Yokoi Shōnan was a Bakumatsu and early Meiji period scholar and political reformer in Japan, influential around the fall of the Tokugawa bakufu.
1861 photo by Ukai Gyokusen
Bakumatsu was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as sakoku and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government. The major ideological-political divide during this period was between the pro-imperial nationalists called ishin shishi and the shogunate forces, which included the elite shinsengumi swordsmen.
A 150-pound Satsuma cannon, built in 1849. It was mounted on Fort Tenpozan at Kagoshima. Caliber: 290mm, length: 4220mm
The Royal Navy frigate HMS Phaeton demanded supplies while in Nagasaki harbour in 1808.
The American merchant ship Morrison of Charles W. King was repelled from Edo Bay in 1837.
Russians meeting Japanese in 1779