Editing Samurai (section)

===Dissolution===
[[File:Gasshukoku suishi teitoku kōjōgaki (Oral statement by the American Navy admiral).png|thumb|A [[Woodblock printing in Japan|Japanese woodblock print]] of Perry (center) and other high-ranking American seamen.]]
In 1853, the United States sent a fleet of steamships under the command of [[Matthew Perry (naval officer)|Commodore Matthew Perry]] to force the rulers of Japan to open their borders to foreign trade. The shogun had no choice but to acquiesce. His samurai were no match for Perry's marines and as a pre-industrial agrarian society, Japan was no match for the United States. The Japanese were aware of how European imperialists defeated and humiliated the Chinese, and they feared an invasion of Japan was soon to come. Japan had to modernize if it was to maintain its honor and independence.

The Japanese began importing large quantities of Western-made weapons and hiring European and American veterans to train their armies. The new weapons included modern rifles with [[caplock]] and [[breechloader|breech-loading]] mechanisms. These new firearms were more versatile and deadly than the [[tanegashima (gun)|matchlock muskets]] the Japanese had been using for three centuries. Their rifled barrels gave them better accuracy and range, their mechanisms were less fiddly and worked even in wet weather, and they could be fitted with [[bayonet]]s to double as spears. Whereas the matchlock musket was used alongside spears and bows on the battlefield, the new rifles became the standard infantry weapon.<ref>Hoya Toru, in Hellyer & Fuess. ''The Meiji Restoration''<br/>p. 155: "Until the late Edo period, smoothbore muskets had been used in conjunction with other weapons such as bows and spears. Furthermore, engagements involved hand-to-hand combat with weapons such as the short spear."
<br/>p. 161: "the government effectively disbanded units of archers and spearmen, key components of the early modern military structure. Moreover, the mounted cavalry, which had been the backbone of samurai military organization, was completely eliminated."</ref> [[Revolver]]s and [[derringer]]s became the self-defense weapons of choice, supplanting knives and swords. These firearms were also much easier to use than the traditional weapons of the samurai, requiring only a week or two of practice to master as opposed to years.<ref>Hans Busk (1859). [https://archive.org/details/riflevolunteersh00busk/page/6/mode/2up ''Rifle Volunteers: How to Organize and Drill them''], p. 7-8: "Educated men are not like ploughboys, and there cannot be a doubt that a few days' drill and rifle practice, in the month, would shortly give us a hundred thousand men perfectly fit for the ordinary duties of a soldier."</ref><ref>An 1860 British rifle training manual, [https://archive.org/details/drillforcorpsri02lysogoog/page/n99/mode/1up?q=days ''Drill and Rifle Instruction for the Corps of Rifle Volunteers''], on p. 75 recommends one week of drilling followed by one week of target practice.</ref><ref>In ''[https://books.google.be/books?id=AApXAAAAcAAJ Questions on the Instruction of Musketry and the Hythe Papers]'' (1862), Elphinstone Waters Begbie rhetorically poses the question "How many days ought the rifle-carbine training of the Royal Artillery recruits to occupy?". In [https://books.google.be/books?id=mlABAAAAQAAJ the accompanying answer booklet], Begbie answers: "Fifteen working days"</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |magazine=Japan Railway & Transport Review |date=September 1997 |pages=48-49 |title=Train Driver and Master Iaido Swordsman |url=https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/jrtr/jrtr13/pdf/people48.pdf}}
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"According to Kawaguchi, it requires some 3 years to learn to handle the sword with natural ease, and no less than 10 years to tentatively master all aspects of the art."</ref> Peasant gunmen could be trained on an as-needed basis and were just as effective as samurai gunmen, which rendered the samurai obsolete as a specialist warrior caste.<ref>Gwynne Dyer (1985). ''War'', p. 58:<br/>"It is not doing too much violence to history to compare the warrior class of samurai in Japan with the feudal nobility of Europe. Both were groups who owed their wealth, power, and social position to their proficiency with arms and derived their own self-respect from it. But proficiency with arms is only an important distinguishing mark if it takes long and arduous training to achieve and has a direct relationship to a man's chances of success and survival in battle—as it does with the sword, the spear, or the bow. Firearms take far less time to master and are much more democratic in their effects: samurai and commoners died with equal speed and equal futility in Takeda's desperate charges at Nagashino."</ref><ref>Noel Perrin. ''Giving up the Gun'', p. 73: "So could Lord Matsudaira, Warden of Kami Province, who said disgustedly of the 1637 rebellion. ‘In this there is no difference between soldiers and peasants, because firearms are used.’"</ref><ref>Mark Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'' pp. 24-25: "A well-disciplined deployment of peasant musketeers could destroy an elite brigade of mounted archers, whose skills reflected years of training and noble privilege."</ref>

Even before the [[Meiji Restoration]], the shogun and other warlords put a stronger emphasis on commoners when they set about rebuilding their armies.<ref>Jaundrill. ''Samurai to Soldier'', p. 71: "On the national level, the Tokugawa shogunate had inaugurated an ambitious attempt to create a new kind of army: one composed primarily of commoner soldiers and solidly under the control of Tokugawa authorities—not vassal warriors, as had been the case early in the regime’s history."</ref><ref>Hoya Toru. ''The Meiji Restoration'', p.153: "In the wake of armed internal conflicts, almost every domain embraced modern, military organizational methods modeled after those of contemporary Europe. The key trigger to these reforms was the adoption of modern firearms, notably rifles, which decisively reshaped the military organizations of the day."</ref> There were political advantages to using commoners. Commoners tended to be more submissive as they came from humbler backgrounds, did not inherit any military tradition, and were easier to replace.<ref>Jaundrill. ''Samurai to Soldier'', p. 47: "Because the soldiers recruited through the 1863 conscriptions ranked as the lowest members of the warrior status group, Tokugawa military leaders were free to use them as test subjects in their experimental effort to create a Westernized military. Unlike the warriors who had attended (or avoided) the Martial Arts School, the new recruits had no prior experience with military service, and thus no preconceptions about the limits of their superiors’ authority."</ref>  They were less resistant to social reform because they had little to lose and potentially a lot to gain. They typically came without any political baggage or conflicting loyalties, which became especially important later on when the Meiji government sought to create a national army that cut across feudal domains. During the Meiji era, conscription into the national army exposed men across Japan to nationalist indoctrination, a way to build unity and national identity.<ref>Jaundrill (2019). ''Samurai to Soldier'', p. 44: "Others domains like Choshu and Saga recruited on and outside the margins of the warrior status group in order to avoid sparking political conflicts within the domain."</ref><ref>Esposito. ''Japanese Armies 1868-1877'', p. 13: "The peasant conscripts would be trained in regular, disciplined units with modern firearms; there would be no place for the selective loyalties of traditional samurai entourages in any future wars."</ref><ref>Edward J. Drea. ''Japan's Imperial Army'', pp. 22, 29</ref> 

Progressive Japanese argued that in order to match the industrial might of the West, Japan had to remake its political system and economy in the Western mold.<ref>Jaundrill. ''Samurai to Soldier'', p. 31: "Thus the Ansei (1854–1860) round of reforms aimed to graft new technology onto existing organizational frameworks. The setbacks encountered in the Ansei reform era led shogunal and domainal leaders to conclude that technological reform was not possible without organizational reform—a political act that most authorities were unwilling to undertake unless absolutely necessary."</ref> In 1866, the shogun pushed to dismantle feudalism and unify Japan under a centralized government similar to Napoleonic France.<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'', p. 106: "...the crisis of 1866 prompted one of the most remarkable reform efforts in Japanese history. Defeat by Chōshū had discredited defenders of the shogunal status quo. Yoshinobu seized this chance to push through the most radical Japanese reform project in a millennium. Yoshinobu sought nothing less than the complete reorganization of the shogunate “from a feudally organized suzerain regime into a unified national regime organized along the bureaucratic lines of Napoleonic France."</ref> This move was opposed by those with a vested interest in the old system. The shogunate was already unpopular for its failure to expel the foreign "barbarians" along with longstanding accusations of corruption and incompetence,<ref>Totman. ''The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu'', p. 10: "The erosion of bakufu strength was reflected in the quality of rumors circulating at the time. During Abe's era, there had been talk of foreign invaders and of corruption and incompetence, but only few and vague references to dynastic weakening of critical moment."</ref> so the shogun relinquished his powers to the emperor in October 1867. The emperor supported centralization and was seen as a unifying figure by the Japanese. Thus began the [[Meiji Restoration]]. The shogun expected to receive a high-ranking position in the new government,<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'', p. 116: "Yoshinobu’s move was tactically brilliant. By agreeing to restore political power to the court, he stole the issue from Chōshū and Satsuma. At the same time, his “surrender” allowed Yoshinobu to reposition himself in the emerging political order. The imperial court accepted Yoshinobu’s “return of political authority” on 10/15 but also called for a meeting of the daimyo to decide the course of reform. Since Yoshinobu had deftly manipulated daimyo councils before, he had every reason to expect substantial power in any national assembly.</ref> but his enemies wanted him gone and launched a revolt, kicking off the [[Boshin War]]. In April 1868 the shogun was captured and forced into retirement.<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World''<br/>p. 118: "The new government convened on the evening of 12/9 and, over the objections of Tosa and Fukui, moved to change the terms of Yoshinobu’s surrender."<br/>p. 119: "In 1868/4, the last shogun surrendered Edo Castle without a fight."</ref> The shogun's allies and vassals continued fighting the imperial government, eventually suffering their own defeat in June 1869.<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'', p. 124: "Ironically, Yoshinobu’s surrender agreement prompted the most dogged resistance of the Boshin War. The surrender terms ignored both Tokugawa-allied domains such Aizu and ordinary Tokugawa vassals. Those parties felt betrayed and abandoned. They ignored Yoshinobu’s decision to surrender and elected to fight the new imperial government on their own.</ref>

[[File:Saigo Takamori Portrait by Ishikawa Shizumasa.jpg|right|thumb|[[Saigo Takamori]] is romanticized as the last samurai. He led a failed rebellion against the new government which saw his kind as obsolete and troublesome.]]
Between 1869 and 1871, the ''daimyo'' class was peacefully dissolved. Some former ''daimyo'' were given government jobs, but most retired with generous pensions.<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'', p. 122: "Rather than fight in defense of noble privilege, many of the last generation of daimyo were eager to be coopted: a handful received positions in the new Meiji government, but most simply accepted lavish pensions and disappeared from political life.</ref> Their domains became prefectures subject to the authority of the imperial government.

The dissolution of the ''daimyo'' class made the samurai defunct as a feudal retainer caste, so the Meiji government began repealing their special rights and privileges. In 1869, the government reclassified high-ranking samurai as ''shizoku'' (warriors) and lower status samurai as ''sotsuzoku'' (foot soldiers).<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'', p.131: "As vassals of vassals, Inada samurai were to be classified as soldiers (sotsu) rather than samurai (shi), resulting in a reduction in both income and status."</ref> In 1872, the ''sotsu'' rank was abolished and the ''sotsuzoku'' were reclassified as ''shizoku''.<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'', p. 181: "It eliminated the distinct rank of “sotsu” for lower samurai and classified all retainers with heritable income as “shizoku,” a neologism for “former samurai.”"</ref> In 1871, the government banned the samurai topknot (the ''[[chonmage]]'').<ref>https://www.meijishowa.com/calendar/4272/08-09-1871-japan-abolishes-the-samurai-topknot</ref> From 1873 to 1879, the government started taxing the stipends and transformed them into interest-bearing government bonds. The main goal was to provide enough financial liquidity to enable former samurai to invest in land and industry. In 1876, the government forbade anyone outside the military to wear swords even if they were of samurai lineage, and repealed the right of a samurai to strike an insolent commoner with potentially lethal force (''[[kiri-sute gomen]]'').<ref>Laurence Winkler. ''Samurai Road'': "In 1876, the wearing of swords was forbidden to anyone except members of the national armed forces, and all samurai stipends were converted to government bonds, at significant financial loss. The samurai right of ''kirisute gomen'', which allowed them to execute commoners who paid them disrespect, was abolished."</ref> 

Most samurai accepted these reforms. In fact the Meiji leadership was composed mostly of samurai. Although they were no longer entitled to rule, many former samurai were offered positions in the new civilian government because they were typically well-educated. Others were offered teaching positions in the new public education system.<ref>Eiko Ikegami. ''The Taming of the Samurai'', pp. 360-361</ref>

But some samurai could not be placated, leading to sporadic samurai rebellions. In 1873, a prominent samurai named [[Saigo Takamori]] quit the government in protest and moved to Satsuma. Many disgruntled samurai followed him there. Takamori set up military academies to teach samurai the ways of modern warfare and spread his militant right-wing beliefs. The imperial government feared an insurrection and sent a task force to disarm Takamori's growing paramilitary force. In response, Takamori marched his army on Tokyo. The rebel samurai were defeated by the imperial army, which was composed mostly of commoners. Both armies were equipped with modern weapons. After this rebellion was quashed, the Meiji government faced no further challenges to its authority.<ref>Ravina. ''To Stand with the Nations of the World'', p. 196: "A primary cause of the 1877 rebellion was the government’s attack on samurai privilege."</ref>

In 1947, the ''shizoku'' class was abolished.