![\"A](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/meijiat150\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/09\/Steele-Figure-1-e1535387678118.jpg\")
<\/a> Figure 1.<\/strong> Anonymous, \u201cA Compendium of Events and Record of the Rice Market from 1853 to 1868\u201d (Ka\u2019ei nenkan yori bei s\u014dba nedan narabi ni nendaiki kakinuki daishinpan<\/em>), n.d., but perhaps mid-1868. Source: Hachiro Yuasa Memorial Museum, ICU, Poking Fun<\/em>, p. 7.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\u201cWhat sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times\u2026 all things are as they were then, and you were there.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u2014Walter Cronkite,\u00a0<\/span>You Are There<\/em>, early television series<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n In the middle of 1868, a woodblock print was published in Osaka that chronicled the years leading to the collapse of the Tokugawa bakufu<\/em>\u00a0[<\/strong><\/span>Figure 1; see full translation here<\/a>]<\/strong>. The print, entitled \u201cA Compendium of Events and Record of the Rice Market from 1853 to 1868\u201d (Ka\u2019ei nenkan yori bei s\u014dba nedan narabi ni nendaiki kakinuki daishinpan<\/em>), is divided into 16 panels or boxes, one for each year between the intrusion of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 and the defeat of the Sh\u014dgitai at the Battle of Ueno Hill in 1868. Each box includes a list of major happenings for that year and a pictorial depiction of one of those events. In 1853, for example, the box includes a colorful depiction of a foreign ship, a visual reference to Perry\u2019s black ships. In addition to political events such as the assassination of Ii Naosuke (1860) and the procession of Shogun Iemochi to Kyoto (1863), the print depicts military skirmishes (1861, 1864, 1868), a tsunami (1854), an earthquake (1855), a flood (1856), religious festivals (1857, 1865), epidemics (1858, 1862), relief activities (1866), and fires, including the conflagration that destroyed the main keep of Edo Castle in 1859. Rice market data is also given for each year, showing an abrupt decline in the buying power of copper coins in the years leading up to fall of the old regime.<\/p>\r\n The\u00a0<\/span>Compendium of Events<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>has not been the object of careful study.[footnote]The copy of \u201cA Compendium of Events and Record of the Rice Market from 1853 to 1868\u201d (Ka\u2019ei nenkan yori bei s\u014dba nedan narabi ni nendaiki kakinuki daishinpan<\/em>) translated and analyzed here is from the Japanese print collection of the Yuasa Hachir\u014d Memorial Museum (International Christian University). It and other bakumatsu prints are included in: Poking Fun at the Restoration: Satirical Prints in Late 19th Century Japan<\/em>, edited and published by ICU Hachir\u014d Yuasa Memorial Museum, 2012. Other copies of the Compendium of Events<\/em> include: Boston Museum of Fine Arts<\/a>; and the University Library, University of Tokyo (Ishimoto Collection of Earthquake and Disaster Prints<\/em>, no. 230<\/a>). Osatake Takeshi made brief mention of the print in Meiji bunka zensh\u016b<\/em>, vol. 21 (Shakai-hen), Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha, 1929, pp. 40-41. The print was reproduced inside the front cover. Osatake noted that it was an early example linking changes in the market (the price of rice) with social and political change. See also note in Meiji bunka kenky\u016b<\/em>, Third year, vol. 3 (section 4), April 1927.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>It was published by Kintakud\u014d in Osaka. The artist is unknown; the date of issue may be assumed to be 1868, perhaps before the change in era names from Kei\u014d to Meiji on the 28th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 9th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month.[footnote]Unless otherwise noted, dates follow the solar-lunar calendar in use in Japan before the switch to the Western calendar in 1873, given in the order of day, month, and year.[\/footnote] Nonetheless, for its very anonymity, the print is an important historical document. As a cartography of time, it offers a glimpse into the way contemporary people understood and remembered the flow of events that led to what historians today call the Meiji Restoration. It is an alternative view of the bakumatsu years, especially interesting because it was compiled before the imperial side had fully succeeded in its attempt to create a new national government.[footnote]For a convenient overview of the bakumatsu years, see the introduction (\u201cDomestic Disorder, Imperialism, and National Consolidation\u201d) in Anne Walthall and M. William Steele, Politics and Society in Japan\u2019s Meiji Restoration, A Brief History with Documents<\/em>, (Boston and New York: Bedford\/St. Martin\u2019s, 2017), pp. 1-27.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>Moreover, compared with existing textual accounts, the testimony of images found in the print\u2019s visual narrative adds depth to our understanding of these dramatic years, replete with man-made and natural disasters and fears that the world that as people knew it was entering its final days.\u00a0<\/span>Naiy\u016b gaikan\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(troubles from within, threats from without) described the reality of the age.<\/p>\r\n Every picture tells a story.[footnote]On the use of images as historical evidence, see Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence<\/em>, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. Regarding visual narratives, Burke notes that \u201cone of the most important consequences of printing images was to make it possible to produce pictures of current events and to sell them while the memory of those events was still fresh\u201d (p. 141).[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>This visual essay inquires into which story, if any, is being told. Primary focus is fixed on the\u00a0<\/span>Compendium of Events,<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>but reference is made to other contemporary visual and textual materials in order to more fully illustrate the lived history of the bakumatsu period. These images are good evidence of the heterogeneity of views and experiences that animated people in Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century, and allows us, as viewers of the past, to achieve a more vivid imagining of the chaos of those days.[footnote]In addition to the collection of the Yuasa Hachir\u014d Memorial Museum, the essay takes advantage of the University of British Columbia\u2019s <\/span>Meiji at 150 Digital Resources<\/a><\/em> website.<\/span>[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n <\/span>The layout of the\u00a0<\/span>Compendium of Events<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is immediately reminiscent of a\u00a0<\/span>sugoroku<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>board game, with an obvious beginning (furidashi<\/em>) and goal (agari<\/em>).[footnote]For description and examples of sugoroku board games, see Rebecca Salter, Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards<\/em>, Honolulu: University of Hawai\u2019i Press, 2006, pp. 164-182. See also the essay by Kanaya Masataka<\/a> in this collection.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>In this case, the year 1853 is the starting point and the defeat of the Sh\u014dgitai at Ueno Hill is the end point: the final demolition of the old regime. The chronology of events highlighted in the years in-between seemingly lack a clear rationale or narrative. As with many contemporary accounts, one event follows another with no apparent rhyme or reason, no distinction between human and natural affairs, and no indication of cause or effect.[footnote]On chronologies and graphic representations of times, see Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline<\/em>, Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>But whether this represents a mentality \u201cin which things\u00a0<\/span>happen to<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>people rather than one in which people\u00a0<\/span>do<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>things\u201d is open to question.[footnote]Rosenberg and Grafton, quoting Hayden White, p. 12.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>On the one hand, the seemingly incoherent chronology recorded in the woodblock print, in both text and visual image, demonstrates how difficult it was for people at that time to make sense of the passage of time, so disrupted by events beyond their control. At the same time, however, the print reveals a somewhat ominous view of history\u2014an apocalyptic confluence of natural, political, economic, and social disasters.<\/p>\r\n Indeed, some order can be imposed on what otherwise seems historical mishmash. Of the total of 51 events listed in the print for the 16 years between 1853 and 1868, 17 refer primarily to political affairs, 12 to disasters including earthquakes, fires, and epidemics, 8 to economic matters, 6 to religions festivals, 4 to welfare activities, and 4 to social happenings such as the display of an elephant in downtown Edo. Naturally, such general categories (politics, disasters, economics, religion, welfare, and society) are prone to much overlap; for example, the attack on the imperial palace in 1864 (the so-called Incident at the Forbidden Gate) was carried out by pro-imperial loyalists, but remembered in the print more for the fire that destroyed much of the central district of Kyoto. Nonetheless, what follows is an examination and discussion of the events recorded in the print by category, beginning with the political (closest to what is often considered the \u201cusual\u201d story) and ending with the attention paid to disasters (perhaps, for us, the most \u201cunusual\u201d story). Special attention will be given to the print\u2019s complex matrix of images that constitute a visual lexicon of the bakumatsu years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Perry and his black ships were portrayed as the beginning of the end of Tokugawa rule. An American warship had entered Edo Bay earlier in 1846, but Captain James Biddle was easily turned away and the event left little impact on popular memory. A show of force by Naval Commander James Glynn to Nagasaki in 1849 proved successful in repatriating some 13 American seamen in Japanese custody, but this event was also quickly forgotten in both Japan and the United States.[footnote]Michael P. Onorato, \u201cThe Opening of Japan, 1849-1854: America \u2018Finds the Key,\u201d Asian Studie<\/em>s, 6:3 (1968), pp. 286-296.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>Perry and his black ships were different. At full force, the 1853-54 expedition consisted of 9 vessels, around 150 cannon, and more than 1600 men; it was unprecedented in the number of men and munitions mustered in peacetime for the purposes of diplomacy. The illustration of the foreign paddlewheel steam ship in the upper right-hand corner of the print, the starting point, may not appear menacing\u00a0[<\/strong><\/span>Figure<\/strong> 2]<\/strong>. There is no billowing black smoke, no visible cannon, and no indication of national origin. But it symbolized the reality of the foreign threat that had troubled Japan\u2019s political and intellectual elite from the early nineteenth century. Very likely it was drawn in imitation of the many black ship broadsheets (kawaraban<\/em>) that appeared for sale on the streets of Edo shortly after Perry\u2019s arrival in Uraga on the 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 6th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month (July 8), 1853\u00a0[<\/strong><\/span>Figure 3]<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n The popular crude woodblock prints were designed to exploit the curiosity of the Edo commoners as well as to allay their fears.[footnote]For a basic information on kawaraban, see Sepp Linhart, \u201cKawaraban\u2014Enjoying the News when News was Forbidden,\u201d in Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart, eds., Written Texts \u2013 Visual Texts: Woodblock-printed Media in Early Modern Japan, Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2005, pp. 231-250. For details on kawaraban and the impact of the \u201cblack ships\u201d in 1853 and 1854, see \u201cGoemon\u2019s New World View,\u201d in M. William Steele. Alternative Narratives in Modern Japanese History, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 4-18. See also John Dower\u2019s visual essay, \u201cBlack Ships & Samurai: Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan (1853-1854),\u201d in the MIT Visualizing Cultures site<\/a>. See also, \u201cPerry in Japan, a visual history,\u201d<\/a> Brown University Library Center for Digital Scholarship. Finally, for digital versions of late Tokugawa kawaraban, see the Ono Hideo Collection<\/a> maintained by the University of Tokyo. This collection includes a broad selection of images related to political and international affairs, but also to fires, earthquakes, and floods and other events related to social and cultural history.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n With the help of\u00a0<\/span>kawaraban<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and other social media, including word of mouth, news of Perry and the black ships quickly spread throughout Japan. Perry\u2019s visit was thus a national event well befitting the beginning of a new era. Reports of a major earthquake that struck months before Perry\u2019s arrival, in Odawara on the 2nd<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 2nd<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month, 1853 and news of the appointment of Tokugawa Iesada as shogun, following the sudden death of his father on the 22nd<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 6th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month, during the height of the Perry crisis, added to this sense of a new beginning.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_902\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"768\"] But the beginning of what? Aside from attention given to the appearance of foreign ships in 1853 and the opening of Yokohama to trade\u00a0[<\/strong><\/span>Figure 4]<\/strong>, the\u00a0<\/span>Compendium of Events<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>made little mention of international affairs.[footnote]For images connected with the opening of Japan to foreign trade, see John Dower\u2019s \u201cYokohama Boomtown: Foreigners in Treaty Port Japan\u201d unit<\/a> in the MIT Visualizing Culture website.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>Events relating to domestic politics were similarly fragmented. Shogun Iesada\u2019s death was reported in 1858 but the event was secondary in importance to the cholera epidemic that swept through Japan in the same year.<\/p>\r\n The illustrated chronology made no mention of the messy succession dispute that followed the death of Iesada in 1858 nor of the reign of terror, the so-called Ansei purge, conducted by the new shogun\u2019s chief senior councilor Ii Naosuke in 1859. But the dramatic assassination of Ii, on the 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 3rd<\/sup> month, was depicted as the central event of 1860. Snow falls on banks of the moat surrounding Edo Castle near the Sakurada Gate as a group of 17 men from Mito and one from Satsuma cut down the man who had been labeled by his enemies as a tyrant\u00a0[<\/strong><\/span>Figure 5]<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span>While the terrorist attack shocked and fascinated the Edo populace, it would seem that another major event of 1860, the bakufu\u2019s mission to the United States to sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, was of lesser importance. It was not included in the chronology.<\/p>\r\n On the other hand, the outbreak of hostilities led by anti-foreign, anti-Tokugawa insurgents from Mito in the spring of 1861 in Shim\u014dsa Province (present-day Chiba Prefecture) was depicted as the major event for that year [Figure 6]<\/strong>.\u00a0The incident, absent from most present-day historical accounts, began on the 17th<\/sup>\u00a0day of the 1st<\/sup>\u00a0month of Bunky\u016b 1 (1861) in Sawara.[footnote]The incident was reported in many contemporary accounts, including the Kinsei Shiraku<\/em> (translated into English in 1873 as Kins\u00e9 shiriaku<\/em>): \u201cDuring the 1st month of the 1st year of Bunky\u016b the number of the r\u00f3nins in Hitachi and Shim\u00f4sa increased to such an extent that they proceeded into K\u00f4dzuk\u00e9 and Shimotsuk\u00e9, where, under pretext of requiring war contributions for the expulsion of the barbarians, they extorted money from the peasants and tradespeople. The Bakufu ordered the house of Mito to arrest them.\u201d Kins\u00e9 Shiriaku: A History of Japan from the First visit of Commodore Perry in 1853 to the Capture of Hakodate by the Mikado\u2019s Forces in 1869<\/em>, E. M. Satow, trans., Yokohama: Japan Mail Office, 1873, p. 17. The Kaei Meiji Nenkan Roku also includes details of the incident at Sawara, and of later disturbances caused by the Mito ronin. Ge volume, pp. 736, 742, 745, 747 (reproducing the Mino ronin manifesto), 767, 770, 773, 778, and 783 (on the ronin attack on the British Legation).[\/footnote]\u00a0Ronin from Mito and elsewhere, proclaiming their desire to \u201crevere the emperor and expel the barbarian\u201d (sonn\u014d j\u014di<\/em>) attempted to extort money from wealthy merchants and farmers. The men were likely associated with the assassination of Ii Naosuke and with the murder of Townsend Harris\u2019 secretary and interpreter, Henry Heuskin, in late 1860 and later, on the 28th<\/sup>\u00a0day of the 5th<\/sup>\u00a0month with the attack on the British Legation in Edo. In other words, the hard-fought and bloody skirmish at Sawara denoted the beginning of what would become a prolonged civil war between Tokugawa and imperial supporters.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_903\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"189\"] The next political event listed and depicted in the print was the 3000-man procession that delivered Shogun Iemochi to Kyoto in the spring of 1863 [Figure 7]<\/strong>. The image shows the entry of the shogun into Kyoto, pulled in an ox-cart reserved for the nobility. Intended to awe the court, the shogun\u2019s first visit to Kyoto in 229 years instead further weakened Tokugawa prestige. The shogun was forced to bow down before the emperor and promise the impossible: to expel the barbarians. Commoners in Edo were confused by the sudden absence of the shogun, especially at a time when rumors of war with England and America abounded after the murder of an Englishman, Charles Richardson, by Satsuma samurai, and other anti-foreign incidents\u00a0[<\/strong>Figure 8]<\/strong>. A major fire that engulfed the center of Kyoto, barely sparing the imperial palace featured as the event for the year 1864\u00a0[Figure 9]<\/strong>. The catastrophe was a result of the Forbidden Gate Incident (18th<\/sup>\u00a0day of the 7th<\/sup>\u00a0month), a battle that pushed Japan one step further in the direction of civil war. Despite the shogun\u2019s presence, Kyoto had become a hotbed of anti-foreign, pro-imperial activists. In the summer of 1864, pro-Tokugawa forces managed to expel the terrorists from Kyoto, but a group of sonn\u014d j\u014di radicals from Ch\u014dsh\u016b attempted to retake the city. A contemporary account (Genji Yume Monogatari<\/em>) complements the visual depiction neatly: Soldiers were \u201cbrandishing swords and spears, rushed hither and thither. \u2026 Some of the townspeople had fled, throwing down their things in the street. Lying prostrate here and there were men who had fallen down wounded and the roads were full of headless corpses. \u2026 The sky was lit up by the flames as if it were broad daylight, and the roar of the cannon never ceased. \u2026 Palaces of the great and dwellings of the common people came tumbling down with a sound of general ruin, like the falling of hundreds and thousands of thunderbolts. Heaven and earth trembled and quaked, until the end of the world seemed to be at hand.\u201d[footnote]Baba Bun\u2019ei, Japan, 1853-1864, or Genji Yume Monogatari<\/em>, trans. Ernest Mason Satow (Tokyo: Naigai Shuppan Ky\u014dkai, 1905) as excerpted in Walthall and Steele, Politics and Society in Japan\u2019s Meiji Restoration<\/em>, pp. 101-103.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_906\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"] The\u00a0<\/span>Compendium of Events<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>failed to mention the deepening civil war between Tokugawa supporters and its enemies, with Ch\u014dsh\u016b domain in the lead. The first campaign against Ch\u014dsh\u016b was launched in late summer, 1864, soon after the Forbidden Gate Incident; a second expedition began in the spring of the next year. The illustrated chronology for 1865, Kei\u014d 1, focused instead on the breakdown of law and order in Edo, much of the unrest caused by economic dislocations, including the imposition of an extraordinary levy on the townspeople of Edo to cover the expenses of the expeditions.[footnote]The reactions of urban commoners to the breakdown in public order as described in graffiti, popular songs, and irreverent verse are included in Motoyama Yukihiko, \u201cPatterns of Thought and Action of the Common People during the Bakumatsu and Restoration Epoch,\u201d in Proliferating Talent: Essays on Politics, Thought and Education in the Meiji Era<\/em>, (J.S.A. Elisonas and Richard Rubinger, eds.,) Honolulu: Hawai\u2019i University Press, 1997, pp. 63-81. See also Minami Kazuo, Ishin zenya no Edo shomin<\/em>, Tokyo: Ky\u014dikusha, 1980.[\/footnote] Ronin insurgents were reported to have taken up residence in the vacant Ogasawara mansion in Honjo, on the east bank of the Sumida River, just north of Ryogoku. Moreover, two\u00a0<\/span>gokumon<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>were set up at Ry\u014dgoku Hirok\u014dji for the public display of severed heads\u2014primarily those of captured\u00a0<\/span>sonn\u014d j\u014di<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>provocateurs.[footnote]According to Daniel Botsman, a total of 123 severed heads were put on display in Edo between 1862 and 1865. See Daniel Botsman, Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan<\/em>, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 20.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>This did little, however, to restore popular confidence in the ability of the Tokugawa government to bring back the peace, stability and prosperity of the recent past.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_907\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"600\"] The next year, 1866, proved even worse: bankruptcy, robbery and murder, and ultimately rioting in the streets of Edo dominated the news for the year. Inflammatory posters pointed the finger at the bakufu for failing to come to the aid of the people: \u201cDue to High Prices, Goods are in Short Supply, and Able Officials are All Sold Out.\u201d[footnote]Minami Kazuo, Ishin zenya no Edo sh\u014dmin<\/em>, Tokyo: Ky\u014dikusha, 1980, p. pp. 155-57.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>A change in leadership, not reported in the woodblock print chronology, failed to restore popular trust in government.<\/p>\r\n Shogun Iemochi died in Osaka on the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 7th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month, 1866, just as mass rioting was breaking out in the hinterland north of Edo. He was replaced by Yoshinobu, destined to be the last of the Tokugawa shoguns. At the very end of Keio 2, on the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 12th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month (January 30, 1867), Emperor K\u014dmei passed from the scene, replaced by the young prince Mutsuhito, the future Emperor Meiji. In effect the stage was set for the final act of the bakumatsu drama.<\/p>\r\n In 1867, police patrolled the streets of Edo and special guard stations were set up to keep insurgents out the city\u00a0[<\/strong><\/span>Figure 10]<\/strong>.\u00a0The commoners were not impressed. One inflammatory poster criticized the peacekeeping squads as inept: \u201cNone of the rioters were arrested, only the spectators were caught.\u201d[footnote]Ibid.[\/footnote]<\/span>\u00a0At least the rice harvest, for the first time in many years, was bountiful. Nonetheless, events at the end of the year only confirmed the worst fears of the Edo commoners: on the 14<\/span>th<\/sup>\u00a0day of the 10<\/span>th<\/sup>\u00a0month (November 9) Yoshinobu decided to return governing authority to the emperor (<\/span>taisei h\u014dkan<\/em>), and later on the 9<\/span>th<\/sup>\u00a0day of the 12<\/span>th<\/sup>\u00a0month (January 3, 1868), troops from Satsuma, Echizen, Tosa and Hizen seized the imperial palace in Kyoto, abolished the office of shogun, and declared the restoration of direct imperial rule (<\/span>\u014dsei fukko<\/em>). These key events that led to the Meiji Restoration were not included among the entries for 1867.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_908\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"] The one \u201cbattle\u201d on the list, \u201cLarge-scale fighting breaks out in Senba district of Osaka,\u201d may well have been a side show in the restoration drama. It probably referred to the outrageous behavior and wild dancing associated with the Harvest Festival dancing (<\/span>h\u014dnen odori<\/em>) that began in early July in Senba and easily melted into the\u00a0<\/span>ee ja nai ka\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Ain\u2019t it great \/ What the hell!) craze that swept through Japan in the latter half of 1867\u00a0[<\/strong><\/span>Figure 11]<\/strong>.\u00a0As one\u00a0<\/span>ee ja nai ka\u00a0<\/span><\/em>chant put it: \u201cWhat a dreadful year it was [1866]. Let\u2019s forget it! Thanks to the gods we can dance. Isn\u2019t that right! Japan is going to be renewed. Isn\u2019t that great! Let\u2019s celebrate the abundant harvest by dancing. Let\u2019s set off on a pilgrimage. Ain\u2019t it great!\u201d[footnote]On the ee ja nai ka<\/em> movement, see George Wilson, Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration<\/em>, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. See page 106 for a version of this chant. On visual representations of the ee ja nai ka<\/em> craze, see \u201cPublishing \u0112janaika: Popular Religion as Media Event,\u201d in Formanck and Linhard, eds., Written Texts \u2013 Visual Texts<\/em>, pp. 311-340. See also Walthall and Steele, pp. 122-126, for documents on the ee ja nai ka<\/em> movement.[\/footnote]<\/span><\/p>\r\n The final 1868 panel in the\u00a0<\/span>Compendium of Events<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>included 9 events that detailed the collapse of Tokugawa rule. The year began with cannon fire. On the 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 1st\u00a0<\/sup>month (January 27), Ch\u014dsh\u016b and Satsuma forces engage troops loyal to the Tokugawa at Toba-Fushimi, on the outskirts of Kyoto. This marks the formal beginning of the Boshin Civil War that lasted until the final defeat of pro-Tokugawa forces at Hakodate on the 18th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 5th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month, 1869.<\/p>\r\n The chronology did not take note of this opening volley but did record the appointment of an imperial envoy (Higashikuze Michitomi) on the 15th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 1st<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>month, charged with foreign affairs and dispatched to Kobe in order to meet with the foreign diplomatic corps to formally inform them of the establishment of the restoration of imperial rule. By this time, Yoshinobu had been declared an \u201cenemy of the court.\u201d And on the 9th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>day of the 2nd<\/sup>Introduction<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n
The Political Narrative<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_900\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"500\"]
<\/a> Figure 2.<\/strong> 1853 (Kaei 6 Kich\u014d) Kuwa no ki (Mulberry bush). <\/em>Foreign Ships arrive in Uraga (inside Edo Bay) for the first time. Detail of Figure 1.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_901\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]<\/a> Figure 3.<\/strong> Kawaraban: A Black Ship<\/em>, 1853. Source: Hachir\u014d Yuasa Memorial Museum, Poking Fun, p. 2. Commodore Perry and his \u201cblack ships\u201d appeared in Edo Bay in the summer of 1853 and once again in the spring of 1854, initiating changes that would radically transform Japanese foreign and domestic policy. Edo commoners were naturally curious to learn about these aliens who suddenly appeared within sight of their city. Over 500 monochrome woodblock prints known as kawaraban appeared on the streets of Edo for sale during this time. Although filled with inaccurate information, these crude prints gave the commoners their first detailed view of the world outside Japan. They also served as a stimulus for popular national consciousness.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/a> Figure 4.<\/strong> Opening of Yokohama to Foreign Trade. Yoshikazu, \u201cPicture of the Landing of Foreigners of the Five Nations in Yokohama,\u201d 1861. The five countries, America, England, France, the Netherlands, and Russia, are each indicated by their national flag. Two Chinese are in the center of the picture; as in other treaty ports in Asia, these compradors were essential in facilitating trade with native merchants. Interestingly, the image focuses on the military rather the commercial presence of foreigners in Japan.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 5.<\/strong> 1860 (Man\u2019en 1 K\u014dshin) Sakura no ki (The Cherry Tree).<\/em> Battle at the Sakurada Gate on the 3rd day of the 3rd month (in which the chief senior councillor of the Tokugawa bakufu, Ii Naosuke, was assassinated).<\/em> Detail of Figure 1.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_904\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"189\"]<\/a> Figure 6.<\/strong> 1861 (Bunky\u016b 1 Shiny\u016b) Tani no mizu (Water in the Valley).<\/em> Outbreak of fighting by r\u014dnin insurgents in Shim\u014dtsuke Province. Detail of Figure 1.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_905\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"189\"]<\/a> Figure 7.<\/strong> 1863 (Bunky\u016b 3 Kigai) O-umi no mizu (Water in the Ocean).<\/em> Shogun Iemochi travels to Kyoto in the 2nd month. Detail of Figure 1.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/a> Figure 8.<\/strong> \u201cCuring the Difficult Diseases that Confront Our World, 1863.\u201d Source: Hachir\u014d Yuasa Memorial Museum, Poking Fun<\/em>, p. 16. This \u201cpanic print\u201d offers satirical comments on problems experienced by Edo commoners in 1863. It takes the form of a parody of a famous satirical print by Kuniyoshi: \u201cA Marvelous Doctor Treating Serious Diseases\u201d (1850). As in the original; a doctor and his assistants attempt to cure various ills of the day. In this print, however, the real doctor is absent and a substitute and his surrogates are called in to handle the caseload. The absent doctor refers to Shogun Iemochi who has left Edo for Kyoto. And the patients who seek help are cart pullers, porters, shippers, landlords outside of Edo and others who have suddenly profited from the mass exodus from Edo in response to rumors of war. Cart pullers, for example, complain of stomach troubles; they spent their sudden wealth on fancy food. Other patients, such as geisha and money lenders, seek help from sudden impoverishment. Two foreigners also seek help. One complains that he can\u2019t move forward or backwards because his feet are pointed in opposite directions. The doctor tells him that there is no cure. Another foreigner fears that he will be forced to leave Japan and never return. Again, no cure![\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 9.<\/strong> 1864 (Ganji 1 Kasshi) Umi no kane (Gold in the Sea).<\/em> Great fire in Kyoto between the 15th day of the 7th month and the 20th day; many people die. Detail of Figure 1.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 10.<\/strong> 1867 (Keio 3 Teib\u014d) Irori no hi (Fire in the Hearth).<\/em> Police patrol the streets of the city (Edo). Detail of Figure 1.[\/caption]\r\n