Before the Meiji Restoration, Japan was in the era of shogunate rule, and the country's weakness and the invasion of the great powers made many Japanese people think about ways to save the country, so the fall of the curtain movement under the banner of "Zun Wang Zhiyi" came to the fore, and the main force of which was the Choshu Domain and Satsuma Domain in Kansai. If we exclude the contingencies of history, we cannot help but wonder why, among the hundreds of japanese clans at that time, Choshu and Satsuma were the vanguard of the fall. Many people say that Japan's restorationists were mostly concentrated in the southwest region, and out of concern for the country, they embarked on the road of armed reform.
This statement is not wrong, but it is too idealistic, to know that the emperor at that time was only a virtual throne, the shogunate was the absolute authority to represent the country, and choshu and Satsuma's actions were "reform" at the best point and "rebellion" at worst. If we take our perspective back to the beginning of the Establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, we will understand that the rebellion of Choshu and Satsuma was almost inevitable, and even from a certain point of view, it can be considered that the fall of the curtain in the name of "reform" was essentially choshu and Satsuma's revenge against the Tokugawa family, and it was a hidden revenge spanning 250 years.
During the Sengoku period, japan was divided and warlords fought, but during this period, three powerful people who dominated the world appeared in succession, namely Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Oda Nobunaga, who started in the Owari Kingdom, and the early Toyotomi Hideyoshi, were only a soldier under Nobunaga, both of whom could be considered representatives of the Kansai faction because their core of rule was located in the region and China (there is a place in Japan called China), while Tokugawa Ieyasu was the leader of the Kanto faction, and the Edo he single-handedly opened was today's Tokyo. Temporally, the order in which the three men ruled the world was that Toyotomi replaced Oda, and Tokugawa replaced Toyotomi, but in a different way.
Oda Nobunaga was killed in the "Honnoji Rebellion", and Toyotomi Hideyoshi received the power of the "Tenjin" due to the violent death of his old lord, and there was a clear submissive relationship between them, while the Tokugawa clan replaced the Toyotomi clan through "violent robbery", the decisive battle of which was the "Sekigahara Battle" in 1600 AD. During the Sekigahara War, japan's large and small princes were faced with the choice of taking sides, with the Kansai faction supporting the Toyotomi clan and the Kanto faction supporting the Tokugawa clan, which also led to the regional discrimination between the Kanto and Kansai that continues to this day, such as Kyoto and Nara, which still despise Tokyo as "upstarts".
Photo - Tokyo, Japan
The confrontation between the two military blocs ended in the victory of the Eastern Army, and the Western Army, which was the defeated side, was inevitably sanctioned. At that time, the commander-in-chief of the Western Army was Maori Huiyuan, and although the Maori family had secretly colluded with the Tokugawa family before the incident, after the war, its territory was still steeply reduced from 1.3 million stones to 300,000 stones, and the Maori family was the predecessor of the later Choshu Domain. Similarly, the Satsuma Domain, led by Yoshihiro Shimazu and Governor Konishi, was the main force of the Western Army, and after the War, they were also retaliated against by the Tokugawa clan, and their domain later evolved into satsuma domain. It is conceivable what such hatred will become after 250 years of brewing.
Photo - Night view of Tokyo
During the Edo period, when the Satsuma clan encountered setbacks, they would silently chant "Sekigahara, Sekigahara", and the courtiers of the Choshu domain always greeted the lord with "Has sekigahara avenged it" when they visited the lord of the domain. This shows how much the Kansai clans, represented by Choshu and Satsuma, hate the Tokugawa family to the bone. When the great powers invaded and the country changed dramatically, the samurai of Satsuma in Choshu became the warriors of the Restoration, and the Tokugawa shogunate became the target of scorn and attack. Of course, there were the Fallen Shogunate faction, and there was also the Guardian Faction, and today's Fukushima Prefecture belonged to the Aizu Domain at that time, and the war between Choshu and Aizu at the end of the shogunate has always been a source of resentment among the people of Fukushima Prefecture.
Photo - Tokyo
If the fall of Choshu and Satsuma was a revenge that lasted for more than two hundred years, then the regional discrimination throughout Japan is undoubtedly an added to this revenge, but in any case, the Meiji Restoration contributed to the strength of modern Japan, a result that no one can deny.