Sebuku (open)

[wolf half-demon kisuki57]

Bakumatsu Era

Latest part of the Tokugawa era, comprised between the opening of Japan to foreign trade in 1853 and the Meiji Restoration in 1867.
The bakumatsu period is one of the most agitated and romanticized part of Japanese history. It is the age of the last samurai, of intense fighting between the pro-emperor ishin shishi from Satsuma and Choshu and the pro-shogunate Shinsengumi troops.

Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration, in Japanese called 明治維新 meiji ishin, denotes events that started during the bakumatsu in the late Edo period and lasted until 1868, resulting in the restoration of imperial rule in Japan. It not only brought about political and economic change, but lead to a veritable social and cultural revolution of unprecedented dimensions in Japan. It is also considered the beginning of the Meiji Era.
The rebellion was initiated in 1866 by a group of samurai from the domains of Satsuma and Chōshū, who under their leaders Saigo Takamori and Kido Takayoshi forged the Satchō Alliance (薩摩長州同盟 Satsuma-Chōshū dōmei) to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate.

The events were originally triggered by the arrival of Commodore Perry and his Black Ships in 1853, coercing the Tokugawa shogunate into opening Japan's ports to trade, thus demonstrating the immense superiority of the Western military power over Japan at the time. Other nations followed suit, causing nationalist unrest, under the slogan sonnō jōi (尊皇攘夷, "Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians"). The aim of the rebellious samurai was consequently to restore the pride and power of Japan, by modernizing the country at all cost.

Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu (徳川 慶喜) abdicated in favor the the 15 year-old Mutsuhito emperor, posthumously known as Meiji ("Enlightened Rule"). The capital was moved from Kyoto to Edo (江戸 Edo, lit. "estuary") and subsequently renamed Tokyo (東京 Tōkyō, "Eastern Capital").

The Meiji Restoration saw the abolition of feudalism and the fast modernization, industrialization and westernization of Japan, with many Japanese scholars and politicians (such as Ito Hirobumi or Saionji Kinmochi) dispatched to study the Western system and technologies in Europe and North America, and Westerners invited to Japan to help develop new industries, such beer brewing, the manufacturing of dairy products, and Japan's first modern railway system.

Meiji Era


The Meiji Era (明治時代 1867-1912) denotes the reign of the Meiji Emperor. During this time, Japan started her modernization and rose to world power status.

In 1867, 14-year-old Mutsuhito succeded his father, the Emperor Komei, taking the title Meiji, meaning "enlightened rule". The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended the 265-year-old feudalistic Tokugawa shogunate.

Considering that the economic structure and production of the country was roughly equivalent to Elizabethan era England, to become a world power in such a short amount of time is widely regarded as remarkable progress. This process was closely monitored and heavily subsidized by the Meiji government, enhancing the power of the great zaibatsu firms such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Hand in hand, the zaibatsu and government guided the nation, always borrowing technology from the West. Japan gradually took control of much of Asia's market for manufactures, beginning with textiles. The economic structure became very mercantilistic, importing raw materials and exporting finished products - a reflection of Japan's relative poverty in raw materials.

Following her defeat of China in Korea in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), Japan broke through as an international power with a victory against Russia in Manchuria (north-eastern China) in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Allied with Britain since 1902, Japan joined the Allies in World War I, seizing German-held territory in China and the Pacific in the process, but otherwise remained largely out of the conflict.

After the war, a weakened Europe left a greater share in international markets to the U.S. and Japan, which emerged greatly strengthened. Japanese competition made great inroads into hitherto European-dominated markets in Asia, not only in China, but even in European colonies like India and Indonesia, reflecting the development of the Meiji era.

The major institutional accomplishment after the Satsuma Rebellion was the start of the trend toward developing representative government. People who had been forced out or left out of the governing apparatus after the Meiji Restoration had witnessed or heard of the success of representative institutions in other countries of the world and applied greater pressure for a voice in government.

A major proponent of representative government was Itagaki Taisuke (1837-1919), a powerful Tosa leader who had resigned from the Council of State over the Korean affair in 1873. Itagaki sought peaceful rather than rebellious means to gain a voice in government. He started a school and a movement aimed at establishing a constitutional monarchy and a legislative assembly. Itagaki and others wrote the Tosa Memorial in 1874 criticizing the unbridled power of the oligarchy and calling for the immediate establishment of representative government.

Dissatisfied with the pace of reform after having rejoined the Council of State in 1875, Itagaki organized his followers and other democratic proponents into the nationwide Aikokusha (Society of Patriots) to push for representative government in 1878. In 1881, in an action for which he is best known, Itagaki helped found the Jiyuto (Liberal Party), which favored French political doctrines.

In 1882 Okuma Shigenobu established the Rikken Kaishinto (Constitutional Progressive Party), which called for a British-style constitutional democracy. In response, government bureaucrats, local government officials, and other conservatives established the Rikken Teiseito (Imperial Rule Party), a progovernment party, in 1882. Numerous political demonstrations followed, some of them violent, resulting in further overnment restrictions. The restrictions hindered the political parties and led to divisions within and among them. The Jiyuto, which had opposed the Kaishinto, was disbanded in 1884, and Okuma resigned as Kaishinto president.

Government leaders, long preoccupied with violent threats to stability and the serious leadership split over the Korean affair, generally agreed that constitutional government should someday be established. The Choshu leader Kido Takayoshi had favored a constitutional form of government since before 1874, and several proposals for constitutional guarantees had been drafted. The oligarchy, however, while acknowledging the realities of political pressure, was determined to keep control. Thus, modest steps were taken.

The Osaka Conference in 1875 resulted in the reorganization of government with an independent judiciary and an appointed Council of Elders (Genronin) tasked with reviewing proposals for a legislature. The emperor declared that "constitutional government shall be established in gradual stages" as he ordered the Council of Elders to draft a constitution.

Three years later, the Conference of Prefectural Governors established elected prefectural assemblies. Although limited in their authority, these assemblies represented a move in the direction of representative government at the national level, and by 1880 assemblies also had been formed in villages and towns. In 1880 delegates from twenty-four prefectures held a national convention to establish the Kokkai Kisei Domei (League for Establishing a National Assembly).

Although the government was not opposed to parliamentary rule, confronted with the drive for "people's rights", it continued to try to control the political situation. New laws in 1875 prohibited press criticism of the government or discussion of national laws. The Public Assembly Law (1880) severely limited public gatherings by disallowing attendance by civil servants and requiring police permission for all meetings.

Within the ruling circle, however, and despite the conservative approach of the leadership, Okuma continued as a lone advocate of British-style government, a government with political parties and a cabinet organized by the majority party, answerable to the national assembly. He called for elections to be held by 1882 and for a national assembly to be convened by 1883; in doing so, he precipitated apolitical crisis that ended with an 1881 imperial rescript declaring the establishment of a national assembly in 1890 and dismissing Okuma.

Rejecting the British model, Iwakura and other conservatives borrowed heavily from the Prussian constitutional system. One of the Meiji oligarchy, Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909), a Choshu native long involved in government affairs, was charged with drafting Japan's constitution. He led a Constitutional Study Mission abroad in 1882, spending most of his time in Germany. He rejected the United States Constitution as "too liberal" and the British system as too unwieldy and having a parliament with too much control over the monarchy; the French and Spanish models were rejected as tending toward despotism.

On its return, one of the first acts of the government was to establish new ranks for the nobility. Five hundred persons from the old court nobility, former daimyo, and samurai who had provided valuable service to the emperor were organized in five ranks: prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron.

Ito was put in charge of the new Bureau for Investigation of Constitutional Systems in 1884, and the Council of State was replaced in 1885 with a cabinet headed by Ito as prime minister. The positions of chancellor, minister of the left, and minister of the right, which had existed since the 7th century as advisory positions to the emperor, were all abolished. In their place, the Privy Council was established in 1888 to evaluate the forthcoming constitution and to advise the emperor.

To further strengthen the authority of the state, the Supreme War Council was established under the leadership of Yamagata Aritomo (1838-1922), a Choshu native who has been credited with the founding of the modern Japanese army and was to become the first constitutional prime minister. The Supreme War Council developed a German-style general staff system with a chief of staff who had direct access to the emperor and who could operate independently of the army minister and civilian officials.

When finally granted by the emperor as a sign of his sharing his authority and giving rights and liberties to his subjects, the 1889 Constitution of the Empire of Japan (the Meiji Constitution) provided for the Imperial Diet (Teikoku Gikai), composed of a popularly elected House of Representatives with a very limited franchise of male citizens who paid 15 in national taxes, about 1 percent of the population, and the House of Peers, composed of nobility and imperial appointees; and a cabinet responsible to the emperor and independent of the legislature. The Diet could approve government legislation and initiate laws, make representations to the government, and submit petitions to the emperor. Nevertheless, in spite of these institutional changes, sovereignty still resided in the emperor on the basis of his divine ancestry.

The new constitution specified a form of government that was still authoritarian in character, with the emperor holding the ultimate power and only minimal concessions made to popular rights and parliamentary mechanisms. Party participation was recognized as part of the political process. The Meiji Constitution was to last as the fundamental law until 1947.

In the early years of constitutional government, the strengths and weaknesses of the Meiji Constitution were revealed. A small clique of Satsuma and Choshu elite continued to rule Japan, becoming institutionalized as an extraconstitutional body of genro (elder statesmen). Collectively, the genro made decisions reserved for the emperor, and the genro, not the emperor, controlled the government politically.

Throughout the period, however, political problems were usually solved through compromise, and political parties gradually increased their power over the government and held an ever larger role in the political process as a result. Between 1891 and 1895, Ito served as prime minister with a cabinet composed mostly of genro who wanted to establish a government party to control the House of Representatives. Although not fully realized, the trend toward party politics was well established.

Japan emerged from the Tokugawa-Meiji transition as the first Asian industrialized nation. Domestic commercial activities and limited foreign trade had met the demands for material culture in the Tokugawa period, but the modernized Meiji era had radically different requirements. From the onset, the Meiji rulers embraced the concept of a market economy and adopted British and North American forms of free enterprise capitalism. The private sector-- in a nation blessed with an abundance of aggressive entrepreneurs-- welcomed such change.

Economic reforms included a unified modern currency based on the yen, banking, commercial and tax laws, stock exchanges, and a communications network. Establishment of a modern institutional framework conducive to an advanced capitalist economy took time but was completed by the 1890s. By this time, the government had largely relinquished direct control of the modernization process, primarily for budgetary reasons.

Many of the former daimyo, whose pensions had been paid in a lump sum, benefited greatly through investments they made in emerging industries. Those who had been informally involved in foreign trade before the Meiji Restoration also flourished. Old bakufu-serving firms that clung to their traditional ways failed in the new business environment.

The government was initially involved in economic modernization, providing a number of "model factories" to facilitate the transition to the modern period. After the first twenty years of the Meiji period, the industrial economy expanded rapidly until about 1920 with inputs of advanced Western technology and large private investments. Stimulated by wars and through cautious economic planning, Japan emerged from World War I as a major industrial nation.

After the death of the Meiji Emperor in 1912, the Taisho Emperor took the throne, thus beginning the Taisho Period.


(Info over. You don't have to know everything above,this is just some basic information.)

It is the eleventh year of the Meiji restoration. Kisuki, odd hope, sheathed her sakabato, the heads of Mount Fuji flowers lie in a circle around her. She has cut them off with her backwards blade.

[William Wolfheart]

ooc- I'm joining in

Takahiro walked among the Cherry blossoms quietly and lightly being fully aware of his surroundings. He stopped after hearing something and stepping aside he drew his blade and swung cutting the head off a snake that would have surely bit him. The yelling as several Samurai appeared and he was much faster then they killing them swiftly before he sheathed his blade just as they fell to the ground around him taking out his flute he began to play.

[Revan Marek]

ooc- as am I if you don't mind.

A hooded man is walking. He had never been to Japan before now. The man has a powerful Katana called Bane. several Samurai are behind and in front of him. He throws a coin into the air and kills all of the Samurai swiftly than sheathed his blade and catches the coin before it hits the ground. It is raining heavily. His name is Revan Marek. He is going to see a friend of his.

[wolf half-demon kisuki57]

OOC: Ki uses a style called Hiten mitsurugi-ryu, and is a master of battojutsu, thus the term "battosai." she is the hitokiri battosai, and the ONLY remaining master of Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu, an ancient style of the Sengoku era. Three other Hitokiri heroes of the Meiji revolution during the Bakumatsu needed, Thankyou

The hitokiri

The Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu (幕末四大人斬り, Bakumatsu Shidai Hitokiri?) was a term given to four samurai during the Bakumatsu era in Japanese history. They opposed the Tokugawa shogunate (and later, supported the Meiji Emperor). These four samurai were warrior elite and widely considered undefeatable by normal people. The word hitokiri literally means "manslayer."
(Feel free to be one. Sebuku is intended as sort of the "last battle of the samurai. None were really girls, but one is now, so if one wants to make another a girl, feel free.)
A sakabato is a reversed edge, or backwards sword.


IC: Kisuki sheaths her sakabato, and rises into a regal pose. She walks slowly into Edo, ignoring the sword corps that is after her for carrying a sword. (It is illegal, after all, lol.)

[William Wolfheart]

ooc- okay cool been looking to revamping Takahiro so this RP is a good way to do it

IC- Takahiro walked reaching Edo and keeping his sword hidden from prying eyes, His Robes were the most unusual anyone has seen. Like his sword his Robes and clothing helped keep his powers in check. If faced he would not hesitate for a fight unless it was one worth fighting. What he didn't know was that it was the Meiji Era and everything had changed till it was too late. He had heard rumors of Laws passed banning the possession of Swords and any Samurai Weapons. But A few were fighting to keep the Samurai Way from dying. He walked before going into a Ramen shop and sitting ordered Ramen noodles and started to eat.

[wolf half-demon kisuki57]

Ki is walking through the streets and thinking. Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryū (飛天御剣流, "Flying Heaven Honourable Sword Style"), which utilizes superhumanly-fast Battōjutsu-oriented techniques. This skill earns the title of "Battōsai" ("Master of Sword Drawing"). battojutsu is the drawing of a sword with the edge of the blade and drawn quickly, increasing the draw of the sword by two to three times the speed of the normal draw and slice. very few people know this style anymore. soryusen, the move of draw the sword then hit with the sheath. all possiblylethal, but possibly not. then her thoughts turn to hervow never to kill again, the reason she carries a backwards-bladed sakabato

[William Wolfheart]

Takahiro ate and paid for his meal his blade throbbing with power and he closed his eyes sensing danger and he stood and headed out and in the direction of where the scent was coming from. He then broke into a run as he got closer. Leaping he started to run on the rooftops jumping from roof to roof. Drawing his Katana it changed into a bow and arrows formed onto his back and drawing one he knocked it as he ran hoping he wasn't too late.

[wolf half-demon kisuki57]

Ki looked behind her just a second too late. The sword dug into her shoulder as she reached for her sword. She cried out and dropped to her knees as the sword was jerked out roughly. "What's a pretty little girl like you doing carrying a sword, ningen?" a sword corps samurai says as he hauls her roughly to her feet. She would be taken to the Marshall, but He had other places in mind first. The others shared his thoughts. The abandoned dojo at the top of the hill

[William Wolfheart]

Takahiro ran and stopping drew back the string and aimed but hesitated before closing his eyes, he heard their thoughts and he slid down off the roof of the building and after landing on the ground he headed to the Dojo going the way none would take and he went inside going to a secluded room and waited keeping the sword hidden after sheathing it. He closed his eyes after sitting and started to give off the aura of a demon and dragon managing to keep them both from getting out as he learned from the Monks on how to control his Demonic powers. Taking his Katana he set it on the floor next to him letting the various scents fill the air not giving a single one seclusion. He kept his eyes closed breathing slower and slower till he was almost meditating never knowing that anyone was there already.

[Cecilia Rose Demonic Princess]

ooc: i am joining in and will be one of the people you are looking for kisuki, if the positions are still open for this rp.

ic: Cecilia was asleep in another room of the dojo. She had a long black silk coat with a hood that hid her swords and other deadly weapons that she kept underneath along with her face. She was a master of many different styles from around the world. She was a samurai but she held the title of master of death. She had traveled to Japan on a long journey by ship, she was exhausted and since she could find place to live, she found this abandoned dojo. She spent her life defending the innocent and setting the wrongs of the world, right again. She had came in her in the hopes of finding a home and some peace, even though she doubted that would be possible. Peace in the world was hard to find.

Cecilia then began to stir as she began to sense an Aura of someone who was both demon and a dragon. She slowly woke up and stood up in the room she was in and she grabbed her sword's hilt under her trench coat. The hood on the coat was up hiding her face. She slowly began to walk out of the room she was in following the scent of the Aura. When she found the room the Aura was coming from, she slowly opened the door holding her sword looking and seeing Takahiro. She pointed her sword at him and goes, "who are you? Why have you come after me?" She said thinking he was after her and not there for another reason. She had never trusted anyone and after her years of experence stop seeing the good in people and saw only the bad. For that is all she seemed to run into and that was the bad.

ooc: her silk coat. there is no front view.
Back view - http://blog.lloydkbarnes.com/wp-content/..._00611.jpg
side view - http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5205/5201...cbc01d.jpg