The Meiji Restoration
The achievements of the Meiji regime in transforming Japan into one of the most powerful of modern states are regarded as among the most remarkable events in history. But the restoration of the Emperor and the fall of the Shogun was brought about at the cost of a fierce domestic struggle.
To the inhabitants of Yedo, as the city now called Tokyo was then named, March 24th, 1860, had a double significance. According to the lunar calendar it was the third day of the third moon, or the Feast of Dolls, when every Japanese household with a daughter displays a set of toy figures, as elaborate as the family means will permit, to represent an imperial couple and their court.
But, apart from these private festivities, the day was also of public importance, since the Shogun or Generalissimo, the supreme ruler of Japan, was holding a grand levee in his castle for his leading advisers and the various feudal chiefs; and the pomp with which these grandees made their way to their suzerain’s presence always provided an exciting spectacle.
This year, however, the occasion was ruined by the unseasonable weather. Throughout the night it had been snowing hard; and, although it stopped for a while after daybreak, no sooner had the beating of a drum from within the castle announced, at eight o’clock, that the audience was opened, than the snow began to fall again, even more heavily.
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