Bakumatsu ( 幕末 幕末 , literally “the end of the shogunate ”) is a troubled time in the history of Japan , completing part of the Edo era , covering the period from 1853 to 1869 : from the arrival of the “ black ships ” of the American Commodore Matthew Perry to the end of the Bosin Civil War . The result of the bakumatsu was the Meiji restoration : the abolition of the Tokugawa shogunate and the transfer of power to the emperor .
 History of Japan |
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The Bakumatsu period was characterized by a surge of nationalist and xenophobic sentiments, which at the same time combined with great interest in European sciences and technologies. It was at this time that Japan was forced to stop the policy of self-isolation and signed several unequal treaties with the Western powers, the first of which in 1854 was the United States . Foreigners in Japan acquired broad rights: opening seaports for trade, low customs duties, and the right to extraterritoriality of their consulates. All this caused deep discontent of the part of the population, which refused to support the shogun and began to pin hopes on the emperor, who, according to the dissatisfied, was to expel the European "barbarians" from Japanese soil. Opponents of the shogun, united under the slogan Sonno Joi ("Long live the Emperor, down with the barbarians!"), Were responsible for the numerous killings of foreigners, especially in the early 1860s.
The shogun government took tough retaliatory measures against those who were dissatisfied, in particular, organized the Ansei purge , the organizer of which was tyro Ii Naosuke . However, after his assassination in 1860, the shogun government actually lost its leader and gradually began to lose in the confrontation. The rebellious principalities , such as Choshu , Satsuma and Tosa , with the help of Great Britain and France, modernized their armies, giving them modern European weapons at that time. The effect of the rearmament and reorganization made itself felt in 1866 , when the punitive expedition organized by the shogun government against Choshu failed. In 1867, the last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu renounced power and ceded it to the young emperor Mutsuhito . Soon after, the forces loyal to the shogun began the Bosin war, but their resistance was quickly crushed. The end of the shogunate became a fait accompli, and a new Meiji era began. Nevertheless, the reasons for the fall of the shogunate are much more complicated than the simple arrival of Europeans in the country, whose military power led to the destruction of the current government. Meiji restoration was made possible largely due to the general state of the social and economic sphere of feudal Japan of the 19th century , where at that time there were a large number of problems.