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East Asia 16-20
terms, with help from East Asia By Ebrey/Walthall/Palais
136
History
Undergraduate 1
12/24/2011

Additional History Flashcards

 


 

Cards

Term
Jurchen
Definition
As the Ming Dynasty fell into disorder, the Jurchens put together an efficient state beyond Ming’s northeastern border and adopted the name Manchu for themselves. 
Term
Nurhaci
Definition
Nurhaci, who in 1583 at age twenty- four became the leader of one group of Manchus. Over the next few decades, he was able to expand his territories, in the process not only uniting the Manchus but also creating a social- political- military organization that brought together Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese. He introduced ideas of intermarriage and repelled the Japanese invasion of Korea.
Term
Li Zicheng
Definition
Rebel leader who opposed Ming Dynasty. Ming general Wu Sangui, a native of Liaodong, was near the eastern end of the Great Wall when he heard that the rebel Li Zicheng had captured Beijing. Dorgon proposed to Wu that they join forces and liberate Beijing. Wu opened the gates of the Great Wall to let the Man-chus in, and within a couple of weeks they had occupied Beijing.
Term
Queue
Definition
Although they had not maintained the written language that the Jin had created, they had maintained their hairstyle. A Manchu man shaved the front of his head and wore the rest of his hair in a long braid ( called a queue).
Term
Chinese Reflection of Lost Power
Definition
Han should have addressed the practical problems such as monetary and agricutual issues. Should have protected China from barbarians
Term
Kangxi
Definition
could speak, read, and write Chinese and appreci-ated the value of persuading educated Chinese that the Manchus had a legitimate claim to the Mandate of Heaven. Kangxi emperor faced was the revolt of Wu Sangui and two other Chinese generals who in the early years of the con-quest had been given vast tracts of land in the south as rewards for joining the Qing. Wu was made satrap of Yunnan and Guizhou, and it was his armies that had pursued the last Ming pretender into Burma.
Term
Qianlong and the book burning
Definition
knew many languages, supported both confucian and buddhist teachings. Qianlong carried out a huge literary inquisition. He began to suspect that some governors were holding back books with seditious content. He ordered full searches for books with disparaging references to the Manchus or previous alien conquerors. Sometimes passages were omitted or rewritten, but when the entire book was offensive, it was destroyed.
Term
Banner System
Definition
The Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors used the Banner system to maintain military control and preserve the Manchus’ privileges. Became in a sense a hereditary occupational caste, ranked above others in society, whose members were expected to devote themselves to service to the state. Were not allowed to pursue occupations other than soldier or official. Many led lives of forced idleness, surviving on stipends paid to relatives. Qialong emperor, had most of the Chinese bannermen removed from the banner system
Term
Jinshi Exams
Definition
exam, people prepared for exams to be part of the civil service. Jinshi was the highest. Special quotas for Manchus allowed them to gain more than 5 percent of the jinshi degrees, even though they never exceeded 1 percent of the population.
Term
King George/Lord Macartney/George Staunton
Definition
King george sent Macartney to try and develop trade relations. Instead he came back with reports that he had to pay tribute to Chinese emperor. Staunton protrayed women in submissive capasity.
Term
Confucian Conservatives and Luo Qilan
Definition
Manchu allowed women to be poets, but Confucians said that only men could be poets. Luo Qilan responded by saying Confucius would have removed poetry by women from his book if he thought women could not be poets.
Term
Dream of Red Mansion
Definition
The Dream of Red Man-sions ( also called Story of the Stone), considered by many the most successful of all works of Chinese fiction. Concerned with the grand themes of love and desire, money and power, life and death, and truth and illusion, it is at the same time a psychologically sensitive novel of manners.
Term
Tokugawa
Definition
The social and political order imposed under the Tokugawa shoguns consolidated trends long in the making. The demarcation of villages as corporate communities, the separation of samurai from commoners, the creation of bounded domains, and the growth of and restrictions on commerce all had antecedents in the late sixteenth century. The structure of family life, in particular the emphasis on primogeniture and the custom of brides serving their husbands’ families, continued practices already apparent in the fourteenth century.
Term
Samari
Definition
warrior, all classes of society
Term
Ashikaga
Definition
Designed to keep the daimyo both loyal to the shogun and effective in local administration, the system balanced the centrifugal forces that had weakened the Kamakura regime and the centripetal tendencies that had destroyed the Ashikaga.
Term
Shogun
Definition

largest domain and had vassal

                daimyo

Term
Daimyo
Definition

were assigned collections of

                villages, were also hatamoto retainer

Term
bakufu
Definition
government pieced together by the Tokugawa shoguns developed an elaborate bureaucratic struc-ture ( later called a bakufu— tent government).
Term
hatamoto
Definition

retainer control more power over the land, considered representative of shogun

Term
 Sankin kotai
Definition

system that allowed shogun to control daimyo by regulating which villages they were in and requiring them to live in Edo for a period of time.

 
Term

Fudai

 
Definition

Vassal daimyo were hereditary retainers, shoguns advisors and

line of defense

Term
Tozama
Definition

rival, didnot support shogun; competing families; were interested in trade and were in charge of expansion

Term
Edo
Definition
consumer population lived here
Term
Kyoto
Definition

manufactured goods were created here

Term
Asaka
Definition
marketplace
Term
Shogunate
Definition

in charge of national projects; communication (writing style); trade regulation; control the Ainu (claiming tributaries); contruling religion (Christianity; registering Buddhist temples)

Term
Bushi (or Bushido)
Definition
 warrior
Term
Ronin 
Definition
wanderer, samari who brokeaway from master 
Term
Giri 
Definition
duty was primary focus of samari 
Term
 Seppuku
Definition
 suicide by disimbowlment
Term
Sensei 
Definition
teachers,-teach bushido to the samuri (the samuri way)
Term
Daisho
Definition
Daito-katana; Shoto-wakizawhi
Term
Genrokou Era
Definition

era of renisance once, led to lossing of the Sarkin oko tie system, era of economic reform, loses of Daimyo Family. Poetry become accessible to commoners.

Term
Floating world (ukiyo)
Definition
two pleasure zones: the brothel district and the theatres. Celebrated in wood bullock prints of courtesans and actors along with pornography
Term
kabuki
Definition

began in 17th century where a prostitute

erected a stage on which to sing and dance to attract customers. Shogunate banned women from appearing on stage in 1629, boys replaced prostitutes

Term
Neo-Confucianism
Definition

was distinguished by a unifying explains him for the universe, the physical world, and human nature.

Term
Edo schools of thought
Definition

Japanese believed they were supior b/c

                were desendents from Sun god

Term
Shogun Yoshi and Dutch Studies
Definition

lifted bann on Western books as long as they did not promote Christianity. Japanese doctors were attracted to "Dutch studies" such as anatomy astronomy, geography and military science

Term
Sakura Sogoro
Definition
in the seventeenth century a few brave headmen, epitomized by Sakura Sogoro, made a direct appeal to the daimyo, or, in Sogoro’s case, to the shogun. Sogoro paid for his audacity by suffering crucifixion along with his wife and saw his sons executed before his eyes.
Term
Peasant Ikki
Definition
Instead of an individual groveling before his superiors, cultivators marched together to assert their grievances en masse. They called their deeds ikki, harking back to the leagues that had bedeviled political authorities in the sixteenth century.
Term
British East India Company
Definition

trading company that

        dealt Asia; Frist organized effort, led to sea routes, developed

        competitor with British government

Term
China's mantle in Asia
Definition

b/c of opening of trade, China's mantle which had once included Vietnam, Korea now had to be own by someone. China's influence was decreasing. Asia was being divided 

Term
Kowtow
Definition
bow, prostrate to emperor.
Term
Bengai opium and Chinese tea
Definition

Bengal supplied opium that the British used to buy tea from China

Term
 Cohong monopoly
Definition

restrict relations, serve as Middleman; Trade continued, albeit with British merchants calling for warships to enforce their demand, for elimination of Cohong

Term
Lin Zexu and Queen Victoria
Definition

Lin Zexu was Chinese commissioner tried to control opium trade; first appealed to Queen Victoria, threw opium in the sea, led to opium war 

Term
Tianjin indemnity negotiations
Definition

British tried to get china to pay reparations for the opium that was thrown into sea; British got ports in the north

Term
Opium War
Definition

tested china's mortality against British

        technology. China's defeat in the war forced it to open to the west

Term
Extraterritorially
Definition

meant that w/ the exeption

 of opium traders, Americans in China we subject to American laws, judges, courts, and prisons

Term

Commodore Perry's Kanagawa ''Friend ship" treaty

      

Definition

  opened two small parts to America ships, allowed an America consul to reside on Japanese soil, and provide for most favored nation 

Term

Asian Disapora

 
Definition

Asian left to go to  America to work on things such as the railways.

Term
Female Infanticide
Definition
practice of killing female infants, as families could not afford to raise more than two or three children and saw sons as necessities. This resulted due to surplus population
Term
Floating Population
Definition
many young men who took to the road in hope of finding better opportunites never found permanent homes, instead became part of floating population
Term
Grand Canal
Definition
goes through the center of the country, was deteriorating this contributed to the decline of the economy, it caused the tax on grain to go up because the now had to use a sea route
Term
Army of the Green Standard
Definition
emperor developed the army in contrast to banner system, it wasn't hereditary, it was a profressional army. It had new recruits and worked with locals to stop riots.
Term
Lin Zexu, consultant after exile
Definition
brought back after to help surpress rebellions
Term
Treaty of Nanjing
Definition
ended the opium war, all benefits went to the british including ports and low tariffs
Term
War and Peace factions
Definition

Those who had favored compromising with the “ sea barbarians” to avoid further hostilities included the Manchu chancellor Mujangga; those opposed were mostly Chinese degree holders who had supported Lin Zexu and believed the Qing should have put up stronger resistance.

Term
Taiping Rebellion(incl. Hong Xiuquan's God worshipers and Yang Xinqing)
Definition

The founder of this sect was Hong Xiuquan ( 1814– 1864). Hong interpreted his visions to mean that he was Jesus’s younger brother. He began preaching, calling on people to destroy idols and ancestral temples, give up opium and alcohol, and renounce foot binding and prostitution. He called his group the God Worshipping Society and soon attracted many followers, especially among the Hakkas. Yang Xiuqing elevated himself and three others to top posts within the God Worshippers. To claim superiority over Hong, Yang announced that when he spoke, it was the voice of God the Father, putting him above Hong, the mere younger brother.

Term
Women soldiers
Definition
Taiping had women soldiers who were segregated from male soldiers
Term
Utopian society
Definition
Taiping had plans for utopian society based on equality of land and equality btwn men and women
Term
Li Hongzhang(Zeng Guofan)
Definition
Generals under him, including close relatives and his protégés Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang, played major roles in the slow stranglehold placed over the Taiping capital at Nanjing. In 1865, when it was clear that the Qing regular armies had failed to suppress the Nian, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were assigned the long and difficult task.
Term
Black Flags
Definition
Elsewhere in south China, the Taipings held out longer, with some armies relocating to Taiwan and Vietnam. In Vietnam, where they were known as the Black Flags, they took an active part in resistance to French colonial expansion.
Term
Nian
Definition
rebel group that were responding to the economic hardship, these rebels acted be seizing property and land, and by capturing wealthy people.
Term
Hetreodox Sufi Muslims
Definition
The Muslim rebellion in the northwest was rooted in the spread of a mystical school of Islam known as Sufism, but much of the violence came from longstanding antagonism between the Han Chinese and the Muslims. By 1867 all of Gansu was in Muslim hands.
Term
Zuo Zangtang(in Xinjiang)
Definition

Preoccupied with its problems elsewhere, the Qing did not send Zuo Zongtang (1812– 1885) to retake the region until 1866. Zuo classed Sufis as heterodox, like White Lotus or Taiping sectarians, and ordered their slaughter. The campaign took five years and consisted largely of sieges during which the population slowly starved. Zuo Zongtang marched his troops into Xinjiang, which might well have broken away from Qing control otherwise.

Term
Russian Expansion
Definition

Russia, seeing China’s weakness, penetrated the Amur River valley, violating the borders agreed to in 1689. In new treaties of 1858– 1860, Russia gained the maritime provinces of eastern Manchuria down to Vladivostok. A large part of the reason the Qing decided to march an army into Xinjiang was fear of Russian expansion there.

Term
Arrow War (Bristian and France)
Definition

Both sides wanted the trade agreement reached after the Opium War renegotiated, though for different reasons. On the grounds that China had failed to implement all the provisions agreed to a decade earlier, the British and French decided to make swift, brutal coastal attacks, a repeat of the Opium War. (They called it the Arrow War, from the name of a ship that gave the British a pretext for war.) 

Term
Self Strengthening (Feng Guifen)
Definition

Scholar named Feng Guifen ( 1809–1874) wrote a set of essays presenting the case for wide-ranging reforms. He had taken refuge in Shanghai during the Taiping War and there had seen how the Westerners defended the city. In his essays he pointed out that China was a hundred times bigger than France and two hundred times bigger than Great Britain. 

Term
Empress Dowager Cixi
Definition
her cousin was in charge but she ruled, was skilled political operator, recognized the fears of the manchu establishment, needed modernizers like Li Hongzhang, encouraged conservative critics
Term
Foriegn concessions and residence
Definition

The foreign concessions at treaty ports were areas carved out of existing Chinese cities. They had foreign police and foreign law courts and collected their own taxes, a situation the Qing accepted with little protest, even though most of the population within the concessions continued to be Chinese. At the treaty ports, the presence of the British and Indians was especially strong, and the habits of the British Empire tended to spill over into these cities.

Term
Gunboat diplomacy
Definition
when missionaries or converts were attacked or killed, gunboats were sent to the nearest ports to threaten retaliation
Term
Imperial Maritime Customs
Definition

British and American consuls there collected the tariffs themselves, a practice later regularized into a permanent Imperial Maritime Customs staffed at its higher level by Westerners. In addition to recording and collecting tariffs, the customs published annual reports on the outlook for trade at each port and undertook projects to improve communications, such as telegraph and postal systems.

Term
Missionary orphanages and the French Consul
Definition

Missionaries often ran orphanages, a “good work” that also helped produce converts, but the Chinese suspected that they were buying babies for nefarious purposes. The volatility of relations btwn Chinese and foreign missionaries led to tragedy in Tianjin on a June day in 1870. French troops had been based there from 1860 to 1863; the French had taken over a former palace for their consulate; and they had built a cathedral at the site of a former Chinese temple.

Term
Women Protestants Missionaries
Definition

about 3,000 Protestant missionaries in China, more than half of them women. Although the majority of missionaries devoted themselves to preaching, over the course of the nineteenth century, more and more concentrated on medicine or education, which were better received by the Chinese.

Term
First Sino-Japanese War
Definition

After Japan sank a steamship carrying Chinese troops, both countries declared war. The results proved that the past decade of accelerated efforts to upgrade the military were still not enough. The Japanese went overland to take the Chinese port city of Weihaiwei in Shandong province, then turned the Chinese guns on the Chinese fleet in the bay. This was a defeat not of Chinese weapons but of Chinese organization and strategy.

Term
Cedeing Taiwan
Definition

China sued for peace and sent Li Hongzhang to Japan to negotiate a settlement. Besides a huge indemnity, China agreed to cede Taiwan and Liaodong ( the southern tip of Manchuria) to Japan and to allow Japan to open factories in China.

Term
Trans-Siberian railway
Definition

At the high point of this rush in 1898, it appeared that the European powers might divide China among themselves the way they had recently divided Africa. Russia obtained permission to extend the Trans- Siberian railway across Manchuria to Vladivostok and secured a leasehold over the Liaodong Peninsula.

Term
Kang Youwei
Definition

two most important intellectual leaders to give shape to these feelings were Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, both from Guangdong province. Kang was a committed Confucian, dedicated to the ideals of personal virtue and service to society. He reinterpreted the classics to justify reform, arguing that Confucius had been a reformer, not a mere transmitter as he had portrayed himself in the Analects.

Term
Liang Qichao
Definition

contended that self-strengthening efforts had focused too narrowly on technology and ignored the need for cultural and political change. The examination system should be scrapped and a national school system instituted. China needed a stronger sense of national solidarity and a new type of state in which the people participated in rule.

Term
Samuri vs. bannermen
Definition

In Japan, when the special status of the samurai was abolished, samurai had not only joined the new armies in large numbers as officers, but many had successfully switched to other occupations requiring skill or learning. The hereditary military caste of the Qing did not fare as well. Many bannermen became alarmed, not seeing how the banner population could survive without government handouts.

Term
Mai Menghua's comparison
Definition
china needs inheritence taxes, public schools, public works, medical schools
Term
Hundred Days reforms
Definition

In June the emperor gave Kang a five hour audience. Over the next hundred days, the emperor issued over a hundred decrees on everything from revamping the examination system to setting up national school, banking, postal, and patent systems. He was redesigning the Qing as a constitutional monarchy with modern financial and educational infrastructures. This was a failure.

Term
German missionaries and extraterrtorial
Definition

local grievance concerned the highhanded behavior of Christian missionaries, especially a group of German missionaries who actively interfered in their converts’ lawsuits, claiming the privileges of extraterritoriality for the converts. They also irritated people by forbidding their converts to contribute to traditional village festivals that involved parading statues of the local gods.

Term
Boxers
Definition

They were dubbed “ Boxers” by foreigners because of their martial arts practices. The Boxers also practiced spirit possession, which allowed individuals to achieve direct communication with their gods and gain a sense of personal power.

Term
Empress Dowager Cixi response
Definition

Cixi, having been told by pro-Boxer Manchus that the European powers wanted her to retire and restore the emperor to the throne, declared war on the eight powers. Although she had repeatedly seen China defeated when it was fighting only one of these powers, she deluded herself into thinking that if the people became sufficiently enraged, they could drive all eight out and solve the foreign problem once and for all.

Term
Foriegn response to Boxer Rebellion
Definition

The foreign powers demanded that the Qing government suppress the attacks on foreigners. Cixi, apparently hoping that the Chinese people, if aroused, could solve her foreign problem for her, did little to stop the Boxers. Eight foreign powers announced that they would send troops to protect missionaries.

Term
Yuan Shikai
Definition
helped Cixi stage a coup and revoke the reforms of her predecer
Term
Boxer Indemnity
Definition

negotiations that led to the Boxer Protocol, China had to accept a long list of penalties, including cancellation of the examinations for five years (punishment for gentry collaboration), execution of the officials involved, destruction of forts and railway posts, and payment of a staggering indemnity of 450 million silver dollars.

Term
Place the Qing Decline in world history
Definition

Better comparisons for the Qing Dynasty in this period are probably the Ottoman and Russian Empires. All three were multiethnic, land-based Eurasian empires, with long experience with mounted horsemen of the steppe and in the case of both the Ottomans and the Qing, currently ruled by groups that claimed this tradition themselves. All three knew how to deal with problems of defending long land borders but were not naval powers.

Term
Ninomiya Sontoku (peasant sage)
Definition

Longer-term solutions came in the teachings of the peasant sage Ninomiya Sontoku. Sontoku revitalized villages, increasing their population and bringing fields back into production by preaching an ethic of diligence, fortitude, and frugality to repay the bounty of the gods while instituting mutual aid associations to give vil-lagers who had fallen into debt access to low-interest loans. His emphasis on rational planning to wring the most from land and labor demanded steady work habits instilled in men and women alike.

Term
Hirata Atsutane (mainstream nativist)
Definition

Atsutane and his followers offered a vision of a just social order that largely ignored existing political arrangements. Although they acknowledged shogunal authority and the Confucian principles of social inequality, they sought the wellspring of human virtue in Japan’s ancient past and looked to the monarch as a manifest god who linked the divine and human worlds. Atsutane claimed to be a disciple of Motoori Norinaga, thus putting him in the mainstream of nativist thought. Unlike his teacher, he did not envision the afterlife as a filthy, polluted realm but rather as an invisible world that parallels the visible world.

Term
Rural entrepreneurs (compared to ordinary cultivartors)
Definition

rural entrepreneurs sought new ways to bolster their prestige. Rather than marry within the village, they sought marriage partners of similar background a day’s walk or more away. They educated themselves; they also educated their daughters to standards beyond what could be achieved by an ordinary cultivator. They studied Chinese philosophy and classical poetry as well as Western science and geography. They took up swordsmanship.

Term
Domainal reforms
Definition
promoting those who are the most able and talent rather than a hereditary system
Term
Assumptions About Famine and Calls for World Renewal
Definition

Conditions reached a crisis when poor harvests in the 1830s recalled the famines of the 1780s. Commoners assumed that food shortages owed more to greedy merchants than to crop failures. They turned on village leaders for not offering relief, and they called on the gods of world renewal (yonaoshi) for salva-tion from economic hardship and political ineptitude. Women played an active role, marching with men to protest arbitrary government policies and complaining to rice merchants that hoarding grain threatened the poor with starvation.

Term
Influence of Wang Yangming
Definition

Raised in the Confucian tradition that deemed bureaucratic work a service to the people, Oshio had also studied Wang Yangming, who argued that at time of crisis, a man had to use his intuition, not institutional norms, to guide his behavior. In 1836, Oshio petitioned the Osaka city magistrate to save the starving. When the magistrate refused, Oshio sold his books to buy food. In a last desperate effort, he issued a manifesto that charged shogunal officials with corruption and led a rural army against the city. A quarter of Osaka burned before shogunal troops caught up with him, and he committed suicide.

Term
Divine wisdom and ridiculing samurai?
Definition

In 1838 a long-suffering rural woman named Nakayama Miki was possessed by a spirit who deemed her to be the “shogun of heaven” and the mouthpiece for the true and original god of salvation. According to the god’s divine wisdom (tenri), the shogun and daimyo were far too removed from daily life to aid the people; instead, the people should trust in the god of world re-newal and work together, offering mutual assistance in time of need. They indulged in novels that depicted the immediate world of human feelings, such as Jippensha Ikku’s travelogues featuring an irreverent pair, Kita and Yaji, who poked fun at self- important samurai, stole when they could, seduced serving maids, and laughed at farts.

Term
Kabuki
Definition
theatre; Japanese commoners played hard. Festivals in town and country became increasingly elaborate, and laborers demanded more of them. Kabuki troupes discovered the money to be made in touring the countryside. In prosperous regions, villages built kabuki stages and competed in presenting plays to their neighbors.
Term
Russian Encroachers
Definition

Russians were the first foreigners to encroach on Japan. During the eighteenth century, they started to trade with the Ainu in the Kuril Islands and Kamchatka. In 1793, Adam Laxman, a delegate to Catherine II, tried to open relations between Russia and Japan. He got as far as Nagasaki, only to be rebuffed by Matsudaira Sadanobu, who insisted that respect for his ancestors prohibited him from initiating new foreign relations.

Term
Annexation of Hokkaido
Definition

shogunate decided to annex Hokkaido and Sakhalin. Its reach exceeded its grasp; it did not have the forces to defend either. Russians again asked for permission to trade at Nagasaki in 1804. When that was not forthcoming, officers attacked trading posts on Sakhalin and the Kurils in 1806 and 1807.

Term
British whalers in the Mito(shogunate) and the Satsuma(tozama)
Definition

In two separate incidents in 1824, British whaling ships raided villages on the coast north of Edo and southern Kyushu. The first village belonged to the Mito domain, home to one of the shogun’s relatives, the xenophobic Tokugawa Nariaki. The second was located in Satsuma, the powerful outside (tozama) domain that dominated the Ryukyus.

Term
Sakoku
Definition

With the exception of Dutch ships allowed at Nagasaki, all foreign ships, regardless of the circumstances, were to be driven off without hesitation. This order announced that the shogunate was closing the country (sakoku) to the West, its first truly isolationist policy.

Term
Matthew Perry
Definition

Perry treated the shogunate’s exclusion order with disdain, and he refused to shift anchorage until he had handed over a letter from President Millard Fillmore addressed to the monarch. He paraded his men, opened his gunports to expose his cannons, and announced that he would return the next year for a reply. This time he had six ships under his command, having commandeered two more in Hong Kong.

Term
"gifts" of the Industrial Revolution
Definition

Perry brought gifts that displayed the wonders of the Industrial Revolution— a telegraph using Morse code and a quarter size steam locomotive with carriages and track. Sailors in blackface put on a minstrel show. Men and women flocked to see the strange black ships with their steam stacks and guns.

Term
Townsend Harris
Definition

In 1856, Townsend Harris arrived as the first U. S. consul at Shimoda, to the consternation of shogunal officials, who had never expected a barbarian to live on Japan’s sacred soil. A failed businessman in the China trade, Harris was determined to sign a commercial treaty with Japan. Realizing Shimoda’s isolation, he bullied Japanese officials to allow him to negotiate in Edo.

Term
Komei(monarch)
Definition

Komei rejected the treaty, urged the shogun to consult the leading daimyo, and demanded the foreigners’ expulsion. When the shogunate signed the treaty against Komei’s wishes, it was considered treasonous. People from many walks of life began to collect and debate information on political affairs. By ignoring prohibitions on discussion of contemporary events and creating a new public political realm, they helped bring about what hindsight has deemed as the last days of the shogunate.

Term
Sakuma Shozan
Definition

Sakuma Shozan argued for a proactive policy of seeking advanced Western military technology in order to strengthen Japan and of fusing Western science to Japan’s Confucian ethical base. Only by opening Japan to trade could it achieve the knowledge and tools needed to compete in the emerging world order.

Term
Fukoku kyohei
Definition
Yokoi Shonan, who popularized the slogan fukoku kyohei ( rich country, strong army), taken from a line in the Chinese classics. Both Sakuma and Yokoi died at the hands of xenophobic assassins.
Term
Tokugawa Nariaki
Definition

Tokugawa Nariaki believed that allowing trade with the West would weaken Japan both materially, in that Japan would lose precious metals in exchange for fripperies, and spiritually, because it would be infected by Christianity. The only way to revive Japan’s martial spirit was to fight, even though fighting meant certain defeat.

Term
Sonno joi
Definition

In 1854 he opened a small school where he taught public policy under the rubric sonno joi ( revere the monarch and expel the barbarian). By this he meant that the monarch should participate in policy decisions and the foreigners must be driven off.

Term
Kawaraban
Definition

Broadsheets (kawaraban) reported gossip on the treaty negotiations. They circulated primarily in urban areas, where they could be easily and anonymously sold, but travelers also took them back to villages. A few commoners presented plans for coastal defense to their daimyo for forwarding to the shogun.

Term
Yoshinbu v. Iemochi
Definition
Yoshinbu was Nariachi's son and was thought to be more capable however Iemochi was of the correct bloodline
Term
Ii
Definition

They appointed a vassal daimyo, Ii Naosuke, regent for Iemochi and chief senior councilor. Ii purged his daimyo opponents and arrested, exiled, or executed over one hundred men employed as agents by daimyo and court nobles.

Term
Shishi
Definition

Angry at the execution of men they revered, they committed their lives to the politics of direct action. Their deed galvanized public opinion against Ii by deeming him a traitor for having executed men of high purpose (shishi) whose only aim was to serve the monarch.

Term
Kobu gattai
Definition

The shogunate abandoned its authoritarian stance for a more conciliatory posture. It proposed a union of court and military ( kobu gattai) that would give important tozama and collateral daimyo advisory positions on foreign affairs and reinstated daimyo purged by Ii. It sealed the deal by having Shogun Iemochi wed Komei’s younger half-sister, Kazunomiya, in return for a promise to expel the barbarians.

Term
Tozama (satsuma and choshu)
Definition

When shishi tried to capture the palace in the eighth month of 1863, planning to place Komei at the head of an army to unite western Japan under the slogan of “Restore monarchical rule,” Satsuma allied with shogunal forces to drive them from Kyoto. Many fled to Choshu. The daimyo of Tosa forced shishi in his domain to leave or commit suicide. Choshu shishi returned to Kyoto with supporters from other domains and rural militia in tow. Once again, the shogunate routed them.

Term
Illiteracy v. inertia
Definition

But how significant was the expansion of a public political sphere based on the discussion and exchange of information given that 60 percent of the population was illiterate? Most commoners remained bystanders. Historians who emphasize that commoners remained quiescent during the years leading to the Meiji Restoration and that therefore it cannot be deemed a revolution from below overlook a similar inertia in the ruling class.

Term
Riots in the Summer of 1886
Definition

In the summer of 1866, rising unemployment, crop failures, inflation, and shogunal efforts to tax trade created the conditions for the most widespread riots in Edo history, particularly in the shogun’s stronghold of eastern Japan.

Term
Military Modernation, opposed
Definition

The shogunate hoped to use new taxes levied on foreign trade to subsidize its military modernization program. It imported thousands of weapons through Yokohama and drilled its retainer band in rifle companies supplemented by rural recruits. It sent missions abroad. The first in 1860 signed a friendship treaty with the United States; subsequent envoys emphasized the study of foreign technology. In 1861 it opened a naval training school at Hyogo. In 1865 it started an ironworks at Yokohama and a shipyard at Yokosuka.

Term
Amulets from the sun goddess
Definition

In the eighth month of 1867, a new popular movement swept the coast from the inland sea to Edo. Claiming that amulets inscribed with the name of the sun goddess that portended a prosperous future had fallen from heaven, men and women danced in the streets chanting, “ Ain’t it great?” ( Ee ja nai ka?). When the movement reached eastern Japan, dancers threw stones at foreigners to drive out barbarian demons and rehearsed a mock funeral for the shogunate.

Term
Unity around a new emperor
Definition

A better alternative was to unite around the new emperor. Although retainers died, Yoshinobu and the daimyo of Aizu survived to take their places in the new imperial peerage and join their efforts to the task of strengthening state and economy to compete in the new world order. Hirata disciples and other imperial loyalists rushed to offer their ser-vices to the new government; people in Edo watched warily as their old masters were replaced with new.

Term
1867 collapse of the shogunate
Definition

When the shogunate collapsed in 1867, it left behind a dynamic economy, a pool of able administrators, and a population well educated for its time. Also bequeathed to the fledgling government was a set of treaties with the Great Powers that recast Japan’s relations with the outside world and opened the country to foreign trade, though not on terms favorable to Japan.

Term
Satsuma and Chosu samurai
Definition

amorphous group of samurai from Satsuma and Choshu, plus a few activist Kyoto aristocrats and imperial loyalists from other domains, they had diverse interests and goals. Their first pronouncement came in the Oath of 1868, offered by the emperor in the company of court nobles and daimyo to the gods of heaven and earth. 

Term
Council of State
Definition
The Council of State became the highest deliberative body. It was assisted by a board of 106 advisers, the activists in the Meiji Restoration, who made the real decisions. The Council of Shinto Affairs enjoyed a brief existence equal to the Council of State. This structure was reorganized four times in the next four months.
Term
Shizoku
Definition
The government put all domainal retainers above the level of foot soldiers into one general category called former samurai (shizoku).
Term
Self-strengthening
Definition
Some daimyo hoped to play a larger role in national affairs; some concentrated their efforts on self-strengthening. Most stayed aloof from government and isolated from each other. In 1869, the daimyo of Satsuma and Choshu agreed to make a formal declaration of returning their land and population registers to the emperor, with the understanding that he would then confirm their holdings as governors.
Term
Prefectures
Definition

To eliminate the redundancies of 270 domain administrations and centralize tax collection, the oligarchs in 1871 abolished the domains and established prefectures. They started the process of consolidating 170,000 towns and villages into larger administrative units with a new hierarchy of local officials and inaugurated a household registration system whereby each household head had to establish a place of legal residence and inform the government of births, deaths, marriages, and divorces in his family.

Term
1871 Japanese study mission – Iwakura Tomomi
Definition
Having taken the first steps toward a more centralized state, in 1871, one faction of oligarchs left for the United States and Europe. Forty-nine officials and fifty-eight students, including five girls, made up the delegation. Headed by Iwakura Tomomi, a former court noble, their goal was to convince the Western powers to revise the unequal treaties that infringed on Japanese sovereignty.
Term
Blood tax
Definition

Both farmers and shizoku opposed conscription. The ordinance used the term “ blood tax,” meaning that all citizens should willingly sacrifice themselves for their country. Farmers who took it literally assumed that the government wanted their blood.

Term
Popular Rights Movement (aka People’s Rights Movement)
Definition

Publicity generated by the promise of a national assembly and constitution stimulated responses that coalesced into the Popular Rights Movement. Shizoku, village officials, rural entrepreneurs, journalists, intellectuals, and prefectural assemblymen held meetings and circulated petitions for an immediate national assembly that collected hundreds of thou-sands of signatures. Oligarchs responded to the Popular Rights Movement by issuing increasingly draconian peace preservation laws.

Term

 

Emperor Meiji

 

Definition

The Meiji Constitution defined institutions estab-lished before its promulgation. In 1878 the military General Staff was made directly responsible to the emperor, bypassing the War Ministry run by bureau-crats.

Term
Diet
Definition
A new peerage destined to fill the upper house of the bicameral national assembly, known as the Diet, was announced in 1884. It included oligarchs, former daimyo, and Kyoto nobility.
Term
Cabinet of genrõ
Definition
Oligarchs wanted a constitution that secured the governing bodies and protected the imperial house through which they exercised power, and they mistrusted “ ignorant” masses. After its promulgation, they designated themselves genro, elder statesmen, charged with picking cabinet ministers for the emperor.
Term
Meiji economic reform
Definition

Oligarchs promoted economic reform and industrialization. They appropriated the arms-related industries already established by the domains and the shogunate. Some of the industries came under state control to supply the military; others were sold to cronies at favorable terms. Iwasaki Yataro founded Mitsubishi enterprises on the maritime shipping line he acquired from Tosa and expanded it with low-interest government loans.

Term
Financial disaster
Definition
In 1880 the government faced financial disaster. It had printed money recklessly during the 1870s to fi-nance its projects, and private banks issued their own notes. It spent heavily suppressing shizoku rebellions and other police actions; most of the industries it built operated at a loss. Inflation that doubled the price of rice in Tokyo between 1877 and 1880 reduced the value of property tax revenues, and taxes did not cover expenditures.
Term
“Stable” economy
Definition
The ranks of tenant farmers and factory workers swelled. By 1886 key industries had become concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy capitalists with excellent government connections. The government had rid itself of drains on its income, the budget was balanced, and prices were stable.
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