The end of the samurai and the Restoration Coalition

What the specification asks for

“The impact of the Cultural Revolution and the breakup of the Restoration Coalition (1873). Meiji culture – civilisation, Enlightenment and relations with Christianity.” — examined through change and difference. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The split of 1873

The Restoration coalition held together while there was an old order to dismantle and broke apart when it had to decide what to do next. The immediate issue in 1873 was Korea: one faction, associated with Saigo Takamori, argued for a punitive expedition, partly on its merits and partly because it would give the displaced samurai a purpose and a livelihood.

The opposing faction, associated with Okubo Toshimichi and strengthened by the Iwakura Mission's recent tour of Europe and America, argued that Japan could not afford a foreign war and must concentrate on internal development. That view prevailed and Saigo and his supporters left the government.

The split matters beyond the personalities because it settled a priority. Japan would build the economy and the institutions first and act abroad afterwards, and every subsequent success — the treaty revisions, the victories of 1895 and 1905 — rests on that decision to wait.

1877 and the conscript army

The samurai grievance accumulated through the 1870s: stipends commuted, status abolished, swords prohibited, and a conscript army raised from the classes they had ruled. A series of local risings culminated in 1877 in the Satsuma Rebellion, led by Saigo, the largest and the last.

It was crushed by the conscript army, and the significance is exactly there. Farmers and townsmen, conscripted and drilled for four years, defeated the hereditary warrior class in the field. The Restoration had been made by samurai and it destroyed the samurai as a class, using an instrument built by the men who had been samurai themselves.

The consequence was decisive for the state. After 1877 no domestic force existed capable of challenging the central government by arms, and the government could proceed with unpopular measures knowing that armed resistance had been tried and had failed.

Civilisation, Enlightenment and its limits

The 1870s and 1880s saw an enthusiasm for Western institutions and manners promoted under the slogan of civilisation and enlightenment. Fukuzawa Yukichi's writings on education and independence sold enormously; Western dress was adopted for officials, the solar calendar was introduced, and a national school system was built on French and then American and German models.

The treatment of Christianity illustrates the calculation involved. The Tokugawa prohibition was lifted in 1873, largely because the ban was an obstacle to treaty revision and to good relations with the powers, rather than from any conversion of opinion. Christianity remained the religion of a very small minority while Christian schools became disproportionately important in education, especially for girls.

By the late 1880s a reaction had set in against uncritical Westernisation, and the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 restated loyalty and filial piety as the basis of schooling. The pattern for the whole option is visible here: Western methods adopted deliberately and selectively, inside a framework of authority that was being reinforced rather than loosened.

The education system makes the calculation explicit and is worth knowing in detail. A national school law of 1872 aimed at universal elementary schooling, an ambition Japan came close to achieving within a generation, and the curriculum and structure were borrowed successively from France, the United States and Germany as each seemed most useful. What was borrowed was the machinery — compulsory attendance, teacher training, a standard curriculum, textbooks approved by the ministry — and what was taught through it was increasingly the duty of the subject to the state. A modern school system is an instrument, and the Meiji government adopted the instrument in order to produce a population that was literate, numerate, conscriptable and loyal.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1873

Conscription is introduced and the Restoration coalition splits over policy towards Korea. Why this date: It settles the priority of internal development over foreign action, and it creates the army that ends the samurai.

1876

Samurai stipends are commuted and the wearing of swords prohibited. Why this date: It removes the material and visible basis of a hereditary class and produces the rebellions that follow.

1877

The Satsuma Rebellion is defeated by the conscript army. Why this date: A class abolished by the revolution it had made is beaten in the field by the commoners it had governed.

1890

The Imperial Rescript on Education restates loyalty and filial piety as the basis of schooling. Why this date: It marks the limit of the enthusiasm for Western models and shows the framework of authority being reinforced.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 1873 to 1877 — Four years between the introduction of conscription and its defeat of the samurai.
• A very small minority — The Christian share of the Japanese population after the prohibition was lifted in 1873. (Christian influence in education and social work was much larger than the number of adherents suggests.)
• 1868 and 1877 — The Restoration made by samurai and the destruction of samurai power, nine years apart.

The people to place

• Saigo Takamori — Restoration leader who left the government in 1873 and led the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877.
• Fukuzawa Yukichi — Writer and educator whose works promoted Western learning and personal independence.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'self-abolishing revolution' reading: The Meiji leaders were samurai who dismantled the samurai class deliberately, because a hereditary warrior order was incompatible with the conscript army and the central taxation a modern state required. Contested by The reading that they were also removing the only social group capable of resisting them, so the abolition served the new government's security as much as its modernising programme..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The samurai were destroyed by Western forces.

This: They were defeated in 1877 by a Japanese conscript army of commoners raised under the law of 1873, which is what makes the event significant.

Not this: Meiji Japan adopted Western culture wholesale.

This: Western models were adopted selectively and for calculated reasons, and by 1890 the Imperial Rescript on Education had restated loyalty and filial piety as the basis of schooling.

Two things students merge

Blurred: The Restoration coalition and the Meiji government.

The distinction: The coalition that made 1868 split in 1873, and the government that followed was one faction of it. Treating them as continuous makes the Satsuma Rebellion incomprehensible.

Blurred: Lifting the ban on Christianity and welcoming it.

The distinction: The prohibition was lifted in 1873 largely because it obstructed treaty revision. Adherence remained tiny; the influence was in schools rather than in conversions.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer notices what the Meiji leaders were willing to destroy. They were samurai, and they abolished samurai stipends, status and swords, then raised farmers to defeat samurai in the field — because a hereditary warrior class could not coexist with a conscript army and a cash land tax, and they preferred the state they were building to the class they came from.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: 1877 stated as a comparison: conscripts against samurai, nine years after samurai made the Restoration. It is the option's sharpest single sentence.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain TWO ways in which the Japanese army after 1873 was different from the samurai it replaced. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
2. Explain TWO causes of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
3. Explain TWO causes of the split in the Restoration coalition in 1873. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
4. How significant was the abolition of the samurai in the transformation of Japan, in the years 1868–1912? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. How far did Japan adopt Western culture, in the years 1868–1912? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: The Meiji Constitution and political modernisation
• Next lesson, in key topic 3: The industrial and commercial revolution of the Meiji period
• Key topic 2 · Transformation, 1867–1895 · Japan in transformation, 1853–1945 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of Japan in transformation: Japan opening up to China and the West, 1853–67 · An emerging power, 1895–1919 · Political and economic challenges, 1919–31 · Depression, empire and collapse, 1931–45