>>539715283
Context note 3: Kokugaku (national studies) was a popular academic movement around this time, focused on studying Japanese society from a nationalistic perspective (i.e. as opposed to sucking Chinese dick all the time, as much of the Japanese high class often did). One of the central ideas was the question of “Where does legitimacy come from?”, the answer to which was “From the emperor’s divine blood.” The Tokugawa Bakufu generally did not give much of a shit about all this because the next link in that chain of reasoning was “and since the Emperor endorses the shogunate, the shogunate is legitimate too”, so, hey, works out for us too. Ain’t like some sudden socially-cataclysmic even is gonna suddenly tank out social capital, right?
And then Perry happens. What with the Unequal Treaties and all, you had a whole generation of kids raised to overact about honor ‘n shit that just watched the Bakufu getting fucked in the ass without a fight, and thus feeling pretty salty about the whole thing. This anger undermined the legitimacy of the Bakufu, which led whole scores of 20-somethings assisting swordsmanship schools (basically the youth clubs of the time, but with a heavy militaristic bent) to ask themselves “If the Bakufu is no longer legitimate, where should authority reside?” And the Kokugaku circlejerks promptly answered: “In the emperor, of course.” And so the kids then asked, “shouldn’t we give authority back to the emperor then?”
And so that’s when shit started getting really funny. And stabby.
