Sonno joi - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese political philosophy

Political philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...

and a social movement

Social movement

Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....

derived from Neo-Confucianism

Neo-Confucianism

Neo-Confucianism is an ethical and metaphysical Chinese philosophy influenced by Confucianism, that was primarily developed during the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, but which can be traced back to Han Yu and Li Ao in the Tang Dynasty....

; 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

The slogan sonnō jōi ( or in Kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

) had its origins in China with Lord Huan of Qi

Lord Huan of Qi

Duke Huan of Qi was the best-known ruler of the state of Qi in the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history. His ancestral name is Jiang,clan name is Qi，given name is Xiǎobái and he was the brother of Duke Xiang. His clan was Lǚ...

, the ruler of the state of Qi in the Spring and Autumn Period. During that time, the Zhou

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

Court lost control to the feudal states and foreign invasion was frequent. Lord Huan of Qi

Lord Huan of Qi

first used the slogan ostensibly in an attempt to make rulers of other feudal states respect the Zhou court, although in reality he used it to seize hegemony over other feudal rulers and brush aside the Zhou court's supremacy.

In Japan, the origin of the philosophy can be traced to works by 17th century Confucian scholars Yamazaki Ansai

Yamazaki Ansai

was a Japanese philosopher and scholar. He began his career as a Buddhist monk, but eventually came to follow the teachings of Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi. He combined Neo-Confucian ideas with Shinto to create Suika Shinto.-Early Years/Buddhism:...

and Yamaga Sokō

Yamaga Soko

was a Japanese philosopher and strategist during the Tokugawa shogunate. He was a Confucian, and applied Confucius's idea of the "superior man" to the samurai class of Japan...

, who wrote on the sanctity of the Japanese Imperial house and its superiority to the ruling houses of other nations. These ideas were expanded by Kokugaku
Kokugaku
Kokugaku was a National revival, or, school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period...

scholar Motoori Norinaga

Motoori Norinaga

was a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.-Life:...

, and seen in Takenouchi Shikibu's theory of absolute loyalty to the Emperor

Emperor of Japan

The Emperor of Japan is, according to the 1947 Constitution of Japan, "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people." He is a ceremonial figurehead under a form of constitutional monarchy and is head of the Japanese Imperial Family with functions as head of state. He is also the highest...

(尊皇論 sonnōron), that implied that less loyalty should be given to the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate

Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

.

Mito

Mitogaku

Mitogaku refers to a school of Japanese historical and Shinto studies that arose in the Mito domain, in modern-day Ibaraki prefecture.The school had its genesis in 1657 when Tokugawa Mitsukuni , second head of the Mito domain, commissioned the compilation of the Dai Nihon-shi...

domain scholar Aizawa Seishisai

Aizawa Seishisai

, born ', was a Japanese nationalist thinker of the Mito school during the late shogunate period.In 1799 he became involved in the compilation of the Dai Nihon-shi being undertaken by the Mito school....

introduced term sonnō jōi into modern Japanese in his work Shinron in 1825, where sonnō was regarded as the reverence expressed by the Tokugawa bakufu to the emperor and jōi was the proscription of Christianity.

Influence

With the increasing number of incursions of foreign ships into Japanese waters in the late 18th and early 19th century, the national seclusion

Sakoku

was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633–39 and remained in effect until...

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

Matthew Perry (naval officer)

Matthew Calbraith Perry was the Commodore of the U.S. Navy and served commanding a number of US naval ships. He served several wars, most notably in the Mexican-American War and the War of 1812. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854...

so-called "black ships", the treaty was signed under duress and was vehemently opposed in samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

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

Yoshida Shoin

Yoshida Shōin was one of the most distinguished intellectuals in the closing days of the Tokugawa shogunate...

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

Satsuma Province

was an old province of Japan that is now the western half of Kagoshima Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. Its abbreviation is Sasshū .During the Sengoku Period, Satsuma was a fief of the Shimazu daimyo, who ruled much of southern Kyūshū from their castle at Kagoshima city.In 1871, with the...

. The Imperial court in Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

unsurprisingly sympathized with the movement. The Emperor Kōmei

Emperor Komei

was the 121st emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Kōmei's reign spanned the years from 1846 through 1867.-Genealogy:Before Kōmei's accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name was ;, his title was ....

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

Order to expel barbarians

The was an edict issued by the Japanese Emperor Kōmei in 1863 against the Westernization of Japan following the opening of the country by Commodore Perry in 1854.-The order:...

" . 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

Charles Lennox Richardson

Charles Lennox Richardson was an English merchant based in Shanghai who was killed in Japan during the Namamugi Incident. His name is properly spelled as “Charles Lenox Richardson” according to the census and family documents.-Merchant:Richardson was born in London in 1834. He relocated to...

, 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

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

. Other attacks included the shelling of foreign shipping in Shimonoseki. Masterless samurai (ronin
Ronin
A or rounin was a Bushi with no lord or master during the feudal period of Japan. A samurai became masterless from the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or privilege....

) rallied to the cause, assassinating Shogunate officials and Westerners.

But this turned out to be the zenith of the sonnō jōi movement, since the Western powers responded by demanding heavy reparation

War reparations

War reparations are payments intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.- History :...

s and then bombarding the Satsuma capital of Kagoshima

Bombardment of Kagoshima

The Bombardment of Kagoshima, also known as the , took place on 15–17 August 1863 during the Late Tokugawa shogunate. The British Royal Navy was fired on from the coastal batteries near town of Kagoshima and in retaliation bombarded the town...

when these were not forthcoming. While this incident showed that Japan was no match for Western military powers, it also served to further weaken the shogunate, permitting the rebel provinces to ally and overthrow it in the Meiji Restoration

Meiji Restoration

The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...

.

The slogan itself was never actually government or even rebel policy; for all its rhetoric, Satsuma in particular had close ties with the West, purchasing guns, artillery, ships and other technology.

Legacy

After the symbolic restoration of the Meiji Emperor, the sonnō jōi slogan was quietly dropped and replaced with fukoku kyōhei
Fukoku kyohei
, originally a phrase from the ancient Chinese historical work on the Warring States Period, Zhan Guo Ce , was Japan's national slogan during the Meiji Era, replacing sonnō jōi ....

(富国強兵), or "rich country, strong military" (enrich the nation, strengthen the armies), the rallying call of the Meiji Era and the seed of its actions during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

Origin

Influence

Legacy

See also