Portal:Japan/Selected article/2007/February

Campaign map of the Boshin War (1868-1869). The Southern domains of Satsuma, Chōshū and Tosa (in red) joined forces to defeat the Shogunate forces at Toba–Fushimi, and then progressively took control of the rest of Japan until the final stand-off in the northern island of Hokkaidō

The Boshin War (戊辰戦争, Boshin Sensō, "War of the Year of the Dragon") was a civil war in Japan, fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and those favorable to the restoration of the Emperor Meiji. The war finds its origin in the emperor's declared abolition of the two-hundred-year-old Shogunate and the imposition of direct rule by the imperial court. Military movements by imperial forces and partisan violence in Edo, led Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the sitting shogun, to launch a military campaign to seize the emperor's court at Kyoto. The military tide rapidly turned in favor of the smaller but relatively modernized imperial faction, and after a series of battles culminating in the surrender of Edo, Yoshinobu personally surrendered. The Tokugawa remnant retreated to northern Honshū and later Hokkaidō, where they declared a republic. Defeat at the Battle of Hakodate broke this last holdout and left the imperial rule supreme throughout the whole of Japan, completing the military phase of the Meiji Restoration. (more...)