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Abe Masahiro
was the chief senior councilor ('' rōjū'') in the Tokugawa shogunate of the Bakumatsu period at the time of the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry on his mission to open Japan to the outside world. Abe was instrumental in the eventual signing of the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Abe did not sign the treaty himself or participate in the negotiations in person; this was done by his plenipotentiary Hayashi Akira. His courtesy title was ''Ise-no-kami''. Biography Early life Abe Masahiro was born in his family's residence outside Edo Castle. He was the 5th son of Abe Masakiyo, the 5th ''daimyō'' of Fukuyama Domain. Upon his father's death in 1826, his elder brother Masayasu became ''daimyō'' of Fukuyama; Abe was moved to the domain's ''naka-yashiki'' ("middle residence") in Hongō, Edo (modern-day Bunkyō, Tokyo). However, in 1836, Masayasu adopted his brother as heir. Abe became clan leader and ''daimyō'' of Fukuyama upon his brother's retirement on December 25, 1836. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Fukuyama Domain
file:Abe Masahiro Portrait.png, 270px, Abe Masahiro 7th daimyo of Fukuyama was a Han (Japan), feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, in what is now southeastern Hiroshima Prefecture. It controlled much of Bingo Province and a small portion of Bitchū Province. It was centered around Fukuyama Castle. It was ruled in its early history by a branch of the Mizuno clan, and later the Abe clan. Fukuyama Domain was dissolved in the abolition of the han system in 1871 and is now part of Hiroshima Prefecture. It was called in the early Meiji period to distinguish it from Matsumae Domain, which was also popularly called "Fukuyama Domain" at the time. History After the 1600 Battle of Sekigahara, Fukushima Masanori controlled Bingo Province, Bingo and Aki Provinces. In 1619, the Tokugawa shogunate used the pretext that he had made repairs to Hiroshima Castle without permission to seize a portion of his domain, awarding a 100,000 ''koku'' portion of Bingo Province to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Ōoku
The was historically the harem, women's quarters of Edo Castle, the section where the women connected to the reigning resided. Similar areas in the castles of powerful , such as the Satsuma Domain, were also referred to by this term. During the reign of the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada, ''Ōoku'' was established in Edo Castle as a women's room where his , Oeyo, resided. During the reign of the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, the ''Ōoku'' was expanded at the suggestion of his nanny, Lady Kasuga, to ensure the birth of a male heir to the shogun's lineage, and became a vast shogun's harem with nearly 1,000 women working as maidservants. The ''Ōoku'' was inhabited by the official wife and concubines of the shogun. The women of ''Ōoku'' were highly hierarchical, with the official wife of the shogun, who was of aristocratic lineage, ruling at the top, and the older women who had served her for a long time actually controlling ''Ōoku''. The women who worked as maidservants i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Edo Bay
is a bay located in the southern Kantō region of Japan spanning the coasts of Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Chiba Prefecture, on the southern coast of the island of Honshu. Tokyo Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Uraga Channel. The Tokyo Bay region is the most populous and the largest industrialized area in Japan. Names In ancient times, the Japanese knew Tokyo Bay as the . By the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–1600) the area had become known as after the city of Edo. The bay took its present name in modern times, after the Imperial court moved to Edo and renamed the city Tokyo in 1868. Geography Tokyo Bay juts prominently into the Kantō Plain. It is surrounded by the Bōsō Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture to the east and the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture to the west. The shore of Tokyo Bay consists of a diluvial plateau and is subject to rapid marine erosion. Sediments on the shore of the bay make for a smooth, continuous shoreline. Boundari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Uraga, Kanagawa
is a subdivision of the city of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It is located on the south eastern side of the Miura Peninsula, at the northern end of the Uraga Channel, at the entrance of Tokyo Bay. History With the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo at the start of the 17th century, the small village of Uraga developed rapidly due to its sheltered harbor and strategic location at the entrance of Edo Bay. The area was ''tenryō'' territory under direct control of the shogunate, and the increase in maritime traffic led to the development of merchant and trading firms in the area. In 1720, the shogunate established the post of '' Uraga bugyō'', whose responsibility was to police traffic and to organize coastal defenses, and the entrances to the harbor were fortified with cannon against possible incursions by foreign ships in violation of Japan’s national isolation policy. Still, in 1812, the British whaler stopped at Uraga and took on water, food, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853. He was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House, and the last to be neither a Democrat nor a Republican. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Fillmore was elected vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in 1850. Fillmore was instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850, which led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery. Fillmore was born into poverty in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. Though he had little formal schooling, he studied to become a lawyer. He became prominent in the Buffalo area as an attorney and politician, and was elected to the New York Assembly in 1828 and the House of Representatives in 1832. Fillmore initially belonged to the Anti-Masonic Party, but became a member of the Whig Party as it formed in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with List of aircraft carriers in service, eleven in service, one undergoing trials, two new carriers under construction, and six other carriers planned as of 2024. With 336,978 personnel on active duty and 101,583 in the Ready Reserve, the U.S. Navy is the third largest of the United States military service branches in terms of personnel. It has 299 deployable combat vessels and about 4,012 operational aircraft as of 18 July 2023. The U.S. Navy is one of six United States Armed Forces, armed forces of the United States and one of eight uniformed services of the United States. The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which was established during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sakoku
is the most common name for the isolationist foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate under which, during the Edo period (from 1603 to 1868), relations and trade between Japan and other countries were severely limited, and almost all foreign nationals were banned from entering Japan, while common Japanese people were kept from leaving the country. The policy was enacted by the shogunate government ('' bakufu'') under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633 to 1639. The term originates from the manuscript work written by Japanese astronomer and translator Shizuki Tadao in 1801. Shizuki invented the word while translating the works of the 17th-century German traveller Engelbert Kaempfer namely, his book, 'the history of Japan', posthumously released in 1727. Japan was not completely isolated under the policy. was a system in which strict regulations were placed on commerce and foreign relations by the shogunate and certain feudal domains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
First Opium War
The First Opium War ( zh, t=第一次鴉片戰爭, p=Dìyīcì yāpiàn zhànzhēng), also known as the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the British Empire and the Chinese Qing dynasty between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of their ban on the opium trade by seizing private opium stocks from mainly British merchants at Guangzhou (then named ''Canton'') and threatening to impose the death penalty for future offenders. Despite the opium ban, the British government supported the merchants' demand for compensation for seized goods, and insisted on the principles of free trade and equal diplomatic recognition with China. Opium was Britain's single most profitable commodity trade of the 19th century. After months of tensions between the two states, the Royal Navy launched an expedition in June 1840, which ultimately defeated the Chinese using technologically superior ships and weapons by August 1842. The British ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Koku
The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before cooking), used to this day for the plastic measuring cup that is supplied with commercial Japanese rice cookers. The ''koku'' in Japan was typically used as a dry measure. The amount of rice production measured in ''koku'' was the metric by which the magnitude of a feudal domain ('' han'') was evaluated. A feudal lord was only considered ''daimyō'' class when his domain amounted to at least 10,000 ''koku''. As a rule of thumb, one ''koku'' was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for one year. The Chinese equivalent or cognate unit for capacity is the ''shi'' or '' dan'' () also known as ''hu'' (), now approximately 103 litres but historically about . Chinese equivalent The Chinese 石 ''dan'' is equal to 10 ''d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Tokugawa Iesada
was the 13th ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He held office for five years from 1853 to 1858. He was physically weak and was therefore considered by later historians to have been unfit to be ''shōgun''. His reign marks the beginning of the Bakumatsu period. Early years Iesada was born in Edo Castle as Masanosuke (政之助)—the fourth son of the 12th ''shōgun'' Tokugawa Ieyoshi with his concubine, known as Honjuin. As most of Ieyoshi's children died in infancy or before coming of age, Iesada was appointed heir at a very early age, but his interaction with people was very restricted in an effort to prevent contracting any illnesses. Some historians have theorized that he may have suffered from cerebral palsy. He had suffered from smallpox in early childhood, which left his face pockmarked. On the death of Tokugawa Ienari in 1841, concerns were raised on the fitness of Iesada as heir, with Tokugawa Yoshinobu named as a potential successor. However, this was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Tokugawa Ieyoshi
was the 12th ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan.Hall, John Whitney ''et al.'' (1991) ''Early Modern Japan',' p. 21./ref> Biography Ieyoshi was born as the second son of the 11th ''shōgun'', Tokugawa Ienari and named Toshijirō (敏次郎). Toshijirō was appointed heir on the death of his elder brother, Takechiyo. He became shogun on September 2, 1837, at the age of 45 upon the retirement of his father, Tokugawa Ienari. However, Ienari continued to wield much power from behind the throne, and it was not until after his death in 1841 that Senior ''Rōjū'' Mizuno Tadakuni was able to purge the government of his clique, and to implement measures to overhaul the shogunate's finances and controls in the aftermath of the Great Tenpō Famine of 1832–36. Known as the Tenpō Reforms, these numerous sumptuary laws attempted to stabilize the economy through a return to the frugality, simplicity and discipline that were characteristic of the early Edo period, by banning m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Tenpō Reforms
The were an array of economic policies introduced between 1841 and 1843 by the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan. These reforms were efforts to resolve perceived problems in military, economic, agricultural, financial and religious systems. The changes were intended to address problems in local politics, but they were also addressed more broadly to "domestic uneasiness." The perceived need for change led to the arrest of many prominent political figures and writers. The reforms became a precursor of reforms initiated after the Meiji Restoration two decades later. This reform movement was related to three others during the Edo period: the Kyōhō reforms (1722–1730), the Kansei reforms (1787–1793) and the Keiō Reforms (1864–1867). Background Tokugawa Ienari became the 11th shogun in 1788 and ruled Japan for about half a century, the longest reign of any shogun in history. Whenever the shogunate faced financial difficulties, it lowered the gold and silver content of its coins to p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
