Structural Sources of Popular Revolts and the Tōbaku Movement at the Time of the Meiji Restoration

Turbulent years before and after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 have been one of the most extensively written pages of Japanese history. Much work has been carried out on the revolutionary samurai and the aspiring merchants who implemented the upheaval. Curiously, however, revolts and rebellions which erupted at more popular levels, such as peasant uprisings and urban mass disturbances during this period, have drawn little scholarly attention. According to the literature survey of Irwin Scheiner, no work on Japanese peasant uprisings has been published English since Hugh Borton's study in 1938.