Sonnō Jōi — The Ideological Surge That Drove Bakumatsu Politics
No phrase is more essential to understanding Bakumatsu politics than sonnō jōi. Many activists rallied to this banner and acted fiercely under it. Yet its content changed greatly with the times.
Contents
"Revere the emperor" and "expel the barbarians"
Sonnō jōi joins two assertions: sonnō, "revere the emperor," and jōi, "expel the barbarians" — that is, drive out foreigners.
Behind the idea lay the accumulated scholarship of Mito learning and National Learning (kokugaku). When the arrival of the Black Ships made the external crisis a present reality, these assertions rapidly took on political force.
The rising tide of expulsionism
Amid growing discontent with a shogunate that advanced the opening of Japan, the cry to expel the foreigners gained strength across the country. The Chōshū domain in particular became a center of this movement and even fired on foreign ships.
But before the overwhelming military power of the Western nations, the difficulty of carrying expulsion through by force was driven home all too clearly.
From expulsion to overthrow
Some activists, grasping how unrealistic it was to expel the foreigners, shifted the weight of their thinking. That is: rather than first driving out the foreigners, they should overthrow the very shogunate that floundered in its foreign policy, and build a new political order under the emperor.
Thus the banner of "expulsion" was gradually reread as "overthrow" and "a rich nation and strong army through opening up." The slogan stayed the same, but its meaning changed greatly.
Where the ideology led
The sonnō jōi movement, shedding much blood, flowed at last into the Meiji Restoration. Ironically, the new government built by activists who had cried out for expulsion chose the path of actively adopting the West.
The key to understanding the Bakumatsu lies not in chasing the words of the slogans, but in reading how people's thinking moved behind them.
The activists who lived by this ideology can be traced in the articles of Bakumatsu Figures.
Related reading
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Photographic technology that arrived in Japan around the opening of the country preserved the faces of Bakumatsu people for posterity. A fact-based look at pioneers like Ueno Hikoma and the background to the famous portraits of the age.
The Black Ships and the Opening of Japan — Four Vessels That Ended Two Centuries of Seclusion
In 1853 the Black Ships under Commodore Perry appeared off Uraga, and Japan turned toward opening its ports. A clear, fact-based account of the arrival of the Black Ships, the end of seclusion, and the dawn of the Bakumatsu.
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Rangaku — Dutch learning — brought Western knowledge into secluded Japan. At Ogata Kōan's Tekijuku in Osaka, students like Fukuzawa Yukichi studied. A fact-based look at the scholarship and schools that underpinned Bakumatsu modernization.