Tokugawa Crisis

The Bakuhan itself is a combination of the word Bakufu i.e, the tent government and Han i.e, the
domainal government of the daimyo.The daimyo was treated as the personal vessel of the shogun.
Hence, there was a lord vassal relationship in place between the two and the daimyo was bound to
the shogun by an oath of allegiance. In return of this oath, the daimyo could keep his domain as a
fief. Daimyos were of three kinds: the fudai daimyo; the Tozama Daimyo and the Shenpan Daimyo

In the medieval period, the samurai’s had been battle hardened soldiers. However, by the 1600s,
they were not taking part in such activities due to the peace period ushered in during the tokugawa
shogunate. Secondly, the samurai had also been de-fief’ d. fourthly, unlike the Chinese shenshi, it
was a hereditary privileged group both by birth and by law without being in possession of land.
Lastly, there was a large no, of variations and groupings among the samurai: Gushi (country
samurai); Ashigaru (Ground foot soldier); Baishing (Vassals of other samurai). However, the
conventional histories have divided the samurai into three categories: the upper, middle and the
lower samurai.

The Japanese peasantry was organized in the form of semi-autonomous villages. The distinction
between the commoner and the samurai was made very strictly so that the peasant could be
disarmed and a no. of status distinctions were in place in order to set them both apart. Below the
peasantry came the artisans and the lowest among them were the merchants. The artisans and the
merchants grouped together, were known as the chonin. According to D H Norman, it is the ronin
and chonin of the society, when came in alliance brought about the Meiji restoration.

Outside of this four class division involving the samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants, we have
the KUGE i.e, the court aristocracy and the Buddhist monks or Shinto priests who were powerful
political sources in tokugawa japan. After these are the “Etat” people i.e, the outcasts which
constituted atleast 2% of the population. They were either the war prisoners, criminals or group who
worked with animal hide. The crisis of the tokugawa Bakuhan system has five causes to it:
Commercial/urban revolution, Agrarian transformation, the changing role of the government,
Samurai discontent and the opening of japan by the west.

Commercial/Urban revolution
James mc clainn argues that the story of the mitsui house is symptomatic of a commercial revolution
taking place in japan. People were giving or quitting their jobs to become merchants. They were
moving from countryside to towns hence it was also a period of large migration. Population and
agricultural production both grew in the late tokugawa period but population did not rise at a rate
that ate up in the agricultural productivity. There are various reasons for this growth: (a) End of
feudal warfare in japan (b) Economic unification of country (c) Development of a brand new coinage
(d) Improvements in transport and communications network and (e) Urbanization of the samurai
class.

Agrarian transformation
By the early 19th century, things began to change. Agricultural production was on a rise and
improvements in agrarian technology were being welcomed. There are two large arguments. Firstly,
Thomas smith points out that the rural population remained relatively stable as did the taxes and
the agricultural production and productivity were on a rise which gave way to a peasant surplus. The
second arguement is the rising commercial agriculture as a result of the peasant surplus. A historian
called Kenneth Pyle has pointed out that at the beginning of tokugawa period, agriculture was self-
sufficient and cooperative which meant that the farmer didn’t have to buy or sell on the market.

In the late tokugawa period, market relations began to transform agricultural production. The
people in edo and Osaka were demanding agricultural supplies due to the rise of commercial
revolution. As regions began to send their prominent goods to the dwellers in towns and cities they
also began to specialize. Hence, regional specialization in agriculture started. Hence the commercial
revolution ate into the self-sufficiency and cooperative nature of the villages and now the peasants
were entering the markets both as a consumer and a producer. However, whenever there is a
process of commercialization of agriculture, there will always be new patterns of stratification within
the peasant society. In tokugawa japan, the gono emerged as the new class or the rich peasant, who
also participated in money lending.

Changing role of the government

The ruling authorities at this time consisted of the bakufu and the Han government of the daimyos.
The official ideology of the bakufu was neo-Confucianist, which meant that they believed in an anti-
merchant ethos. Hence, this thinking promotes the idea that a state’s economy has to be stagnant.
Problems faced by the economy included – instability of government revenues, growing gap
between income and expenditure, lots of debts. According to Peter Duus, the bakufu response to
the problems faced by the economy was negative, unimaginable and restrictive. It acknowledged the
high strain faced by the economy but the bakufu was reluctant in developing a policy to deal with
this.

According to Kenneth Pyle, one of the most remarkable failures in the administrative response of
the bakufu was its failure to tax the growing areas of the tokugawa economy i.e., the culture and
trade. Secondly, the lack of account keeping and a dead bureaucracy constituted the failure of the
bakufu to tax merchants. There are two broad approaches that the bakufu takes up, as Pyle has
pointed out i.e, the fundamentalist approach (advocated a restoration of the agrarian economy) and
the realist approach (advocated the commercialization of the economy and opening up of the
japan).

However, both Pyle and Peter Duus have pointed out that these fundamentalist reforms failed
because they treated the symptoms as a problem rather than the cause of the problem. However,
unlike the bakufu, the Hans were not reluctant to enter into the sphere of trade.

Samurai
According to Kenneth Pyle, the essential transformations in the nature of samurai was that they had
to adjust from a period of war to a period of peace. This transformation was accompanied by an
expansion and differentiation in the bureaucracy itself. However, according to Pyle, the samurai felt
the contradiction between the warrior ethos in which they had been trained and their new position
as civil administrators very keenly.The social rank appointment was not favored by the samurai and a
tension developed in this region. What became repetitive was that the samurai found it difficult to
sustain their lifestyles on the basis of their diminished stipend.

Hence they took up gentile jobs such as teaching calligraphy and all. However these were for the
lucky samurai while many of them had to take up menial jobs.Pyle points to two shifts that occurred
in the lord vassal relationship of the daimyo and the samurai between the late and early tokugawa
period. The loyalty that used to be conditional in the early tokugawa became unconditional.
Secondly, loyalty that used to be personal and intimate in the early tokugawa became formal and
distant and remote in the late tokugawa period.Most samurai expressed their social criticisms in
conservative Confucianist terms. They argued that the tokugawa world was upside down because
everywhere there was a relentless pursuit of profit taking place. These critiques also pointed a finger
at the declining quality of political leadership, seen at the level of the bakufu and the domain.
However, a group of thinkers began to argue that trade should be encouraged rather than checked.
These were the kaikoku.

Opening of Japan
Upon the arrival of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853 in Japan, a debate started among the
Japanese scholars and two schools emerged: the pragmatist view (advocating kaikoku) and the Joi
School (expel the barbarian). The belief of the Kaikoku School was that practical ideas are more
important than abstract principles. Whereas the joi considered that opening Japan to the west
would foster cultural and social corruption.

In 1853, Perry presented his demands to a divided bakufu and gave Japan a year to respond to his
demands. The bakufu collected every daimyo’s opinions on the matter. Ultimately the dominance
emerged in the favor of the Kaikoku School. Hence, in the March of 1854, the treaty of kanagawa
was signed wherein two ports namely Shimoda and Hakodate was opened up to the west. However
the west began to accelerate their pressure to open Japan and it had to sign another treaty by the
name of Harris treaty, signed in the July 1858 which included provisions involving international
control over Japanese tariff and extra territoriality along with the opening of 5 other ports.

However before it’s signing the bakufu consulted the imperial court which refused to sign the draft
treaty and hence head of the tokugawa government had to resign and I Naosuke became the
effective head of the government and necessitated the signing of the Harris treaty despite the
imperial court’s denial. This act inflamed the joi to such an extent that they assassinated I Naosuke
and after his death, a wave of anti bakufu slogans was spread across Japan, especially amongst the
tozama daimyos.

The Satsuma and Choshu, both tozama houses, offered two positions. The satsuma gave the solution
of KOBU GOTTAI or the union of the court and the bakufu while the Choshu was more committed to
the joi policy. The bakufu thought that it was facing a resurgence of its authorities and tried to
impose its dominance by issuing the Sankenkotai system again (it was relaxed in between) and
others. However these measures boomeranged as it led to an alliance between the Satsuma and
Choshu, now known as the sat cho alliance.

Finally in the combined force of the sat cho alliance they marched to the imperial court in January
1868, where the GOI emperor MUTSUHITO sat on the throne of japan. The sat cho raised him to the
position of the real head of the government and gave him the title of ‘meiji’. Hence the entire
movement came to be known as the Meiji restoration.

Historiography
Elise Tipton points out that there is a basic divide on the issue of the crisis of the bakufu which
depends on two kinds of interpretation. The first interpretation is that of the internal problems one,
which is usually emphasized by the marxians (quite different from the Marxists). They usually see the
crisis as representing a passage from feudalism to the bourgeoisie through two types of unrest: 1.
Peasant unrest and 2. Samurai discontent, which acted as the driving force. However the thesis often
varies. The usual consensus rest that lower samurai were frustrated with the inheritance system and
didn’t have access to a higher group. Hence it rose into a rebellion.

The second interpretation usually sees the external problems such as the opening of japan and the
unequal treaties as the driving force. But the marxians emphasize more on the internal rather than
the external.

The non-marxian emphasize political problems of that time which included the beginnings of a
potent force of increasing nationalism in the face of unequal treaties and the opening of japan. The
nature of peasant unrest was heavily localized, according to them. This is not a reflection of a
passage between feudalism and capitalism but intra-village conflict which causes unrest. The latter
was seen as an attack on authoritative structures of village rather than the feudal structure of japan.

When talking of the samurai, the non-marxian reject the thesis of class consciousness in relation to
samurai’s discontent. According to SHIBAHARA TAKUJI, agrarianists with an anti-feudal driving policy
were primarily responsible for the tokugawa fall. Conrad totman argues that the anti-feudal
mentality was prevalent in 1860s but this anti feudal sentiment didn’t turn into an anti bakufu
movement. On the contrary, the rise of the spirit of nationalism, according to totman was the
reason of the fall of tokugawa. Since, he believed that the class consciousness was not developed
enough but the policy of nationalism was.

H.D. Harootunian states that role of emperor changed from ‘principle’ to ‘principal’ due to the work
of shishi. Thomas Huber also talks about the lower class shishi. The role of shishi is contested. Elise
points that they acted as a single group. Marius Jansen and W.G. Beasley notice commonalities b/w
shishi like lower samurai rank and idealist temperament. Those from middling and lower ranks
protested peacefully and manipulated politics, while shishi from ranks of pseudo samurai resorted to
violence. Jansen mentions that orthodox views before 1945 highlight patriotic role of shishi. In mid-
1880’s peasant uprisings and eejanaika (frenzy dancing) characterize age of disorder, acc to George
Wilson.

Albert Craig states that lower samurai were not acting out of class interest but for Han loyalty.
Wilson and Duus state that they wished to restore the old order. Huber says that lower samurai had
class consciousness, ‘service intelligentsia’ because of grievances against bakufu that became a
force. Historian agree that this phase led to the birth of modern Japan. The new view suggests that
Meiji leaders were farsighted and wise in attaining their goals while Marxist view says that they were
conservatives, reflected in their policies. Two factions emerged- KOZAHA (lectures faction) argued
that feudal elements remained after meiji restoration and bourgeoisie and socialist revolution was
yet to be established and RONOHA (labour-farmer faction) stating bourgeoisie revolution as
complete and japan reaching phase of finance and monopoly capitalism.