Japan: Transformation without Revolution p. 625

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JapanTransformation without Revolutionp. 625
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Introduction

• First half of the 19th century the shogunate
  continued to combine beurocracy with feudal
  contsraints
• Government was running into financial problems
• Japanese intellectual life and culture developed
• Japan became more secular
• Schools expanded

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• Terakoya taught reading, writing, and
  Confucianism to ordinary people
• By 1859, literacy was 40 of men and 15 of women
  far higher than anywhere else
• Confucianism remained the major ideology
• There were rivals nationalists who insisted
  on only Japanese style education and the Dutch
  Studies who kept alive the knowledge of the
  Dutch and studied western books

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• In the 19th century commerce expanded
• By 1850 growth came to a halt
• Technological constraints
• Rural riots aimed at the wealthy peasants,
  merchants, and landlord controls

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Isolationism

• Japan feared outside influence
• In 1853, Matthew Perry, and American arrived at a
  port in Edo askeing to open trade
• He threatened bombardment very similar to the
  British in China
• In 1854, Perry returned and won two ports
• The shogunate saw no alternative than to open
  their ports

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Crisis Follows

• Samurai began attacking foreigners
• Civil War broke out in 1866
• The Samurai defeated the Shogunate
• The crisis ended in 1868 when a reform group
  proclaimed a new emperor named Mutsuhito but
  commonly called Meiji or Enlightened One