Japan and the West

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Japan and the West

• Feudal Japan
• Daimyo, Samurai, Emperor, Shogun
• Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1867)
• Control
• Sokoku
• Economic social changes
• American threat
• Commodore Perrys black ships
• Harris Treaty (1858)
• Japanese pragmatism
• Fall of Tokugawa

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Feudal Japan (12th cent.-1467)

• Daimyo (die-mee-yo)
• Feudal lord
• Samurai
• Vassal (to serve), warrior
• Bushido (way of the warrior)
• Shogun
• Supreme military commander
• defacto ruler of Japan
• Emperor
• Theoretical ruler, but only a figurehead

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• Warring States (1467-1600)
• Portuguese arrival (1543)
• Reunification
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi
• Tokugawa Ieyasu
• Battle of Sekigahara (1600)

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Portuguese guns for a daimyo

• At first the people were astonished then they
  became frightened. But in the end they all said
  in unison We should like to learn!
• Tokitaka occupied himself, morning and night,
  and without rest in handling the arms. As a
  result, he was able to convert the misses of his
  early experiment into hitsa hundred hits in a
  hundred attempts.

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Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1847)

• Tokugawa Ieyasu
• Centralized feudalism
• Control mechanisms
• Eliminated religion as independent force
• Closed country (except Dutch at Nagasaki)
• alternate attendance system

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Economic social changes

• Commercial revolution
• Castles castletowns
• Emergence of merchants
• Edo (Tokyo) population 1 million by 1850
• masterless samurai (ronin)

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Matthew Perry
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Commodore Matthew C. Perry
I am desirous that our two countries should
trade with each other, for the benefit both of
Japan and the United States. --President Millard
Fillmore (1854)
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Harris Treaty (1858)

• Opening of ports
• Exchange of ministers
• Extraterritorial privileges
• Similar treaties with European powers follow
• Ends 2 centuries of virtual seclusion

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US Consul Harris to Japanese officials (1858)

• If Japan should make a treaty with the
  ambassador of the US, who has come unattended by
  military force, her honor will not be impaired.
  There will be a great difference between a treaty
  made with a single individual, unattended, and
  one made with a person who should bring fifty
  men-of-war to these shores.

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A senior Japanese official after hearing Harris
remarks

• I am therefore convinced that our policy should
  be to stake everything on the present
  opportunity, to conclude friendly alliances, to
  send ships to foreign countries everywhere and
  conduct trade, to copy the foreigners where they
  are at their best and so repair our own
  shortcomings, to foster our national strength and
  complete our armaments, and so gradually subject
  the foreigners to our influence until in the
  endour hegemony is acknowledged throughout the
  globe.
• (emphasis added)