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Structural Sources of Popular Revolts and the Tōbaku Movement at the Time of the Meiji Restoration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Yoshio Sugimoto
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Extract

Turbulent years before and after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 have been one of the most extensively written pages of Japanese history. Much work has been carried out on the revolutionary samurai and the aspiring merchants who implemented the upheaval. Curiously, however, revolts and rebellions which erupted at more popular levels, such as peasant uprisings and urban mass disturbances during this period, have drawn little scholarly attention. According to the literature survey of Irwin Scheiner, no work on Japanese peasant uprisings has been published English since Hugh Borton's study in 1938.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , August 1975 , pp. 875 - 889
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1975

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References

This research has been funded by a grant from the School of Social Sciences Research Committee at La Trobe University. I am grateful to Carmel M. Spottiswood for her editorial help.

1 Scheiner, Irwin, “The Mindful Peasant: Sketches for a Study of Rebellion,” Journal of Asian Studies 32 (August, 1973), 581–582CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3 Notable works in the field include: Kokushō Iwao, Hyafyuhō ikki no kenkyū (A study of peasant uprisings) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1928); Horic Eiichi, Meiji ishin no shafai kōsei (Social configurations of the Meiji Restoration) (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1954); Hani Gorō, Meiji ishin kenkyü (A study of the Meiji Restoration) (Tokyo: Iwana-mi Shoten, 1956); Aoki Kōji, Meiji nōmin sōjō no nenji-teki kenkyū (A chronological study of peasant disturbances in the Meiji Period) (Tokyo: Shinsei-sha, 1967); Shōji Kichinosuke, Yonaoshi ikki no kenkyü (A study of yonaoshi uprisings) (Tokyo: Azekura Shobō, 1970). For a comprehensive bibliography, see the citations at the end of Scheiner's article.

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15 See articles written by Tanaka Akira, Shiba-hara Takuji, and Ikeda Takamasa in Iwanami Kōza Nihon rekjshi: Kindai I (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1962).

16 Kokushō, op. cit.

17 Mōri Toshihiko, Meiji ishin seiji-shi josetsu (An introduction to political history of the Meiji Restoration) (Tokyo: Mirai-sha, 1967).

18 Fujino Tamotsu, “Bakumatsu ishin-ki ni okeru shohan no kōzō to sono dōkō (Structure and trend of small domains at the end of the Tokugawa period and at the time of the Restoration),” Shirin 46 (1963).

19 Borton, op. cit.

20 Citations are from the translation by Stuart Gilbert (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955).

21 5 (January, 1882), 9–22; and 8 (April, 1882), 97–107, both reported by Kure Fumisato.

22 Ryūken, Ōhashi, Nippon no kaikyū kōsei (Japanese class composition) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971), 10Google Scholar.

23 Scores reported in the data for this index are the mean average scores of 1864 through 1868.

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26 Tokyo: Sanichi Shobō, 1971.

27 More concrete categories of these revolts are discussed later in this paper.

28 The figures also include those cases which erupted at the end of the Tokugawa period (bakti matsu) but whose exact years of eruption are unknown.

29 A one-tailed test of significance assumes that we can hypothesize the direction of influence of an explanatory variable on a dependent variable in the population before we examine the relationship in the sample between the two variables. If the relationship in the sample is strong enough, we can infer that it is unlikely that the hypothesized directional relationship does not exist in the population, When we say that the relationship is significant at a critical level of p = 0.05, the degree of association between the two variables in the sample is so strong that the probability that we are in error in inferring the relationship in the population from the relationship in the sample is less than 5 percent.

30 See Nihon rekishi daijiten, bekkan: Nihon rekishi chizu (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1969), chart 42. Small domains whose hōdaka were below fifty thousand koku are not included.

31 Supporting the point, Figure I shows a drastic decline in the number of cases of revolt in 1867 (one year before the Restoration) when the anti Tokugawa movement organized by the samurai reached its peak.

32 Snyder and Tilly, op. cit., 528.

33 Nagel, Ernest, Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 77–78Google Scholar.

34 Yoshio Sugimoto, “Economic Fluctuations and Popular Disorders in Pre-War Japan (1773–1929),” Paper read at the 46th Congress of the Australian New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, held at the Australian National University in January 1975.