Before Meiji Restoration, Japan was a closed-door and backward feudal country. This country is called "the kingdom of God", which is also called "the country protected by the gods". The emperor is the embodiment of God, and he has supreme power over his subjects. The idea of "loyalty to the monarch" and "loyalty to the monarch" has always been the highest moral standard in Japanese feudal society. By the beginning of17th century, the state power had fallen into the hands of Tokugawa shogunate and was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu, which was called "military regime". Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542 ~ 16 16), originally a local vassal (known as "Daming" in Japan), gradually expanded his power in the war of hegemony for many years, and defeated his opponent Daming in the battle of Guanyuan in 1600, laying the foundation for dominating the world in the future. 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu was awarded the title of "General of Foreign Enemy Invasion" by the Japanese Emperor, and established a feudal military dictatorship in Edo City (now Tokyo). Since then, the Tokugawa family has come down in one continuous line. After 15 generations of generals, the Tokugawa era lasted in Japan for more than 260 years.
In the Tokugawa shogunate era, the nominal head of Japan was the emperor, but the real power fell to the Tokugawa family. At that time, the shogunate held the highest land ownership in the country, directly managed about a quarter of the total cultivated land area in the country, and was the largest feudal Lord. But also controls the national commercial cities and mines, monopolizes foreign trade and controls the lifeline of the national economy. Politically, the Tokugawa shogunate is nominally a "general", but actually calls itself a "king", representing the country externally, presiding over the government internally and monopolizing power. The most typical thing is that the shogunate is not located in the capital, but works in Edo, dealing with state affairs, often acting on its own, and ignoring the emperor at all.
In order to strengthen its rule, the Tokugawa shogunate implemented the "Mufan system" throughout Japan, which was a pyramid-like system with the Tokugawa shogunate general above and the governor's support below. In order to win the support of the famous names, the Tokugawa family divided the plundered land into 260 famous names, and all the famous names should swear allegiance to the general, abide by the shogunate regulations and obey orders. The territory and ruling organization of Daming is called "Fan", which means the barrier of the shogunate. More than 200 princes are divided into pro-princes, internal princes and foreign princes according to the relationship between relatives and friends. The generals rely on the close governors and the internal governors to guard against the name of the distant governors. Daming divided his territory into smaller units and gave them to his vassals, who belonged to the general and Daming and were called warriors. These soldiers are generally professional soldiers and have the privilege of wearing swords. They can kill civilians unscrupulously and are the main force of shogunate generals to rule the people.
In order to further consolidate its rule, on the one hand, the shogunate desperately advocated pedantic Confucianism, especially defined Zhu's theory as Chinese studies, imprisoned people's thoughts and suppressed people's resistance; On the other hand, it pursues the "lock-up policy" and does not establish any relations with other countries, thus tightly closing the whole of Japan.
In the late period of 18, with the development of commodity economy, emerging landlords and commercial capitalists appeared. In order to gain political status and get rid of feudal rule, they were strongly dissatisfied with the shogunate system. However, the broad masses of the people can't bear the hardships of life, and their resistance is also rising day by day. Numerous peasant uprisings and civil riots broke out one after another. These resistance struggles have seriously shaken the rule of the shogunate.
/kloc-In the middle of the 0/9th century, Japan, which has been pursuing the "lock-in policy", was invaded by the United States, Britain, France, Russia and other countries. 1853 and 1854, American navy general Berber led the fleet into edo bay twice, forcing Japan to open ports for trade. The shogunate succumbed to the artillery fire of the great powers, and successively signed many unequal treaties and tariff agreements with the great powers, which betrayed national sovereignty and national interests. Japan is facing a serious national crisis. The Japanese people hate foreign invaders, and even more hate the shogunate that colluded with them. Farmers and citizens have revolted and launched a "counter-curtain" movement; The reform forces among middle and lower class soldiers, businessmen, capitalists and emerging landlords have also invested in the "reverse curtain" struggle.
186365438+February, Changzhou Fanmu faction Takayama Shinsuke led the "Raiders Team" with farmers as the main body to defeat the conservatives and seize the vassal regime. Subsequently, Saigō Takamori, Kubojun, Samoyed Sect, also controlled the power of the vassals. Soon, these two forces formed an alliance to discuss the curtain and became the core of the national curtain-seeking movement. On the one hand, they carried out political and economic reforms to arouse the enthusiasm of farmers, businessmen and middle and lower class soldiers; On the other hand, arm yourself militarily, purchase a large number of western advanced weapons and compete with the shogunate army.
Faced with this situation, the Tokugawa shogunate will never leave it at that. 1in may, 866, the shogunate used Changzhou Francisco as an excuse to send troops to crusade. The shogunate, who thinks he is the shogunate, doesn't know much about his opponent, except that Takayama Shinsuke's army is called Indiana Jones and is equipped with all kinds of strange foreign gadgets. But when the battle started, the shogunate finally found his opponent terrible. This is an army composed of poor soldiers, ronin and farmers. All the officers and men fought bravely, and their clothes, weapons and training methods were imported from Europe. After several attacks and assaults, the shogunate army finally failed and was defeated. At this time, the backyard of the shogunate began to catch fire again, and more than 40 riots broke out in various places. In July, General Kamo died of despair in Osaka.
From 1866 to 12, Tokugawa Yoshinobu succeeded the general. Soon, Emperor Xiaoming, who suppressed the begging faction, died, and Emperor Meiji under the age of 15 acceded to the throne. At this time, the situation in the imperial court began to develop in a direction favorable to the camp. 1867 10, Samoyed, Changzhou and Anyi San Francisco held a secret meeting in Kyoto and decided to arm the curtain with the name of the young Meiji Emperor. On the one hand, they expanded their power, on the other hand, they secretly contacted the emperor and prepared to launch a palace coup to oust General Tokugawa.
1867 12.9, the vassals in the southwest surrounded the palace and relieved the Tokugawa shogunate from guarding the harem. They surrounded the young Meiji Emperor, held a command meeting, and announced that "the imperial power was restored to the ancients", and the power was completely in the hands of the Emperor. Emperor Meiji immediately issued an imperial edict, decided to establish a new central government headed by him, and appointed first-class reformers such as Saigō Takamori and Kubaomin to take charge of government affairs.
186865438+ At the end of October, the shogunate army was defeated near Kyoto, and Tokugawa Yoshinobu fled to Edo. Without giving each other a chance to breathe, the government forces tracked down the remnants of the shogunate and immediately surrounded Edo. In February, the emperor organized a screen-seeking army. Due to the active cooperation between farmers and the urban poor, the shogunate army finally defeated the shogunate army three times bigger than itself. Tokugawa Yoshinobu was forced to surrender, and the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan for more than 200 years, collapsed. The anti-Japanese faction won and established a new Japanese government headed by Emperor Meiji. Emperor Meiji abandoned the vassal counties and divided the country into three prefectures and seventy-two counties, which eliminated the feudal separatist forces in China and established a unified centralized country, clearing the way for the development of capitalism. 59. 1868 After the end of the rule of the French dynasty, in March and April, the Meiji government successively promulgated the Five Pledges and the Power Letter, thus putting forward the basic policy of promoting the new capitalist policy and launching a drastic reform movement from 1868 to 1873. The "five vows" are: 1, Guangxing conference, and every opportunity depends on public opinion; 2. Up and down as one, prevailing economy; 3, the official martial arts and even the common people, each with its own plans, so that people are tireless; 4, break the traditional bad habits, based on justice; 5. Seek knowledge from the world and vigorously revitalize the imperial foundation. The main contents of Japan's reform movement include recovering the feudal landlord territory, abolishing the feudal identity hierarchy, fostering capitalist industry and commerce, and getting rid of the feudal old culture. At the same time, the thinker Western Zhou advocated western learning and became the "father of modern Japanese philosophy". Fukuzawa Yukichi and others advocate "practical learning", absorbing western learning with Confucianism, accepting natural law with rationality and natural human rights with heaven, unlike China people who reject western learning with Confucianism. Political circles, such as Jiu Baojun and others, put forward the slogan of "rich Qiang Bing, prosperous and civilized", urging reform, starting with officials and businessmen, and forcibly accumulating original capital; At the same time, the country is founded on trade, and opening to the outside world is at the expense of economic slavery and loss of customs autonomy, a large trade deficit and serious outflow of gold and silver. Later, the Japanese government put forward the "proposal of developing overseas direct selling industry", and diplomats shouldered the mission of developing foreign trade. Japan also takes education as the "foundation". 1872 the Ministry of education promulgated the academic system to popularize primary education and senior high school education in the 1970s.
These reform measures conducive to the development of capitalism have enabled Japan to embark on the capitalist road, get rid of the crisis of becoming a colony, and gradually transform from a backward feudal society into an independent capitalist power.
However, at that time, the development level of Japanese capitalism was not high, the bourgeoisie was weak, and an independent political force had not yet formed. Therefore, the leadership of the country fell into the hands of middle and lower class soldiers. Although they are bourgeois, they still retain strong feudal factors, which will gradually develop into military feudal imperialism in the future.
Meiji Restoration was a turning point for Japan to squeeze into a capitalist power. The emerging bourgeoisie colluded with the preserved feudal nobles, formed military feudal imperialism, and vigorously expanded to the outside world, making Japan the source of the Second World War and bringing great disasters and pains to the world.