Tokugawa Period (1602-1868)
Capital: Edo (Today’s Tokyo)
Shôgun - Supreme General
Tennô -Emperor
Daimyô -Feudal Lords
Sakoku (country in chain)
1844 – the Dutch (the only Western ally of the Japanese since the establishment of the Tokugawa Bakufu, as will be recalled) advised the Japanese that they should open up their markets in order not to face the terrible fate of the Chinese. They asked them to stop their isolationist policy – sakoku.
1853 – Arrival of Commodore Perry from the USA.
1857 – Commodore Perry is granted to have an audience with the Shogun.
1858- Treaty of Amity and Commerce (US and Japan)
-exchange of diplomatic agents
-Edo, Kobe, Nagasaki, Niigata and Yokohamas opening to foreign trade as ports
ability of United States citizens to live and trade in those ports
-a system of extraterritoriality that provided for the subjugation of foreign residents to the laws of their own consular courts instead of the Japanese law system
-fixed low import-export duties, subject to international control
Similar unequal treaties were signed with Britain, France, Russia and Holland
1868 – Meiji Restoration
End of the Tokugawa shogunate, restoration of the empire.
The era of Westernization and heavy industrialization.
1895 – Sino-Japanese war. A very humiliating defeat of China, and a major success for Japan. Treaty of Shimonoseki is signed in the end. The imdemnity paid by China to Japan was used as a subsidy for further Japanese industrialization.
1904-1905 – Russo-Japanese War. Japan defeated Russia and proved that it has become a world-power.
