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Sonnō jōi (尊王攘夷, Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians) is a Japanese political philosophy and a social movement derived from Neo-Confucianism; it became a political slogan in the 1850s and 1860s in the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa bakufu, during the Bakumatsu ("End of Bakufu") period.

Origin

During the Warring States period of China, Chancellor Guan Zhong of Qi initiated a policy known as Zunwang Rangyi (尊王攘夷; lit. "Revere the King, Expel the Barbarians"), in reference to the Zhou kings. Adopting and adhering to it, Duke Huan of Qi assembled the Chinese feudal lords to strike down the threat of barbarians from China. Confucius himself praised Guan Zhong for the preservation of Chinese civilization by noting the example that they didn't have disheveled hair or wore clothing that folded to the left, a reference to the customs of barbaric peoples. Through the Analects of Confucius, the Chinese expression came to be transmitted to Japan.

Influence

With the increasing number of incursions of foreign ships into Japanese waters in the late 18th and early 19th century, the national seclusion policy came increasingly into question. The jōi (expel the barbarians) portion of sonnō jōi, changed into a reaction against the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened Japan to foreign trade in 1853. Under military threat from Commodore Matthew Perry's so-called "black ships", the treaty was signed under duress and was vehemently opposed in samurai quarters. The fact that the Tokugawa bakufu was powerless against the foreigners despite the will expressed by the Imperial court was taken as evidence by Yoshida Shōin and other anti-Tokugawa leaders that the sonnō (revere the Emperor) portion of the philosophy was not working, and that the bakufu must be replaced by a government more able to show its loyalty to the Emperor by enforcing the Emperor’s will.

The philosophy was thus adopted as a battle cry of the rebellious provinces of Chōshū and Satsuma. The Imperial court in Kyoto unsurprisingly sympathized with the movement. The Emperor Kōmei personally agreed with such sentiments, and–breaking with centuries of imperial tradition–began to take an active role in matters of state: as opportunities arose, he fulminated against the treaties and attempted to interfere in the shogunal succession. His efforts culminated in March 1863 with his "Order to expel barbarians" (攘夷勅命). Although the Shogunate had no intention of enforcing the order, it nevertheless inspired attacks against the Shogunate itself and against foreigners in Japan: the most famous incident was that of the English trader Charles Lennox Richardson, for whose death (which was the result of allegedly disrespecting a daimyo) the Tokugawa government had to pay an indemnity of one hundred thousand pounds sterling. Other attacks included the shelling of foreign shipping in Shimonoseki. Masterless samurai (ronin) rallied to the cause, assassinating Shogunate officials and Westerners.

• An 1861 image expressing the Jōi (攘夷, "Expel the Barbarians") sentiment.
• Part of a woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniteru depicting Samurai under a Sonnō jōi banner during the 1864 Mito rebellion.

See also

• Huaxia

Notes

1. ^ Poo, Mu-chou (2005). Enemies of Civilization. Albany: State University of New York Press. p. 65. ISBN 0-7914-6364-8.
2. Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland (1982). Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch'en Liang's Challenge to Chu Hsi. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-93176-9.
3. Holcombe, Charles (2010). A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-521-73164-5.
4. Jansen, pp. 314-5.
5. Hagiwara, p. 35.

References

• Akamatsu, Paul. (1972). Meiji 1868: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Japan (Miriam Kochan, translator). New York: Harper & Row.
• Beasley, William G. (1972). The Meiji Restoration. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Craig, Albert M. (1961). Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Jansen, Marius B. and Gilbert Rozman, eds. (1986). Japan in Transition: from Tokugawa to Meiji. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 10-ISBN 0691054592/13-ISBN 9780691054599; OCLC 12311985
• ____________. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 10-ISBN 0674003349/13-ISBN 9780674003347; OCLC 44090600
• Shiba, Ryotaro. (1998). The Last Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Yoshinobu. Tokyo: Kodansha. ISBN 1-56836-246-3

• Japanese historical terms
• Meiji Restoration