| Shinsengumi | Tokugawa era | Meiji Restoration | Samurai | Bushido |
SHINSENGUMI | |||||||||||||||
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The Shinsengumi were a special police force of the late shogunate period. They were also called the "Mibu-ro", meaning "Wolves of Mibu", after the town where they were stationed. Originally, it meant the "Roushis of Mibu", but this changed as the reputation of the Shinsengumi became tarnished in its early years. After Japan opened up to Matthew Perry and the West in the 1860s, sentiment towards the Tokugawa shogunate grew negative while citizens longed for the return to power of the emperor. So the shogunate hired some of the greatest swordsmen of Edo, masterless samurai in Kyoto, to protect itself and counteract those who supported the emperor. The Shinsengumi began as the Roushigumi. The Roushigumi - the "Kyoto Defenders", is a group of 13 masterless samurai, originally founded by Kiyokawa Hachirou in 1863. Loyal to the Bakufu, they were supposed to act as the protectors of the Tokugawa shogun. Kiyokawa Hachirou, however, was actually in favor of the revolutionist movements, though he publicly appeared pro-shogunate. He intended to use the Roushigumi to ruin the shogun's foreign diplomacy and image by engaging them in terrorism. He divulged his plan to the group on February 24. They were now supposed to work for the Emperor. 13 members dissented, and later became the founding members of the Shinsengumi. The original Captains of the Shinsengumi were Serizawa Kamo, Kondou Isami, and Niimi Nishigi and they based themselves in the village of Mibu. Their job was to keep the peace in Kyoto and to stop the actions of pro-revolutionists. The reckless actions of Serizawa and Niimi, done in the name of the Shinsengumi, caused the group to be feared in Kyoto. This continued until the seppuku of Niimi and the assassination of Serizawa by key members of his own group. Popular fiction claims that the Shinsengumi law was written by Serizawa Kamo or Kondou Isami, but it was most probably written by Hijikata Toshizou (since its strictness fits his personality more than the other leaders). The law has five articles, which can be translated as follows:
The penalty for breaking any rule was seppuku. In addition, the Shinsengumi had these additional laws:
The most prominent of which is this: "If a Shinsengumi member engage in a fight with a stranger, be it on duty or not, if he is wounded and can't kill the enemy, allowing him to run away, even in case of a wound in the back, seppuku is ordered."Tennen Rishin Ryu was a sword style practiced by the Shinsengumi. Founded by Kondou Uchikuranosuke, the style was popularized by Kondou Isami. This style, like other koryu arts, teaches kenjutsu, bojutsu, and aikijutsu. It was said that the blood of Shinsengumi members flowed like water in the streets of Kyoto. The Ikeda-ya Affair of 1864, in which they prevented the burning of Kyoto, made the Shinsengumi popular overnight and they had a surge of recruits. At its peak, the Shinsengumi had about 300 members.
The death of Hijikata Toshizou on May 11, 1869, marks the end of the Shinsengumi. |
| Shinsengumi | Tokugawa era | Meiji Restoration | Samurai | Bushido |
TOKUGAWA ERA |
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The Edo period is a division of Japanese history running from 1603 to 1867. The period marks the governance of the Edo or Tokugawa Shogunate which was also officially established in 1603 by the first Edo shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. In Japanese history, a Shogun was the practical ruler of Japan for most of the time from 1192 to the Meiji Era beginning in 1868. Since the launch of the Kamakura shogunate, the shogun had seized the practical power of ruling Japan, taking power over from the Imperial Court in Kyoto until the Meiji restoration. The administration of a Shogun is called Bakufu in Japanese, or the shogunate in English. During this Edo period, external political, economic and religious influence on Japan was limited. Only China and the Dutch V.O.C. enjoyed the right to visit Japan during this period. Other caucasians who landed on Japanese shores were put to death. The period ended in 1867 with the restoration of the Imperial rule by the 15th and last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu. The Edo period is also known to be the beginning of the early modern period of Japan. The end of this period is particularly called "Late Tokugawa shogunate". The cause for the end of this period is controversial but is recounted as the forcing of Japan's opening to the world by Commodore M. Perry of the U.S. Navy whose armada (known by Japanese as 'the black ships') fired weapons from Tokyo Bay. Several artificial land masses were created to block the range of the armada and this land remains in what is presently called the Odaiba district. |
| Shinsengumi | Tokugawa era | Meiji Restoration | Samurai | Bushido |
MEIJI RESTORATION |
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The Meiji Restoration (Meiji Ishin), also known as the Meiji Ishin or Renewal, describes a chain of events that led to a change in Japan's political and social structure; it occurred from 1866 to 1869, a period of 4 years that transverses both the late Edo (often called Late Tokugawa shogunate) and beginning of the Meiji Era. The formation in 1866 of the Satcho Alliance between Saigo Takamori, the leader of the Satsuma domain, and Kido Takayoshi, the leader of the Choshu domain, marks the beginning of the Meiji restoration. These two leaders supported the emperor and were brought together by Ryoma Sakamoto for the purpose of challenging the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate (bakufu) and restoring the emperor to power. The Tokugawa bakufu came to an official end on November 9th, 1867, with the resignation of the 15th Tokugawa Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu and the "restoration" (Taisei Houkan) of imperial rule. The 15-year-old Mutsuhito succeeded his father, Emperor Komei, and the following year took the reign name Meiji or "enlightened rule," and signed the Five Charter Oath. Shortly thereafter in January 1868, the Boshin War (War of the Year of the Dragon) started with the Battle of Toba Fushimi in which the new government's army, led by the forces from Choshu and Satsuma defeated the shogun's army. The war ended in early 1869 with the siege of Hakodate, Hokkaido. The defeat of the armies of the former shogun (led by Hijikata Toshizou) marked the end of the Meiji Restoration; all defiance to the emperor and his rule ended. The leaders of the Meiji Restoration, as this revolution came to be known, claimed that their actions restored the emperor's powers. This is not in fact true. Power simply moved from the Tokugawa Shogun to a new oligarchy of the daimyo who defeated him. These oligarchs were mostly from the Satsuma province (Okubo Toshimichi and Saigo Takamori), and the Choshu province (Ito Hirobumi, Yamagata Aritomo, and Kido Koin.) |
| Shinsengumi | Tokugawa era | Meiji Restoration | Samurai | Bushido |
SAMURAI |
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Samurai is a common term for a warrior in pre-industrial Japan. A more appropriate term is bushi (literally, "war-man") which came into use during the Edo period. However, the term samurai now usually refers to warrior nobility, not, for example, ashigaru or foot soldiers. The samurai with no attachment to a clan or daimyo was called a ronin (literally, "wave-man"). The word samurai has origins in the pre-Heian period Japan when it was pronounced saburai, meaning servant or attendant. It was not until the early modern period, namely the Azuchi-Momoyama period and early Edo period of the late 16th and early 17th centuries that the word saburai became substituted with samurai. However, by then, the meaning had already long before changed. During the era of the rule of the samurai, the earlier term yumitori (bowman) was also used as an honorary title of an accomplished warrior even when swordsmanship had become more important. Japanese archery (kyujutsu), is still strongly associated with the war god Hachiman. During the Heian period, samurai came to refer especially to the guards of the imperial palace and to those who carried swords. These forerunners of what we now know as samurai had ruler-sponsored equipment and were required to hone heir martial skills in all times. The actual armies of the emperor, on the other hand, were nothing but groups of conscripts assigned to provincial areas of Japan in case of war or rebellion. They were modeled after continental Chinese armies and were composed of a third of the able-bodied adult male population. In contrast to the imperial guards, each soldier had to supply his own weapons and support himself. In the early Heian, the late 8th and early 9th centuries, the emperor Kammu sought to consolidate and expand his empire in northern Honshu. The original armies sent to conquer the rebellious Emishi (the ancestors of the present-day Ainu) lacked motivation and discipline and were unable to prevail. He then introduced the title of shogun and began to rely on the powerful regional clans to conquer the Emishi. These clans originally were farmers that had been driven to arms to protect themselves from the imperially appointed magistrates sent to govern their lands and collect taxes. Skilled in mounted combat and archery, these clan warriors became the emperor's preferred tool for putting down rebellions (the armies were eventually disbanded). By the mid-Heian, they had adopted Japanese-style armor and weapons and laid the foundation of bushido, their famous ethical code. The samurai used several weapons, though usually they carried a katana, a single edged sword and a wakizashi, a smaller version of the katana. Samurai were expected to be cultured and literate, and over time, samurai during the Tokugawa era gradually lost their military function. By the end of the Tokugawa era, samurai were essentially civilian bureaucrats for the daimyo, with their swords serving only ceremonial purposes. With the Meiji reforms in the late 19th century, the samurai were abolished as a distinct class in favor of a western-style national army. The strict samurai code called bushido still survives, however, in present-day Japanese society, as do many other aspects of their way of life. |
| Shinsengumi | Tokugawa era | Meiji Restoration | Samurai | Bushido |
BUSHIDO |
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In Japanese tradition, Bushido is a term which translates "way of the warrior". Many samurai devoted their lives to bushido, a strict code that demanded loyalty and honor to the death. If a samurai failed to uphold his honor he could regain it by committing seppuku (ritual suicide). Bushido is an internally-consistent ethical code. In its purest form, it demands of its practitioners that they look effectively backward at the present from the moment of their own death, as if they were already, in effect, dead. This is particularly true of the earlier forms of Bushido or budo. Of later forms, traditionalists would scoff, "they reason with staying alive kept clearly in mind." There are seven virtues associated with Bushido:
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| Shinsengumi | Tokugawa era | Meiji Restoration | Samurai | Bushido |