Season 12, Episode 14: The Boshin War

In January of 1868, after stepping down as shogun and being assured that he would become a new prime minister of Japan’s first Parliament only to have the emperor issue a decree abolishing the shogunate entirely, Tokugawa Yoshinobu probably felt like he had been played. The forces of the Satcho Alliance, which included Satsuma, Choshu, and Tosa domains, were determined to remove the Tokugawa family from the political landscape entirely and reform the nation under the emperor’s nominal governance with his trusted loyalist advisors actually holding the levers of power. Not willing to simply slink into the shadows in defeat, Yoshinobu rallied the banners to fight back.

In the struggle to come, nothing short of the fate of the entire nation was at stake. The question of Japan’s future loomed large and certainly there were historical parallels. In 1221, Emperor Go-Toba had attempted to launch a war against the Kamakura Shogunate when he declared Hojo Yoshitoki to be a rebel. The Bakufu’s victory in the ensuing Jokyu War cemented the shogunate as an institution and proved that the imperial court could no longer remove troublesome samurai by painting them with the casual brush of treason. Emperor Go-Daigo managed a brief imperial restoration in 1333 but this was soon overshadowed by the rise of Ashikaga Takauji who established a new shogunate which ruled most of the nation. The Ashikaga were eventually overthrown but only after their authority had spent a century being undermined by petty warlords. It was Oda Nobunaga who expelled the final Ashikaga shogun, not imperial loyalists.

The Tokugawa Clan in particular had reason to feel confident, at least from a historical perspective. The last real attempt to curtail the growing power of Tokugawa Ieyasu that had any potential for success was the Battle of Sekigahara, which even by its less dramatic accounts resulted in near-absolute national domination by the Tokugawa. The Siege of Osaka in 1615 laid to rest any final hope for those who wanted to resist Ieyasu’s position and that battle ended in an absolute defeat for anti-Bakufu forces.

Historically speaking, such attempts to remove the Bakufu or even curtail its power had an extremely poor track record. However, those who now advocated for a final confrontation with the Edo shogunate had a few reasons to hope that they might succeed where their political predecessors had failed. For one, they had already repelled an attempted punitive incursion by the shogunate during the Second Choshu Expedition. They had access to superior arms and their adoption of foreign army reforms gave them a strategic advantage. The Choshu Kiheitai militias had proven especially successful in their engagements with shogunate allies.

It’s tempting, given the ultimate outcome of the Boshin War, to assume that all the major advantages lay with the Satcho Alliance and their like-minded peers but that is not entirely true. The French Military Mission was still drilling new-model soldiers for the Bakufu and in the struggle that was to come, French officers would take the field alongside their Japanese recruits. A few French steam-powered vessels could also provide artillery support for the shogunate and their allies. However, said allies were one of the biggest sources of weakness for the coalition which now rushed to defend the Bakufu.

Although the shogunate was taking great pains to modernize their military, the domains who still supported them had been lagging behind. Some of this was due to limited access to foreign trade; their enemy Satsuma had purchased large quantities of Minie and Dreyse rifles, along with more modern canonry like howitzers and even gatling guns. Aizu domain, one of the staunchest of Edo’s supporters, had suffered its own internal struggles regarding whether to modernize their military throughout the 1860s, and the northern Kanto region which had in the past proven a bulwark against potential disloyalty to the shogunate had experienced the Mito Rebellion, which proved that opinion was not universally in step with Japan’s warrior government.

Even the Bakufu itself still harbored rustic troops whose armaments bluntly served no purpose on a contemporary battlefield. Swords, spears, and bows were certainly lethal, but there is a world of difference between a volley of arrows and a volley of gunfire. Once the fighting began, many of the domains supporting the Bakufu formed their own alliances like the Ouetsu Reppan Domei, which is often called the Northern Alliance. This military union of 31 domains across Mutsu, Dewa, and Echigo Provinces included both tozama and fudai daimyo leaders and at its height was capable of fielding 50,000 soldiers, but its actual military deployment was bogged down by traditional samurai leadership. Each domain’s leaders still commanded their individual forces and never achieved real battlefield cohesion in a way that resulted in victory. We’ll have more to say about their actual battlefield performance in just a little while.

Although the Bakufu enjoyed the friendship and support of the Second French Empire, Satsuma domain had been particularly intentional about befriending the British. The shadow of Napoleon - the original Napoleon, not his nephew - still stretched long over European politics in the latter 1800s. Containing French aggression was a common talking point in the UK parliament at the time and generally the British tried to curtail their rival’s colonial efforts at every opportunity. They were very generous in their dealings with Satsuma domain, selling them many pieces of modern artillery including howitzer guns which would prove extremely useful for loyalist forces in the coming war. This is not to say that the coming struggle was nothing more than a proxy war between the British and French, only that the British were hedging their bets by giving some support to both sides.

Which brings us back to Tokugawa Yoshinobu and the shogunate army of 15,000 which marched on Kyoto after the imperial proclamation that the Bakufu had been abolished. In late January of 1868, the army moved toward Kyoto bearing a letter written by the now former shogun addressed to Emperor Meiji. The contents of that missive warned the young emperor about the low character of the advisors who were steering the nation toward ruin with their divisive rhetoric. The emperor would not receive this letter, however, because when the shogunate army arrived at the gates of Kyoto, the Satcho Alliance soldiers who had garrisoned the city abjectly refused their admittance.

Although the Bakufu-allied army that marched on Kyoto was three times the size of its defending garrison, it seems like the shogunate was not expecting an actual fight. They may have been under the impression that this was all politics - business as usual. A show of force was all that was needed to convince the hardliners that they should stop playing games and allow the original plan of a bicameral parliament to proceed. Most of the vanguard - which occupies the army’s front line - had not even bothered to load their firearms, indicating that they weren’t expecting to use them. Many probably also agreed with the commonly-held opinion that Japan’s military strength should be held in reserve for a future showdown with one or more western colonial powers and not wasted on internecine squabbles.

The Satcho Alliance garrison of Kyoto who were now facing down the shogunate’s coalition, however, were completely willing to fight. Eager, even. A division of about nine hundred had arrayed themselves before the walls of Kyoto, having deployed four cannons. Their guns were loaded. The vanguard approached the area called Toba to the city’s south, crossing the Koeda Bridge. The commander of the shogunate forces Takigawa Tomotaka called out, requesting permission to pass peacefully. This permission was denied and as Tomotaka balked, the Satcho troops opened fire.

Chaos erupted among the shogunate coalition troops. An explosive shell detonated near the vanguard commander and he was thrown from his horse, which bolted in panic from the battle. Seeing the commander’s unmounted horse fleeing caused mass confusion and a Bakufu officer named Sasaki Tadasaburo ordered his troops to charge. The soldiers under his command, however, were a division of spearmen and they were casually gunned down by the Satcho troops’ Minie and Dryse guns.

East of the district of Toba, where this battle was taking place, another wing of the Bakufu army was arriving in the district of Fushimi on the outskirts of Kyoto. When the Satcho troops in that area heard the booming of cannons from nearby Toba, they formed a battle line and fired on the shogunate troops who were approaching the Bungo Bridge. The Bakufu soldiers returned fire and attempted to take control of the bridge, sending Shinsengumi warriors as shock troops, but their efforts were in vain.

What came to be called the Battle of Toba-Fushimi was a resounding victory for the loyalist Satcho Alliance and an embarrassing defeat for the shogunate. The retreating shogunate forces attempted to regroup at Tominomori but were harried by pursuing loyalists and forced to withdraw. The Bakufu army then attempted to take shelter at Yodo Castle, which was controlled by longtime shogunate partisan Inaba Masakuni. When they arrived, they found the gates were barred and Masakuni denied them entry.

It’s hard to overstate just how bad of a sign Masakuni’s betrayal was for the shogunate. He was a fudai daimyo, and descended from a long line of Tokugawa partisans. He had served as the Kyoto shoshidai, the shogun’s representative in the old capital and his present domain, Yodo han, was located in Yamashiro Province not far from Kyoto itself. He could have expected a great reward from the shogunate for providing such assistance at this juncture and the fact that he refused the troops shelter means he may have seen the writing on the wall sooner than most. The shogunate troops dispersed and gradually made their way to Osaka Castle, where Tokugawa Yoshinobu was making plans with his military advisors and had just announced that he planned to lead the Bakufu’s army in the field personally. However, his public bluster concealed a private personal crisis.

During the encounter at Tominomori, the Satcho troops had raised the official Imperial standard. This was not a flippant gesture but was something that the emperor had given official permission to use. The banners were made from brocade, a glistening decorative fabric which reflected the figurative luster of the Tenno himself. These standards had been prepared long before the Battle of Toba-Fushimi and Yoshinobu later wrote in his journal that their appearance at Tominomori, as well as reports that the emperor had empowered the Satcho Alliance to destroy the shogunate, had drained his will to fight. The emperor had not only abolished the shogunate; he had labeled the Bakufu itself as official enemies of the court.

Only two days had passed since the Battle of Toba-Fushimi when Yoshinobu announced to his flagging troops that he planned to take personal command of the shogunate’s army. That very evening, he instead secretly boarded a steamship and traveled to Edo. When the garrison at Osaka castle learned that he had abandoned them, they returned the favor, departing from the great castle, a symbol of the shogunate’s authority, and leaving it for loyalists to seize and burn shortly thereafter. We last discussed the destruction of Osaka Castle during the previous season when Tokugawa troops were taking the fortress from the supporters of Toyotomi Hideyori. Now it was the Tokugawa who were enduring its loss.

Although the Boshin War would continue throughout 1868, in reality the shogunate’s leaders lost the will to obtain a victory shortly after its first engagement. During the same time as the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, a naval engagement was underway in the nearby Seto Inland Sea. Near Awa Island, several Bakufu warships engaged three vessels sent from Satsuma Domain to recall some of their troops in Kansai back to Kagoshima. One of the Satcho transports was destroyed, but the other two ships escaped. Although the Bakufu had asserted control over the inland sea, the poor performance of its land troops meant that this was only a symbolic victory. One of the victorious ships from the Battle of Awa, as it was later named, was the Kaiyo Maru, which, shortly after the naval battle, escorted Tokugawa Yoshinobu back to Edo.

By fleeing to Edo, the abdicated shogun had essentially surrendered Kansai and Chubu to loyalist designs. The Satcho alliance, meanwhile, was freshly invigorated and each member rallied its own army to march on Edo from Kyoto, traveling along the three famous highways Tokaido, Nakasendo, and Hokurikudo respectively. The armies of Choshu, Satsuma, and Tosa flew the imperial brocade banners, which caused many would-be shogunate hardliners along their path to surrender immediately and allow them passage.

The loyalist forces which seized Osaka and prepared to take control of the rest of the nation were not a unified political group. Although they agreed on the issue of imperial restoration, some were in favor of further modernization and others were still firmly in the sonno joi camp. As the armies of the Satcho Alliance began their march east, other loyalist samurai were given charge over Osaka and its outlying areas. Lying 62 miles to the west of Osaka, that’s nearly a hundred kilometers, is the city of Kobe. Its port, known at the time as Hyogo, had recently been opened to foreign trade at the beginning of 1868 and by February already hosted a significant presence of foreign citizens.

A column of 500-800 loyalist soldiers was making its way through Hyogo on February 2, 1868 at the same time that two French sailors were trying to cross the road in use by the troops. This occurred near a planned construction site which would host foreign merchants and dignitaries. The French sailors attempted to cut across a gap between platoons and a nearby commander reacted by attempting to stop them with a spear. Things escalated, as neither side could understand the other, and the spear-armed officer even jabbed his weapon at the sailors but was careful to only inflict minor wounds. The two retreated to the building where they had emerged and after a few moments inside came back out armed with revolvers.

A firefight ensued which quickly grew out of control. Nearby, inspecting the construction site and no doubt making plans for which buildings would be erected was a group of American Marines and other foreign soldiers who took cover as the Japanese troops opened fire. This incident boasted only a single casualty - a Chinese or Indian servant casually referred to as a “coolie” by the British sources. The potential for this to turn into a major diplomatic incident, however, was enormous.

After almost a month of wrangling between foreign envoys and the relevant new officials working on behalf of the imperial court, the Japanese commander who was blamed for the incident was ordered to commit seppuku. Being that only one person in the company of the Europeans was killed, this satisfied the foreign dignitaries. However, a month later there was a similar incident in Sakai, the port city that lay on the outskirts of Osaka.

A French fleet came to the waters around Sakai in order to survey the waters in the area to ensure against naval accidents. In January of that year, the American Admiral Henry Bell had drowned when his vessel struck rocks soon after launching in the area. Once the survey was complete, one hundred sailors took their shore leave in Sakai and proceeded to act in the manner expected of drunk French sailors in the 1860s.

The citizenry complained to the newly-appointed local samurai overlords, who hailed from Tosa Province, that the French sailors were entering people’s homes, harassing women, and disrupting temple rituals. The Tosa samurai assembled a posse to confront one group of these sailors, who behaved rudely. One of the Frenchmen decided to play a terrific prank on the local gentry by stealing the battle standard which they carried. This was, to the Tosa samurai, an unimaginable insult and they proceeded to beat the living shit out of the sailor who stole the flag (Pardon my language, that really is the best way to describe what happened.). His fellows came to help him and a brawl ensued.

Eventually the two parties separated. According to the Japanese, the French opened fire first and they responded in kind. When the smoke cleared, ten French sailors were dead and several more were wounded. Two would later die of those wounds, bringing the total French dead to twelve. This incident also resulted in demands for executions of the Japanese soldiers involved as well as punitive indemnities and demands for official apologies. After some diplomatic wrangling, an official apology from an imperial prince and eleven seppukus, the French captain said that he was satisfied.

These incidents, and the potential fallout they produced, convinced the emperor’s handlers to quietly suppress “sonno-joi” sentiments and gradually replaced them with a new policy catchphrase: “kaikoku washin,” which means “opening the country in peace and friendship.” While the imperial court would continue to enjoy the support of those who promoted expulsion of the barbarians, the shogunate had actually been pretty successful in suppressing these elements so their numbers were not so significant that they could enjoy larger influence. For the moment, the court benefitted from the fact that the western powers, by and large, did not understand the nature of the present conflict between themselves and the Bakufu.

Although Tokugawa Yoshinobu and most of the upper leadership of the shogunate had essentially given up the fight after the first skirmish, many of those who belonged to the lower tiers of the Bakufu refused to go down without a few swings. They justified their resistance with the fairly solid reasoning that those who now controlled the emperor had already declared them rebels and there was no guarantee that they would be treated kindly if they surrendered. Bushido also played a role here; it would be extremely shameful for samurai to surrender without offering resistance.

In the immediate wake of the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, there arose a few leaders who filled the gap in Yoshinobu’s absence. One of the most prominent was Kondo Isami, the leader of the Shinsengumi - the ronin who were originally tasked with hunting down militant loyalists in Kyoto and were involved in several embarrassing high-profile incidents. Isami reformed the remaining Shinsengumi into a new regiment which was named Koyo Chinbutai - the Pacification Corps. He led the Koyo Chinbutai along with a large group of volunteers out of Edo in late March to face the loyalist army in the field and stop their eastward advance.

The total number following Kondo Isami was around three hundred. The army they eventually faced numbered three thousand, so you can probably guess how well this is going to go for Bakufu troops. In the ensuing battle of Koshu-Katsunuma, which took place in western Kanto, the rag-tag shogunate army was utterly shredded by their loyalist enemies, and nearly two thirds were killed during the course of battle. Kondo Isami himself survived and attempted to make his way to Aizu domain in northern Kanto, where Yoshinobu and the rest of the Bakufu had taken shelter. He was captured en route, however, and beheaded.

In May of 1868, the armies of the Satcho Alliance and their loyalist allies surrounded Edo and threatened to utterly sack the Bakufu capital. Here the British government intervened. Edo was an important hub of shipping and mercantile activities and they very much did not want it destroyed. Through their assistance, the chief army minister of the shogunate Katsu Kaishu who was charged with Edo’s defense offered an unconditional surrender. The loyalists began occupying the city but Edo had grown extremely large by this point and housed well over a million people. In spite of Kaishu’s surrender, the Shogitai refused to give up their fortified corner of the north city, which was called Ueno.

The Shogitai were an elite division of Bakufu retainers numbering about 2,000 who had sworn to fight to the end. Many had been present at the Battle of Toba-Fushimi and they held their ground against attempts by loyalist forces to seize Kan Ei Ji Temple and its surrounding environs. After repeated warnings and assurances, on July 4, 1868 things finally came to blows and the Satcho troops attempted to storm the temple and kill all who resisted.

At the beginning of what was later called the Battle of Ueno, the shogunate troops put up a decent resistance and the initial attempts by two thousand Satsuma troops to just charge straight into Shogitai territory were ably repulsed. However, ten thousand loyalist troops attacked from the temple’s flank and brought heavy artillery into play. Three hundred of the Shogitai were killed, many more later died of wounds and those who escaped fled north. The Kan ei ji temple complex, meanwhile, was almost completely destroyed and only its belfry and a few small outlying buildings were left standing.

There were several more battles throughout 1868 but none were as successful for the shogunate as the defense at Ueno. Generally Bakufu armies numbered in the thousands while their enemies numbered in the tens of thousands and thus had the advantage of maneuver. They easily outflanked the shogunate dead-enders and liberally used field artillery to cut them down before moving modernized infantry into position to deliver fatal vollies. Aizu Domain was taken a few months after the fall of Edo and the Ouetsu Reppan Domei, or Northern Alliance, was soon huddled in the far north of Honshu desperately trying to regroup or at least hold out. The Bakufu remnant was in terrible shape by this point and had taken to recruiting the teenage children of samurai to fill out their ranks.

Meanwhile, the imperial court continued to make diplomatic inroads and used their geopolitical connections to gain an advantage. They purchased a French-built ironclad steam-powered warship from the United States as well as several other modern vessels. This modern navy would serve them well as the Northern Alliance holdouts continued to resist from their increasingly narrow corner of Tohoku.

We’ll catch up with the Ouetsu Reppan Domei and their further adventures next season. While planning exactly when to end this season, several possible moments emerged as good ending points, but ultimately I settled on the fall of 1868. In September, the imperial court announced that the city of Edo would henceforth be known as Tokyo, a name which means “Eastern Capital.” On October 15, the emperor was officially crowned as the new sovereign, a moment which had been delayed due to the ongoing civil war. Shortly thereafter he marched with a great procession to the newly-named city of Tokyo and in late November he arrived and made a grand celebratory gift of sake to its residents.

While the shogunate had been abolished, some still fought in its name. The moment when Emperor Meiji made his entry into Tokyo is, in my opinion, the official end of the Edo Period and the beginning of the Meiji Period. Some questions had still to be answered, most of them revolving around what manner of nation the revolutionaries who had restored imperial rule planned to build. Would there still be samurai, daimyo, or domains? What did this restoration mean for those who had held high office in the Bakufu who were now at the mercy of their enemies?

Next season, we will answer those questions and explore the path taken by the Meiji restorationists as they struggled to transform Japan from a rustic, semi-feudal nation into a major world power whose influence would soon overshadow many of their regional rivals, much to the surprise of the colonizing western nations. This is the end of the regular episodes for season twelve, I hope you have enjoyed our journey through the later Edo Period. Next time, in a bonus episode, we will discuss the men known as the Three Outstanding Heroes of the Meiji Revolution.