Abstract
Much of the recent work done in Japan on the political and social background to the Meiji Restoration has concentrated on analysing the manifestations of unrest in Japanese society, which arose from its failure to adjust quickly enough to economic change. Writers point to the growing wealth of merchants, accompanied by the impoverishment of samurai, to the increasing differentiation between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ farmers in the village; and they relate the consequent discontent to samurai reform movements within the great domains (han) and to the rising incidence of peasant revolt. These factors in turn are fitted into general—and often widely differing—explanations of the overthrow of the Tokugawa Bakufu and the nature of Meiji political institutions.
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