Kyōto

Kyōto is identified as Japan’s imperial capital during the political crisis that culminated in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Its occupation by forces from Satsuma and Chōshū placed the capital at the center of the struggle over whether the Tokugawa shogunate would be abolished or restored.

The capital in the struggle for power

After Shogun Yoshinobu agreed to resign, the Meiji Restoration was declared on January 3, 1868. Forces from Satsuma and Chōshū occupied both Edo and Kyōto, the imperial capital. Their control of these cities did not settle the contest: they feared the Tokugawas would regain power and re-create the shogunate, while Ōkubo Toshimichi sought to eliminate the Tokugawa political base. He persuaded the emperor to abolish the Tokugawa domain and confiscate its lands.

Civil war and institutional change

The confrontation escalated when Yoshinobu attacked Satsuma and Chōshū forces on January 27, 1868. Civil war followed and continued until the summer, when the Tokugawas were finally defeated. Kyōto’s place in the account is therefore not as the site of a described battle, but as the imperial capital occupied during the transfer of authority and the establishment of a new regime.

The settlement was followed by broad reforms. In 1869, feudalism was abolished, the three hundred fiefs were surrendered to the government and reorganized as prefectures under appointed governors, and taxation was centralized. Legal equality among social classes was introduced, restrictions on internal migration and trade were removed, and the samurai class was abolished despite rebellions against the change. The new state also introduced individual land rights, opened occupations to free entry, and invested in infrastructure. By 1890, Japan had adopted a written constitution, an elected parliament, and an independent judiciary. In this sequence, Kyōto marks the imperial center around which the restoration of power was proclaimed; the reforms that followed transformed the institutions governing the country.