Meiji Restoration, 명치유신

Felice Beato with Saigo Tsugumichi (both seated in front), with foreign friends. Photograph by Hugues Krafft in 1882.

Samurai of the Satsuma clan, during the Boshin War period (1868–1869)

The Nagasaki Naval Training Center, in Nagasaki, near Dejima.

Kankō Maru, Japan's first steam warship, 1855.

Townsend Harris negotiated the "Treaty of Amity and Commerce" in 1858, opening Japan to foreign influence and trade, under unequal conditions.

 

 

The Shogunate's Kanrin Maru, Japan's first screw-driven steam warship, 1855. The Shogunate actively pursued modernization, but was faced by growing internal discontent against the harm to national sovereignty brought on by contact with Westerners.

Shogunal troops in 1864. Illustrated London News

Bakumatsu troops near Mount Fuji in 1867. The painting by French officer Jules Brunet show an eclectic combination of Western and Japanese equipment.

Training of the Shogunate troops by the French Military Mission to Japan in 1867

Tokugawa Yoshinobu in French military uniform, c. 1867

Destruction of the Palace of Satsuma by Shogunate forces in Edo

Battle scene at Toba-Fushimi. Shogunate forces are on the left, including battalions from Aizu. on the right are forces from Chōshū and Tosa. These are modernized battalions, but some of the forces were also traditional samurai (especially on the Shogunate side).

A Satsuma battery in action at Toba-Fushimi

 

The killing of French sailors in the Sakai incident. Le Monde Illustré