In Ryotaro Shiba's account of the life of Japan's last shogun, Perry's arrival o
ff the coast of Japan was merely the spark that ignited the cataclysm in store f
or the Japanese people and their governments. It came to its real climax with th
e fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the event which forms the centerpiece
of this book. The Meiji Restoration-as history calls it-toppled the shogunate, a
nd brought a seventeen-year-old boy emperor back from the secluded Imperial Pala
ce in Kyoto to preside over what amounted to a political and cultural revolution
. With this, Japan's extraordinary self-modernization began in earnest. Coming t
o power just as the Tokugawa regime was suffering the worst military defeat in i
ts history, Yoshinobu strongly suspected that the rule of the Tokugawas-the thir
d and longest lived of Japan's three warrior governments - was swiftly becoming
an anachronism. During a year of frenetic activity, he overhauled the military s
ystems, reorganized the civil administration, promoted industrial development, a
nd expanded foreign intercourse, with the farsighted aim of creating a unified J
apan. Alarmed by these reforms, pro-imperial interests moved against him, precip
itating the Boshin Civil War and the final defeat of the shogunal armies. To the
surprise of his enemies, Yoshinobu capitulated. It was this surrender of author
ity at a crucial point that made the transfer of sovereignty relatively peaceful
. He then retired to Mito and lived quietly for the rest of his life, studying t
he new art of photography. Ennobled a prince in the new European-style nobility
of the Meiji era, he died in 1913.
