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Hello, and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 129, The Fall of the Samurai, Part 11. So, still no functioning desktop yet,

but hopefully that will be up and running by the time of our next episode. This week, we finally

get into it, the real decline in fall of the house of Tokugawa. It seemed like, and indeed it was only a short

time ago, that the House of Tokugawa was on top of the world. Only two years previously, it had

decisively crushed all competitors in the whirlwind series of military victories that was

1864. But alas, nothing lasts forever, and some

things don't last a very long time at all. Still, such philosophic utterances would have been

very far from the minds of Tokugawa leaders in 1865 as they prepared to deal with Choshu again.

After Takasugi Shinsaku's little coup in March 1865, when his Shotai forces ejected the

government which had made peace with the Tokugawa from office, the Tokugawa began planning

another campaign against Shoshu.

In a public relations move, the Shogun Tokugawa Iyamuchi, at this point all of 19 years old, relocated to Osaka in the summer of 1865, from which he was supposed to personally direct the campaign against Choshu.

...