Dr. Satana Suzuki
speaker
57 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Dr. Satana Suzuki’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
All the big boys, you know, the British, the French and the Dutch and, you know, Prussian and sort of Russian also sent ships, you know, these imperial powers with the capital P. Normally, when one imperial power signed a treaty, treaty meaning unequal treaty, others followed.
Yeah, because they panicked. And this act of asking backfired majorly for the shogunate because emperor at the time was Komei, Komei Tenno, Komei. He said, no, you should just fulfill your duty as barbarian subduing general. But in 1858, the shogunate gave in to pressure and signed an equal treaty with America without imperial approval.
So that sort of angered many samurai loyalists, leading to this coup. movement called Sonno Joy Movement, Undo. That means Sonno is revere the emperor, expel barbarian movement.
It was not anti-Bakufu movement to start with, but that sort of radically, you know, becoming anti-Bakufu too over time.
Yeah, so the Meiji Restoration of 1868 that brought an end to the... because of a combination of internal, external factors. But before that, there's also, you know, ongoing conflict over the succession of the shogunate between Iinaosuke and some Fudai Daimyo who wanted 12-year-old Tokugawa Yoshitomi.
And the 12-year-old Yoshitomi was put forward because he would be controlled by the chief counsellor. You know, it would be more easy.
12 at the time is maybe 30 years old today, so it's OK.
Yes, yes. But the 12-year-old was the 14th shogun, but the other one became the 15th shogun anyway, so it was just a matter of timing, really, yeah.
Yeah.
January the 3rd, 1868. Yes, that's when the raw ranking samurai from Satsuma Choshu, Hizen... And gosh, Satsuma, Choshu, Hizen, and Tosa, sorry, my students who have a go at me. And together with certain progressive courtiers, you know, from the courts, they decided to carry out this coup d'etat, like a really peaceful coup d'etat.
It's just a sort of discussion, but coup d'etat that, you know, the Meiji Emperor, the 16-year-old, getting older, Meiji Emperor is the new sovereign and they established this imperial rule.
Yeah.
It's very incredible how long the Edo period lasted, 260 years. And Edo, Japan thrived due to political stability and economic growth and also cultural development. Political stability was maintained through the effective governance of the Tokugawa shogunate, this carrot and stick strategy and granting autonomy while implementing the hostage system. So I thought it was quite clever.
The shogunate maintained contact with the rest of the world through the Dutch and Chinese, albeit in a sort of passive manner. So that sort of indicated that Edo Japan was still part of the international community, you could say. But while some may argue that Edo Japan was sort of technologically, culturally and intellectually limited and sort of susceptible to external pressure...
because of this long period of isolation, you can see the flourishing arts, crafts and technologies during the Edo period. And, you know, they're amazing. So that's just otherwise. And personally, I'm more drawn to the cultural aspects of the period, you know, like ukiyo-e and literature, especially ghost stories. I recommend that you should just read that. It's great.
And also theatre, you know, these are like still vital components of Japanese culture today. For example, I don't know whether I can say this, but I'm a huge fan of manga. You know, the comic, Japanese comic. Do you read this? I don't know. I still read a lot of them and spend far too much. So a salary on it. Yeah.
Because, you know, whenever I come across references of Edo culture, which you see a lot, it often amazes me how much Edo culture still impacts Japan today. Go and read manga.
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