Sakuradamon Incident (1860)
The Sakuradamon Incident was the assassination of Japanese Chief Minister Ii Naosuke on 24 March 1860 by rōnin samurai of the Mito Domain, outside the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle. Ii, a leading figure of the Bakumatsu period and a proponent of the reopening of Japan after more than 200 years of seclusion, was criticized for signing the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States Consul Townsend Harris and, soon afterwards, similar treaties with other Western countries. From 1859, the ports of Nagasaki and Yokohama became open to foreign traders as a consequence of the Treaties. Ii was criticized for reinforcing the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate against regional daimyōs through the Ansei Purge. Naosuke made strong enemies in the dispute for the succession of Shōgun Tokugawa Iesada, because he forced retirement on his opponents the retainers of Mito, Owari, Tosa and Uwajima; these policies generated strong sentiment against the Shogunate among proponents of the Mito school.
The assassination took place on 24 March 1860, on Double Third Festival where all daimyos stationed in Edo are scheduled to enter Edo Castle for meetings. The assassins attacked Ii's entourage just outside the Castle, near the Sakuradamon when Ii was reaching the premises. Ii had been warned about his safety, many encouraged him to retire from office, but he refused, replying that "My own safety is nothing when I see the danger threatening the future of the country". Ii's entourage was composed of Ii's palanquin carriers. A total of 17 Mito rōnin ambushed Ii together with a samurai from Satsuma Domain. While an attack at the front drew the attention of the guards, a lone assassin fired one shot into the palanquin containing Ii, with a Japanese-made Colt 1851 Navy Revolver, copied from the firearms that Commodore Matthew Perry had given the shogunate as gifts. Drawing the injured and paralyzed Ii out, Arimura decapitated Ii and performed seppuku; the conspirators carried a manifesto on themselves, outlining the reason for their act: While aware of the necessity for some change in policy since the coming of the Americans at Uraga, it is against the interest of the country and a stain on the national honour to open up commercial relations with foreigners, to admit foreigners into the Castle, to conclude treaties with them, to abolish the established practice of trampling on the picture of Christ, to allow foreigners to build places of worship for the evil religion, to allow the three Foreign Ministers to reside in the land...
Therefore, we have consecrated ourselves to be the instruments of Heaven to punish this wicked man, we have taken on ourselves the duty of ending a serious evil, by killing this atrocious autocrat. Accounts of the violent event were sent via ship across the Pacific to San Francisco and sped by pony express across the American West. On June 12, 1860, The New York Times reported that Japan's first diplomatic mission to the West received the news about what had happened in Edo; the popular upheaval against foreign encroachment and assassination of Ii forced the Bakufu to soften its stance, to adopt a compromise policy of kōbu gattai suggested by Satsuma Domain and Mito Domain, in which both parties vied for political supremacy in the years to follow. This soon amplified into the violent Sonnō Jōi movement. For the following years until the fall of Bakufu in 1868, more the streets of Japan, would remain notably hazardous for Bakufu officials and foreigners alike, as the Sonno Joi movement continued to expand.
According to Sir Ernest Satow: "A bloody revenge was taken on the individual, but the hostility to the system only increased with time, in the end brought about its complete ruin". The conflict reached its resolution with the military defeat of the Shogunate in the Boshin War, the installation of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Hikone Domain Mito Domain Mito Rebellion Tsuruga: The city which reconciled Mito and Hikone. Samurai Assassin: 1965 film inspired by the incident. Murdoch, James. A History of Japan. 3. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415154178. Satow, Ernest Mason. A diplomat in Japan. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 9781933330167. OCLC 646791008
Meiji oligarchy
The Meiji oligarchy was the new ruling class of Meiji period Japan. In Japanese, the Meiji oligarchy is called the domain clique; the members of this class were adherents of kokugaku and believed they were the creators of a new order as grand as that established by Japan's original founders. Two of the major figures of this group were Ōkubo Toshimichi, son of a Satsuma retainer, Satsuma samurai Saigō Takamori, who had joined forces with Chōshū, Hizen to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. Okubo Saigō a field marshal. Kido Koin, a native of Chōshū, student of Yoshida Shōin, conspirator with Ōkubo and Saigō, became minister of education and chairman of the Governors' Conference and pushed for constitutional government. Prominent were Iwakura Tomomi, a Kyoto native who had opposed the Tokugawa and was to become the first ambassador to the United States, Ōkuma Shigenobu, of Hizen, a student of Rangaku and English, who held various ministerial portfolios becoming prime minister in 1898. To accomplish the new order's goals, the Meiji oligarchy set out to abolish the four divisions of society through a series of economic and social reforms.
Tokugawa shogunate revenues had depended on taxes on Tokugawa and other daimyo lands, loans from wealthy peasants and urban merchants, limited customs fees, reluctantly accepted foreign loans. To provide revenue and develop a sound infrastructure, the new government financed harbor improvements, machinery imports, overseas study for students, salaries for foreign teachers and advisers, modernization of the army and navy and telegraph networks, foreign diplomatic missions, such as the Iwakura mission. Difficult economic times, manifested by increasing incidents of agrarian rioting, led to calls for social reforms. In addition to the old high rents and interest rates, the average citizen was faced with cash payments for new taxes, military conscription, tuition charges for the newly introduced compulsory education; the people needed more time for productive pursuits while correcting social abuses of the past. To achieve these reforms, the old Tokugawa class system of samurai, farmer and merchant was abolished by 1871, though old prejudices and status consciousness continued, all were theoretically equal before the law.
Helping to perpetuate social distinctions, the government named new social divisions: the former daimyō became peerage nobility, the samurai became gentry, all others became commoners. Daimyō and samurai pensions were paid off in lump sums, the samurai lost their exclusive claim to military positions. Former samurai found new pursuits as bureaucrats, army officers, police officials, scholars, colonists in the northern parts of Japan and businessmen; these occupations helped stem some of the discontent. The 1873 Korean crisis resulted in the resignation of military expedition proponents Saigō and Councillor of State Etō Shimpei. Etō, the founder of various patriotic organizations, conspired with other discontented elements to start an armed insurrection against government troops in Saga, the capital of his native prefecture in Kyūshū in 1874. Charged with suppressing the revolt, Ōkubo swiftly crushed Etō, who had appealed unsuccessfully to Saigō for help. Three years the last major armed uprising—but the most serious challenge to the Meiji government—took shape in the Satsuma Rebellion, this time with Saigō playing an active role.
The Saga Rebellion and other agrarian and samurai uprisings mounted in protest to the Meiji reforms had been put down by the army. Satsuma's former samurai were numerous and they had a long tradition of opposition to central authority. Saigō, with some reluctance and only after more widespread dissatisfaction with the Meiji reforms, raised a rebellion in 1877. Both sides fought well, but the modern weaponry and better financing of the government forces ended the Satsuma Rebellion. Although he was defeated and committed suicide, Saigō was not branded a traitor and became a heroic figure in Japanese history; the suppression of the Satsuma Rebellion marked the end of serious threats to the Meiji regime but was sobering to the oligarchy. The fight drained the national treasury, led to serious inflation, forced land values—and badly needed taxes—down. Most important, calls for reform were renewed; the following were leading figures in the Meiji Restoration, when and in the subsequent Government of Meiji Japan: From the Court nobility: Iwakura Tomomi Saionji Kinmochi Sanjō Sanetomi From Satsuma Domain: Godai Tomoatsu Kuroda Kiyotaka Matsukata Masayoshi Mori Arinori Ōkubo Toshimichi Oyama Iwao Saigō Takamori Saigō Tsugumichi Terashima Munenori From Chōshū Domain: Inoue Kaoru Itō Hirobumi Kido Takayoshi Ōmura Masujirō Takasugi Shinsaku Yamagata Aritomo From Tosa Domain: Gotō Shōjirō Itagaki Taisuke Sakamoto Ryōma From Hizen Domain: Etō Shimpei Oki Takato Ōkuma Shigenobu Soejima Taneomi Others: Hayashi Tadasu Inoue Kowashi 1844-1905) Katsu Kaishū Yokoi Shonan Yuri Kimimasa Genrō Government of Meiji Japan Meiji Restoration Japan: Country Studies - Federal Research Division, Library of Congress This arti
Iwakura Mission
The Iwakura Mission or Iwakura Embassy was a Japanese diplomatic voyage to the United States and Europe conducted between 1871 and 1873 by leading statesmen and scholars of the Meiji period. Although it was not the only such mission, it is the most well-known and most significant in terms of its impact on the modernization of Japan after a long period of isolation from the West; the mission was first proposed by the influential Dutch missionary and engineer Guido Verbeck, based to some degree on the model of the Grand Embassy of Peter I. The aim of the mission was threefold; the Iwakura mission followed several such missions sent by the Shogunate, such as the Japanese Embassy to the United States in 1860, the First Japanese Embassy to Europe in 1862, the Second Japanese Embassy to Europe in 1863. The mission was named after and headed by Iwakura Tomomi in the role of extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador, assisted by four vice-ambassadors, three of whom were ministers in the Japanese government.
The historian Kume Kunitake as private secretary to Iwakura Tomomi, was the official diarist of the journey. The log of the expedition published in 1878 in five volumes as Tokumei Zenken Taishi Bei-O Kairan Jikki, provided a detailed account of Japanese observations on the United States and industrializing Western Europe. Included in the mission were a number of administrators and scholars, totaling 48 people. In addition to the mission staff, about 53 students and attendants joined the outward voyage from Yokohama. Several of the students were left behind to complete their education in the foreign countries, including five young women who stayed in the United States to study, including the 6-year old Tsuda Umeko, who after returning to Japan, founded the Joshi Eigaku Juku in 1900, Nagai Shigeko Baroness Uryū Shigeko, as well as Yamakawa Sutematsu Princess Ōyama Sutematsu. Kaneko Kentarō was left in the U. S. too, as a student. In 1890 he was introduced to Theodore Roosevelt, they became friends and their relationship resulted in Roosevelt's mediation at the end of the Russo-Japanese War and the Treaty of Portsmouth.
Makino Nobuaki, a student member of the mission was to remark in his memoirs: Together with the abolition of the han system, dispatching the Iwakura Mission to America and Europe must be cited as the most important events that built the foundation of our state after the Restoration. Nakae Chōmin, a member of the mission staff and the Ministry of Justice, stayed in France to study the French legal system with the radical republican Emile Acollas, he became a journalist and translator and introduced French thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Japan. On 23 December 1871 the mission sailed from Yokohama on the SS America, bound for San Francisco. Arriving in San Francisco on 15 January 1872, the group travelled by train via Salt Lake City and Chicago reaching Washington, D. C. on 29 February. The mission's stay in the United States was extended with an attempt to negotiate new treaty rights, a task that necessitated two members of the party to return to Japan to obtain necessary letters of representation.
Members of the Iwakura Mission were keenly interested in observing schools and learning more about educational policy. Tours to schools and industrial locations in Boston, New York and Washington DC were made as a result. Unsuccessful in their attempts to renegotiate the existing unequal treaties the party set sail for the United Kingdom in August 1872. On 17 August 1872 the Iwakura Mission arrived at Liverpool on the Cunard steamer Olympus. Traveling to London via Manchester the party spent much of late August and early September in and around the capital inspecting political and military institutions, visiting the British Museum, travelling on the newly constructed London Underground and attending musical concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. After visits to the Royal dockyards at Portsmouth and a day visit to Brighton, the mission split into smaller groups to visit, among other places, Blair Atholl in the Highlands of Scotland, the Yorkshire Dales and the industrial centers of Manchester, Edinburgh, Newcastle upon Tyne and Bradford.
Iwakura Tomomi led the Manchester-Liverpool delegation. A visit that culminated on 7 October in a civic reception and banquet where toasts highlighted the leading role of the region in world manufacturing and municipal administration. In Glasgow, as guests of Lord Blantyre, the delegation stayed at Erskine House and given tours of shipbuilding and steel fabrication facilities on banks of the River Clyde. In Newcastle upon Tyne the group arrived on 21 October staying in the Royal Station Hotel where they met the industrialist Sir William Armstrong, it had been ten years since the Bakufu mission had visited the town, but as a direct result of the visit significant new export orders were obtained for ships and armaments from Tyneside factories. "The gentlemen were attired in ordinary morning costume and except for their complexion and the oriental cast of their features, they could scarcely be distinguished from their English companions." They visited the Elswick Engine and Ordnance Works with Captain Andrew Noble and George Rendell, inspected the hydraulic engines and the boring and turni
Bombardment of Kagoshima
The Bombardment of Kagoshima known as the Anglo-Satsuma War, took place on 15–17 August 1863 during the Late Tokugawa shogunate. The Royal Navy was fired on from coastal batteries near the town of Kagoshima and in retaliation bombarded the town; the British were trying to extract a payment from the daimyō of Satsuma following the Namamugi Incident of 1862, in which British people were attacked by Satsuma samurai for not showing the proper respect for the daimyō's regent, Shimazu Hisamitsu. Following the Namamugi Incident on September 14, 1862, Lieutenant-Colonel Neale, the British Chargé d'Affaires, demanded from the bakufu an apology and a huge indemnity for the Namamugi outrage of £100,000, representing 1/3 of the total revenues of the Bakufu for one year. Neale kept threatening a naval bombardment of Edo. Britain demanded of Satsuma Domain the arrest and trial of the perpetrators of the outrage, £25,000 compensation for the surviving victims and the relatives of Charles Lennox Richardson.
The bakufu, led by Ogasawara Nagamichi in the absence of the Shōgun, in Kyoto, eager to avoid trouble with European powers, negotiated with France and Great Britain on July 2, 1863, on board the French warship Sémiramis and paid the indemnity to the British authorities. Participating in the settlement were the main French and British political and navy representatives of the time: Gustave Duchesne de Bellecourt the French Minister in Japan, Lieutenant-Colonel Neale the Chargé d'affaires of Great Britain, Admiral Jaurès and Admiral Kuper. Satsuma Province, their claim was invalid, as foreigners in Japan benefited from extraterritoriality due to Japan's reluctant acceptance of what the Japanese called the Unequal treaties with Europe. Japanese customary law did not apply to foreigners. However, Satsuma felt it could not be seen as submitting to European demands in the anti-foreign context at that time in Japan. Great Britain. Other anti-foreign troubles were occurring throughout the country at the same time, reinforced by Emperor Kōmei's 1863 "Order to expel barbarians".
The European powers chose to react militarily to such exactions: the straits of Shimonoseki had seen attacks on American and French ships passing through, each of which had brought retaliation from those countries, with the U. S. frigate USS Wyoming under Captain McDougal, the Dutch warship Medusa under Captain François de Casembroot, the two French warships Tancrède and the Dupleix under Captain Benjamin Jaurès attacking the mainland. On 14 August 1863, a multinational fleet under Admiral Kuper and the Royal Navy commenced the Bombardment of Shimonoseki to prevent further attacks on western shipping there, they succeeded. Following protracted and fruitless negotiations with Satsuma that had taken over a year, the British Chargé d'affaires had had enough. Under British Government instructions, he required the Royal Naval Commander-in-Chief of the Far East and China Station to coerce Satsuma into complying with the British Government's demands. Informed of the plans, the Bakufu asked for a delay in its implementation: "On receipt of your despatch of the 3rd of August, we understood that you intend to go within three days to the territory of the Prince of Satsuma with the men-of-war now lying in the Bay of Yokohama, to demand satisfaction for the murder of a British merchant on the Tokaido last year.
But owing to the present unsettled state of affairs in our empire, which you witness and hear of, we are in great trouble, intend to carry out several plans. Supposing, something untoward were to happen all the trouble both you and we have taken would have been in vain and fruitless. On the 5th, a vice-minister from Edo visited Colonel Neale, but far from further opposing the expedition of the European empire transmitted that the Shogunate intended to send one of its steamers with the squadron; the steamer in question. The British squadron left Yokohama on August 6, it was composed of the flagship HMS Euryalus, HMS Pearl, HMS Perseus, HMS Argus, HMS Coquette, HMS Racehorse and the gunboat HMS Havock. They sailed for Kagoshima and anchored in the deep waters of Kinko Bay on August 11, 1863. Satsuma envoys came aboard Euryalus and letters were exchanged, with the British commander pressing for a resolution satisfactory to his demands within 24 hours; the Satsuma clan prevaricated. The deadline expired, diplomacy gave way to coercion.
Deciding to put pressure on Satsuma, the Royal Navy commander seized three foreign-built steam merchant ships belonging to Satsuma which were at anchor in Kagoshima harbour, to use them as a bargaining tool. Picking their moment, just as a typhoon started, the Satsuma forces on shore vented their anger by firing their round shot cannons at the British ships. Surprised by the hostility, the British fleet responded by first pillaging and setting on fire the three captured steamships (to the chagrin of the British sailors, who were thereby depriv
Tokyo
Tokyo Tokyo Metropolis, one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, has served as the Japanese capital since 1869. As of 2018, the Greater Tokyo Area ranked as the most populous metropolitan area in the world; the urban area houses the seat of the Emperor of Japan, of the Japanese government and of the National Diet. Tokyo forms part of the Kantō region on the southeastern side of Japan's main island and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Tokyo was named Edo when Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters in 1603, it became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from Kyoto in 1868. Tokyo Metropolis formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. Tokyo is referred to as a city but is known and governed as a "metropolitan prefecture", which differs from and combines elements of a city and a prefecture, a characteristic unique to Tokyo; the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo were Tokyo City. On July 1, 1943, it merged with Tokyo Prefecture and became Tokyo Metropolis with an additional 26 municipalities in the western part of the prefecture, the Izu islands and Ogasawara islands south of Tokyo.
The population of the special wards is over 9 million people, with the total population of Tokyo Metropolis exceeding 13.8 million. The prefecture is part of the world's most populous metropolitan area called the Greater Tokyo Area with over 38 million people and the world's largest urban agglomeration economy; as of 2011, Tokyo hosted 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, the highest number of any city in the world at that time. Tokyo ranked third in the International Financial Centres Development Index; the city is home to various television networks such as Fuji TV, Tokyo MX, TV Tokyo, TV Asahi, Nippon Television, NHK and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. Tokyo third in the Global Cities Index; the GaWC's 2018 inventory classified Tokyo as an alpha+ world city – and as of 2014 TripAdvisor's World City Survey ranked Tokyo first in its "Best overall experience" category. As of 2018 Tokyo ranked as the 2nd-most expensive city for expatriates, according to the Mercer consulting firm, and the world's 11th-most expensive city according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's cost-of-living survey.
In 2015, Tokyo was named the Most Liveable City in the world by the magazine Monocle. The Michelin Guide has awarded Tokyo by far the most Michelin stars of any city in the world. Tokyo was ranked first out of all sixty cities in the 2017 Safe Cities Index; the QS Best Student Cities ranked Tokyo as the 3rd-best city in the world to be a university student in 2016 and 2nd in 2018. Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the 1979 G-7 summit, the 1986 G-7 summit, the 1993 G-7 summit, will host the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Paralympics. Tokyo was known as Edo, which means "estuary", its name was changed to Tokyo when it became the imperial capital with the arrival of Emperor Meiji in 1868, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital in the name of the capital city. During the early Meiji period, the city was called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph; some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei".
The name Tokyo was first suggested in 1813 in the book Kondō Hisaku, written by Satō Nobuhiro. When Ōkubo Toshimichi proposed the renaming to the government during the Meiji Restoration, according to Oda Kanshi, he got the idea from that book. Tokyo was a small fishing village named Edo, in what was part of the old Musashi Province. Edo was first fortified in the late twelfth century. In 1457, Ōta Dōkan built Edo Castle. In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred from Mikawa Province to Kantō region; when he became shōgun in 1603, Edo became the center of his ruling. During the subsequent Edo period, Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world with a population topping one million by the 18th century, but Edo was Tokugawa's home and was not capital of Japan. The Emperor himself lived in Kyoto from 794 to 1868 as capital of Japan. During the Edo era, the city enjoyed a prolonged period of peace known as the Pax Tokugawa, in the presence of such peace, Edo adopted a stringent policy of seclusion, which helped to perpetuate the lack of any serious military threat to the city.
The absence of war-inflicted devastation allowed Edo to devote the majority of its resources to rebuilding in the wake of the consistent fires and other devastating natural disasters that plagued the city. However, this prolonged period of seclusion came to an end with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. Commodore Perry forced the opening of the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, leading to an increase in the demand for new foreign goods and subsequently a severe rise in inflation. Social unrest mounted in the wake of these higher prices and culminated in widespread rebellions and demonstrations in the form of the "smashing" of rice establishments. Meanwhile, supporters of the Meiji Emperor leveraged the disruption that t
Tokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa Shogunate known as the Tokugawa Bakufu and the Edo Bakufu, was the last feudal Japanese military government, which existed between 1603 and 1867. The head of government was the shōgun, each was a member of the Tokugawa clan; the Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle and the years of the shogunate became known as the Edo period. This time is called the Tokugawa period or pre-modern. Following the Sengoku period, the central government had been re-established by Oda Nobunaga during the Azuchi–Momoyama period. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, central authority fell to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Society in the Tokugawa period, unlike in previous shogunates, was based on the strict class hierarchy established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi; the daimyō were at the top, followed by the warrior-caste of samurai, with the farmers and traders ranking below. In some parts of the country smaller regions, daimyō and samurai were more or less identical, since daimyō might be trained as samurai, samurai might act as local rulers.
Otherwise, the inflexible nature of this social stratification system unleashed disruptive forces over time. Taxes on the peasantry were set at fixed amounts that did not account for inflation or other changes in monetary value; as a result, the tax revenues collected by the samurai landowners were worth less and less over time. This led to numerous confrontations between noble but impoverished samurai and well-to-do peasants, ranging from simple local disturbances to much larger rebellions. None, proved compelling enough to challenge the established order until the arrival of foreign powers. A 2017 study found that peasant rebellions and collective desertion lowered tax rates and inhibited state growth in the Tokugawa shogunate. In the mid-19th century, an alliance of several of the more powerful daimyō, along with the titular Emperor, succeeded in overthrowing the shogunate after the Boshin War, culminating in the Meiji Restoration; the Tokugawa shogunate came to an official end in 1868 with the resignation of the 15th Tokugawa shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, leading to the "restoration" of imperial rule.
Notwithstanding its eventual overthrow in favor of the more modernized, less feudal form of governance of the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa shogunate oversaw the longest period of peace and stability in Japan's history, lasting well over 260 years. The bakuhan taisei was the feudal political system in the Edo period of Japan. Baku is an abbreviation of bakufu, meaning "military government"—that is, the shogunate; the han were the domains headed by daimyō. Vassals provided military service and homage to their lords; the bakuhan taisei split feudal power between the shogunate in Edo and provincial domains throughout Japan. Provinces had a degree of sovereignty and were allowed an independent administration of the han in exchange for loyalty to the shōgun, responsible for foreign relations and national security; the shōgun and lords were all daimyōs: feudal lords with their own bureaucracies and territories. The shōgun administered the most powerful han, the hereditary fief of the House of Tokugawa.
Each level of government administered its own system of taxation. The emperor, nominally a religious leader, held no real power; the shogunate had the power to discard and transform domains. The sankin-kōtai system of alternative residence required each daimyō to reside in alternate years between the han and the court in Edo. During their absences from Edo, it was required that they leave family as hostages until their return; the huge expenditure sankin-kōtai imposed on each han helped centralize aristocratic alliances and ensured loyalty to the shōgun as each representative doubled as a potential hostage. Tokugawa's descendants further ensured loyalty by maintaining a dogmatic insistence on loyalty to the shōgun. Fudai daimyō were hereditary vassals of Ieyasu, as well as of his descendants. Tozama became vassals of Ieyasu after the Battle of Sekigahara. Shinpan were collaterals of Tokugawa Hidetada. Early in the Edo period, the shogunate viewed the tozama as the least to be loyal. In the end, it was the great tozama of Satsuma, Chōshū and Tosa, to a lesser extent Hizen, that brought down the shogunate.
These four states are called Satchotohi for short. The number of han fluctuated throughout the Edo period, they were ranked by size, measured as the number of koku of rice that the domain produced each year. One koku was the amount of rice necessary to feed one adult male for one year; the minimum number for a daimyō was ten thousand koku. Regardless of the political title of the Emperor, the shōguns of the Tokugawa family controlled Japan; the administration of Japan was a task given by the Imperial Court in Kyoto to the Tokugawa family, which returned to the court in the Meiji Restoration. While the Emperor had the prerogative of appointing the shōgun, he had no say in state affairs; the shogunate appointed a liaison, the Kyoto Shoshidai, to deal with the Emperor and nobility. Towards the end of the shogunate, after centuries of the Emperor having little say in state affairs and being secluded in his Kyoto palace, in the wake of the reigning shōgun, Tokugawa Iemochi, marrying the sister of Emperor Kōmei, in 1862, the Imperial Court in Kyoto
