Meiji Period
(1868–1912). Meiji, which means "enlightened rule," is the name officially bestowed upon the reign of the sixteen-year-old emperor, Mutsuhito (1852–1912), on 8 September 1868. It is customary, however, to date the Meiji period from 3 January of that year, when he proclaimed the restoration of imperial rule and the abolition of the Tokugawa bakufu (military government) that had governed Japan for more than 250 years.
For most of the Tokugawa period (1600/1603–1868) the emperor was a forlorn political and cultural figure, isolated in the imperial capital, Kyoto, and overshadowed by the powerful Tokugawa shogun and his advisors, who claimed to rule in the emperor's name from the castle town of Edo. As discontent with the bakufu grew during the eighteenth century, however, some reform-minded critics began to invoke the emperor as an alternate, indeed preeminent, source of political authority. Even so, until the mid-nineteenth century, most of these reformers assumed that revitalizing the bakufu was key to resolving the domestic economic and social problems that plagued the country. It was not until the 1850s, when the bakufu appeared to contravene the emperor's wishes by capitulating to the unequal treaty demands put forward by the United States and other Western trading powers, that plots to topple the bakufu began in earnest.
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