The Restoration Movement in Chōshū

1959 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Craig
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Restoration Movement ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Early Restoration

Until recent times, and to a certain extent, even at the present, most historians have spoken of the movements which led to the Meiji Restoration as lower samurai movements. It is my aim in this article to show that they were not. First, negatively, I hope to show by a consideration of what is meant by the term “lower samurai” and by the application of this to the Chōshū scene that the early Restoration movement or sonō jōi (Honor the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian) movement cannot be described as a lower samurai movement. Second, positively, I will attempt an alternate characterization in terms of the different groups participating in this movement in Chōshū from its inception in 1858 until its culmination in the Chōshū Civil War in 1865.

scholarly journals ‘Out of Whose Hive the Quakers Swarm’d’: Polemics and the Justification of Infant Baptism in the Early Restoration

Perichoresis ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
Jonathan Warren
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Roman Catholics ◽  
Early Restoration

Abstract The English Civil War brought an end to government censorship of nonconformist texts. The resulting exegetical and hermeneutical battles waged over baptism among paedobaptists and Baptists continued well into the Restoration period. A survey of the post-Restoration polemical literature reveals the following themes: 1) the polemical ‘slippery slope’ is a major feature of these tracts. Dissenting paedobaptists believed that Baptists would inevitably become Quakers, despising baptism altogether, and that the resulting social instability would allow the tyranny of Roman Catholicism to reemerge in England. Baptists for their part compared the tyranny of paedobaptist argumentation to the tyranny exercised by Roman Catholics. Anti- Quakeriana and Anti-Popery were both central ‘devil terms’ in this polemical warfare; 2) the exegesis of biblical texts underlying infant baptism revealed contrary understandings of how the bible fit together as a whole. Baptists tended to read Old and New Testaments disjunctively, whereas paedobaptists saw continuity absent explicit abrogation; 3) scholastic theology continued to undergird the arguments of all parties. Especially relevant to this discussion was debate over the proper ‘matter’ and ‘form’ of baptism. Here exegetical and hermeneutical disputes were also relevant. This study reveals that patterns of reading Scripture in each community were informed by traditions and practices, and that the search for the objective ‘literal’ sense of the text was bound to be unavailing.

Supporting the Restoration in War and Ritual

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-198
Author(s):  
Gideon Fujiwara
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
History Of

The chapter tells the history of the Meiji Restoration in Hirosaki domain. Amid the turmoil and uncertainty of the Boshin civil war, Hirosaki domain transferred allegiance from the shogunal forces to the new government and demonstrated its loyalty to the court by fighting rival Morioka. Hirata disciple Yamada Yōnoshin (1843–68) died in this battle. This chapter examines how the Tsugaru group of kokugaku scholars impacted by the domain's decision to support the emperor. It also highlights Hirao Rosen and Tsuruya Ariyo's records on a ritual, shōkonsai (“call back the soul”), which honor the soldiers who died for the emperor. The chapter then reviews Rosen's political documents about how the Boshin War affected his domain, while celebrating Tsugaru's role in the “Imperial” victory of the new Meiji government over the defeated Tokugawa shogunate.

Scholars and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Case of Nishi Amane

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. H. Havens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Restoration Movement ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
European Civilization

One of the interesting questions concerning the Meiji Restoration of 1868 is the degree to which the Western-oriented intellectuals of Japan compromised their scholarly curiosity about European civilization by serving the pre-Restoration Tokugawa government and its successor, the Meiji oligarchy. In what ways might their duties as civil servants colour their objectivity in studying the newly found academic disciplines of the West? What tensions did late Tokugawa and early Meiji scholar-bureaucrats perceive between their investigations of European knowledge and their service in a partisan regime? An examination of the career of Nishi Amane (1829–1897), who was an important scholar of Western philosophy as well as a bureaucrat in both the Tokugawa and Meiji governments, casts some light on the problem of the intellectual as public servant in early modern Japan. This study will concentrate on three important events in Nishi's life: his decision to flee his feudal clan in order to study the West in 1854; his refusal to join the Restoration movement in 1868; and his defence of the idea that scholars could serve the new state without compromising their objectivity in 1874.

Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline A. Hartzell ◽  
Matthew Hoddie
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Power Sharing

Civil War in Siberia

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Smele
Keyword(s):  
Civil War

Reputation and Civil War

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara F. Walter
Keyword(s):  
Civil War
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