Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 529, Bakumatsu part two.

The dominance of I. Nauske, the Tairo, or chief elder of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the instigator of the so-called Anse purges which silenced dissent against the Harris Treaty and its successors,

seems, in hindsight, to be a bit of a mirage.

I think it's fair to say that if you asked most people living in Japan, foreigners and locals alike,

at this time, they would tell you that

the Tyro had successfully brought dissent to heal and had reasserted the power of the Shogunate

over policy. The Tokugawa Bakufu leadership of earlier years, Abe Masahiro, Hottomasa Yoshi,

and their ilk, had been weak and unwilling to make hard calls,

but E was not. He was willing to do what had to be done to protect the shogunate, and he had

succeeded. He'd even managed to move beyond the first stage of his tenure in office, cracking

down on his opposition, onto the second. Way back in 1853, E had been one of the daimyo to offer advice to the Bakufu about how to handle

Commodore Perry, and we still have his letter today.

He advised opening the country, since, quote, there is a saying that when one is besieged

...