Ōkubo Toshimichi

Ōkubo Toshimichi was a leading courtier of the Satsuma domain whose political organizing helped overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate and launch Japan’s Meiji transformation. He joined forces with rival domains, persuaded Satsuma’s ruler to support the overthrow, and used the restoration of imperial authority as a banner for a much wider program: dismantling feudal institutions and building a modern state. His later work as minister of finance connected that political struggle to Japan’s first sustained drive toward industrialization.

Position and Political Setting

In 1868, Japan was a poor country governed under a feudal order dominated by the Tokugawa family. The shogun ruled from Edo, controlled foreign trade, and maintained restrictions on commerce and contact with foreign countries. Feudal lords governed and taxed their own domains, while society remained divided into occupational classes and farmers faced high taxation. The emperor, by contrast, had been sidelined and held a ceremonial role.

The shogunate’s power, however, was not absolute. Satsuma, in the south, retained substantial autonomy and could trade with the outside world through the Ryūkyū Islands. That space for independent action mattered politically: the opposition that gathered around Ōkubo was not simply a movement within the shogun’s own administration, but a coalition rooted in domains that had resources and room to organize beyond his direct control.

Born in Kagoshima, the Satsuma capital, in 1830, Ōkubo was the son of a samurai and became one himself. His abilities attracted the attention of Shimazu Nariakira, Satsuma’s lord, who promoted him within the domain bureaucracy. Nariakira had already considered using Satsuma troops to overthrow the shogun, expand trade with Asia and Europe, abolish feudal economic institutions, and build a modern Japanese state. His death in 1858 interrupted that plan. His successor, Shimazu Hisamitsu, was initially more cautious, leaving Ōkubo to build support for the cause within Satsuma.

Building a Coalition Against the Shogunate

In the autumn of 1867, Ōkubo traveled from Edo to Yamaguchi to meet leaders of the Chōshū domain. His proposal was direct: join forces, march on Edo, and overthrow the shogun. The coalition was already taking shape. Ōkubo had secured the support of leaders in Tosa and Aki; agreement from Chōshū enabled the secret Satcho Alliance between Satsuma and Chōshū to form.

Ōkubo also persuaded Shimazu Hisamitsu to support overthrowing the shogunate. The alliance between domains was presented in terms of restoring the emperor, whose exclusion from political power offered a powerful cause around which to mobilize. An agreement Ōkubo had signed with Tosa stated that “a country does not have two monarchs, a home does not have two masters; government devolves to one ruler.” Yet the book distinguishes that public justification from the coalition’s larger purpose: Ōkubo and his allies sought not merely to restore the emperor, but to change Japan’s political and economic institutions.

The effort to avoid civil war also revealed the breadth of the proposed change. Sakamoto Ryūma presented the shogun with an eight-point plan urging him to resign. Its proposals included returning political authority to the Imperial Court, creating upper and lower legislative bodies, and making government measures depend on general opinion. The plan further called for regulating foreign affairs on that basis and replacing earlier legislation with a new code. The restoration movement thus contained a vision of institutional reconstruction, not simply a change in who held the highest title.

Restoration and Civil War

The shogun, Yoshinobu, agreed to resign, and the Meiji Restoration was declared on January 3, 1868. Emperor Kōmei was restored to power; after Kōmei died a month later, his son, Emperor Meiji, succeeded him. Satsuma and Chōshū forces occupied Edo and the imperial capital, Kyōto, but the coalition feared that the Tokugawa family would try to recover power and re-establish the shogunate.

Ōkubo pressed for a decisive end to Tokugawa power. He persuaded the emperor to abolish the Tokugawa domain and confiscate its lands. On January 27, Yoshinobu attacked Satsuma and Chōshū forces, and civil war followed. The conflict continued until the summer, when the Tokugawas were defeated. The sequence makes clear that the restoration did not immediately settle the question of political authority: the former ruling house’s capacity to resist had to be overcome before the new order could be consolidated.

Reform, State-Building, and Industrialization

After the restoration, Japan underwent a far-reaching reorganization. In 1869, feudalism was abolished and the country’s three hundred fiefs were surrendered to the government and converted into prefectures under appointed governors. Taxation was centralized, and a bureaucratic state replaced the old system of feudal rule. Legal equality among social classes was introduced, restrictions on internal migration and trade were abolished, and the samurai class was ended, though rebellions had to be put down. Individual land rights were established, and people gained freedom to enter and practice trades.

The new government also took an active role in infrastructure and production. In 1869 it created a steamship line between Tokyo and Osaka and built Japan’s first railway, linking Tokyo and Yokohama. Ōkubo, as minister of finance, oversaw the beginning of a concerted industrialization effort. The foundations for industrial change had also been laid earlier in Satsuma: its lord built factories producing pottery, cannon, and cotton yarn, imported English textile machinery, established Japan’s first modern cotton-spinning mill in 1861, and constructed two modern shipyards.

By 1890, Japan had become the first Asian country to adopt a written constitution. It established a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, the Diet, and an independent judiciary. The book treats these institutional changes as decisive in enabling Japan to become the principal beneficiary of the Industrial Revolution in Asia. Ōkubo’s significance lies in the connection between the political coalition that dismantled the shogunate and the state-led reforms that followed: his role was not only to help transfer power, but to advance a transformation of the institutions that organized Japanese society and economic life.