Paper short abstract:

This presentation analyzes a print issued in 1868 that illustrated events leading to the end of the Tokugawa regime. It seeks to demonstrate ways in which a confluence of earthquakes, floods, fires and epidemics in the 1850s and 1860s were used to mark the passing of the old order.

Paper long abstract:

In late 1868, a woodblock print chronicled the course of Japan's history for the years leading to the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate. Titled, "A Compendium of Events and Record of the Rice Market from 1853 to 1868" (Ka'ei nenkan yori bei sōba nedan narabi ni nendaiki kakinuki daishinpan), the print is divided into 16 boxes, one for each year between the arrival of Perry's black ships (1853) and the defeat of the Shōgitai at the Battle of Ueno Hill (1868). Each box includes a list of major happenings for that year and a pictorial depiction of one of those events. In 1853, for example, the box includes an illustration of a paddlewheel steamship. In addition to political and military events, the print depicts tsunami (1854), an earthquake (1855), a flood (1856), religious festivals (1857, 1865), epidemics (1858, 1862), and fires (1859, 1864). Rice market data are also given showing an abrupt decline in the buying power of copper coins in the years leading up to fall of the old regime. The print offers a glimpse into the way contemporaries understood the flow of events resulting in what historians today call the Meiji Restoration. Interestingly this contemporary view ascribes more importance to natural and economic forces, especially the destructive power of natural disasters, than to revolutionary samurai inspired by pro-emperor and anti-foreign (sonnō jōi) ideologies. Referring to this print and other visual and textual sources, the paper attempts to recover a sense of the "lived history" of the late Tokugawa years.