Emperor for centuries has only been a nominal, representative and spiritual leader and it worked for them. He's an equivalent of Pope. A task of everyday governing fell to shogunate or imperial governments. Shogun literally means "Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians" and his rule was a hereditary monarchy / military junta. Shogunate was overthrown because it failed in it's goal to expel the "barbarians" and also because clans who lost at Sekigahara back in 1600 still wanted revenge. They were mostly to the west of Japan, so they westernized their army hard and fast and Shogunate just couldn't keep up with their anachronistic feudal tendencies, struggling to modernize their army and suffering from pretty bad leaders (last Shogun was actually quite competent, just came into power way too late to make a difference).
What reason is that lmao, military overthrow during the genpei war? Failure to reinstate the ritsuryo system during nanboku-cho? Meiji did pretty damn well all things considered, in a world full of conquering colonial powers. You can barely count on one hand the amount of countries that escaped becoming their vassals, as Japan did.
Shimonoseki Campaign in 1863-4 as well as the Bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863. The former event involved the Americans, while the latter was a British affair.
Can't blame you I guess. If you notice the date, the Boshin War and all its littler incarnations happened at the exact same time as the American Civil War, so despite our involvement, American history books tend to pay little mind to what happens after Commodore Perry opened Japan's ports. If it weren't for the Civil War, I'd imagine we'd have gotten a lot more involved. Maybe not quite *fighting* in it very much as America wasn't really interested in off-continent Imperialism yet, but certainly more involved than we were.
