After the Meiji Restoration, Japan's national strength has been greatly developed, and it has entered the ranks of powerful countries in one fell swoop, of course, the success of the Restoration, more naturally inseparable from the Meiji period of the fall of the four hundred - Tosa, Hizen, Chosu and Satsuma Domain, especially the latter two they were the main forces against the shogunate at that time. As for the fall of the curtain movement, the mainstream theory to the present is that the reformists with Satsuma and Choshu as the main body gradually realized the crisis of their own country, put forward the slogan of "Honoring the King", formed the four strong clans of the fallen curtain, and overthrew the rule of the shogunate.
However, why was there so many Japanese vassals at that time, but only these four strong clans could be the main force pushed to the shogunate?
A map of Japanese samurai in the shogunate era
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the Japanese Warring States chaos</h1>
Leaving aside the restorationists who were independent of the Lords at that time, from the perspective of historical development and geography alone, the Four Great Powers of the Fallen Curtain were actually a product of regional struggle or the continuation of the Japanese Warring States. It can even be said that it is a revenge that has been planned for 250 years.
Samurai of modern Japan (see the flag should be Satsuma Shimazu family)
Japan is a very strange country, and the country has actually been divided in a state of division except for the unification of the Nara Dynasty in the Sui and Tang dynasties.
Whether it was the Kamakura shogunate, the Ashikaga shogunate, or the later Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Azuchi Momoyama period and the Tokugawa shogunate, they were actually holding the son of heaven hostage to order the princes. At this time, the generals were the chiefs of the princes, that is, the generals were only the names of the powerful ones. As in the Three Kingdoms period, although Cao Cao was the most powerful, he and Liu Bei, Sun Quan, Ma Teng, Zhang Lu and Liu Biao were actually Han subjects. Just as Cao Cao represented the forces of the Northern Heluo and Yingshang Hao clans that ruled other places, the Japanese general rule actually represented a local power.
From this point of view, Japanese politics is more like a local-to-local struggle.
During the Warring States period, japan fought in a major brawl
Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who started from Owari, originally represented the region and the Chinese region, and after Toyotomi Hideyoshi started his family, he took over the region of Japan, and at the same time used his in-laws and interest alliances to divide southwest Honshu, China, and Kyushu Island into his own sphere of influence to form The Kansai-Nishi Honshu forces, confronting the Kanto-Tohoku forces formed by Tokugawa Ieyasu who controlled the Kanto and united with Tokugawa Ieyasu in the northeast.
After the Battle of Komaki Nagamasa, Tokugawa Ieyasu won, but his real strength could not match Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had accepted Oda Nobunaga's political legacy. Therefore, the kansai power mastered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi is also rising, and the typical example is that in the battle to pick persimmons in Korea (attack Korea), the Kansai Army was dispatched. Tokugawa and other Kwantung armies could only watch the drama as reserves.
So to some extent, the Toyotomi family represents the Kansai forces.
(Haba) Toyotomi Hideyoshi's forces are distributed in Kansai
However, with the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse, and the well-fledged Kanto people began to make moves, and eventually formed a fierce struggle between the two major groups, with Ishida Sansei representing the direct forces of the Kansai and Toyotomi families, and the Tokugawa family being led by the Kanto warlords and wall-riding daimyōs (Masanori Fukushima, Masakiyoshi Kato, and others).
So in 1600, the two sides launched the Decisive Battle of Sekigahara, which determined the history of Japan.
In this battle, the combined forces of the Chugoku region, Kyushu, Kansai, and Shikoku Daimyo were defeated by the Kwantung United Army. After this battle, the Kwantung forces also began to take over Japan, and the Kanto daimyōs, led by Tokugawa Ieyasu of the Kanto Region, began to expand their territory, control the emperor, and formed the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo, until the "Fall of the Curtain Movement" of the Restorationists overthrew the rule of the Kanto Gang.
Representative of the Kwantung forces, Tokugawa Ieyasu
So, what does kanto control of the shogunate have to do with the four strong domains?
Among the main forces of the Western Army, Maori Huiyuanzai, as the commander-in-chief of the Western Army, although there were a series of Mingzhe self-preservation operations, betraying the Western Army to seek self-protection, but the territory directly changed from 1.3 million stones to 30 stones, and the country also changed from the Ten Kingdoms to the Zhou Defense and Nagato, and also reduced to the original lord of the "Choshu Domain".
Yoshihiro Shimazu and Governor Konishi, who were across the sea from the Choshu Domain, were also the main force of the Western Army, of which Governor Konishi was in a relationship with the Western Army leader Ishida Sansei (both were executed after the defeat of the Sekigahara War), and Shimazu Yoshihiro also led 1,000 people to join the Western Army during the battle, and after the war, he was exonerated by the intercession of the Tokugawa generals, but the territory was much less, and the territory of Governor Konishi and Yoshihiro Shimazu at that time happened to be the later "Satsuma Domain".
Stills of the lord of Choshu Domain, Maori Huiyuan
The Nagamasa Ibu clan from Shikoku was always a good thug of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and when Toyotomi Hideyoshi conquered Shikoku, he always remained loyal to the Toyotomi family, and in the Battle of Sekigahara and even the Battle of Osaka, they fought with the Toyotomi family, and even after Tokugawa Ieyasu gained power, the Nagamasa Ibu clan was also demoted to ronin and set its territory as "Tosa Domain"
Therefore, the Battle of Sekigahara, 250 years ago, sowed the seeds of hatred between the four strong clans and the Then Tokugawa shogunate
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the dormant of descendants of the Western Army </h1>
It can be said that these four clans were actually the ones who lost the Sekigahara Battle 250 years ago.
When Tokugawa shifted its political and economic center to Edo and the Kanto region, the de facto relationship with the Chinese region, which had previously been the birthplace of Japan, had begun to fall into loneliness, and the once prosperous Kansai and regions were gradually being caught up by the Kanto region, and hostility between the two places began. (To this day, Kyoto, Nara, and other places have always despised The Tokyoites in the Kanto.)
In the Edo period, many Satsuma people would silently endure the words "Sekigahara, Sekigahara" when they encountered unfortunate things. There is also such a custom in choshu domain, and when the courtiers of the lord of the clan pay homage to the lord of the clan, they will say, "Is the revenge of the Sekigahara war revenge?" The duke replied, "The great vengeance has not been repaid." ”
Use these words to remind yourself of the shame of sekigahara's war.
Sekigahara fights against the Shimazu clan against the Eastern Army
Therefore, from the perspective of the high-ranking people and the samurai class, the Battle of Sekigahara was a disgrace for their entire lives, and in modern times, these samurai who wanted to take revenge on overthrowing the shogunate developed into restorationists, such as Okubo Ritsu and Saigo Takamori of Satsuma Domain, Takayoshi Kido and Yamagata Aritomo of Choshu Domain, and Sakamoto Ryoma of Shikoku. Of course, these actions of theirs were actually secretly supported by the lords of the clan at that time, after all, the lords of the Kansai clan who were originally very broad in the ancestors also wanted to restore their former glory, so they did not resent the actions of the restorationists, anyway, the benefits obtained in the future were their own, and the failure was the pot of the restoration people.
The representative of the Choshu Domain, Yamagata Aritomo
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Yutianjun said</h1>
From a historical and geographical point of view, the Fall of the Curtain Movement is more like the Kanto forces represented by Tokugawa Ieyasu paying off their debts in the Sekigahara War 250 years ago, and it is also a revenge battle for the Kansai people. After the Fall of the Curtain Movement, the Choshu clan of the Maori clan also controlled the Japanese army, and the Satsuma clan in Kyushu also controlled the navy, so the Western army on the side of the defeated side of the Sekigahara War re-entered the Japanese political arena.
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