The Continuation and Realization of the Charter Oath When the bakafu navy surrendered in May 1869, it signaled the end of an era in Japan (Schirokauer, 188). The way of the shogunate was finished, the Tokugawa family had been defeated and the wave of revolution swept through Japan. The only problem with that wave of revolution was that the men who were leading it had no real idea where it should be going. The emperor of Japan was a sixteen year-old boy, they knew that the power should not fall right into his hands, but they were not sure how to centralize the power with out giving it directly to him. Feudalism was not to pass all the way out of Japan; it was not going to play the dominant role that it had during the time of the Shogunate rule. The idea that they settled upon was modeled after the Chinese system, it was called bureaucratic centralization. With this decision the Meiji Restoration was starting to materialize into a staying ideology. Though the men leading the Meiji restoration did not always see eye to eye on policy issues they did have a couple things in common; they were all close in age and agreed that they needed to strengthen their defenses against the West (Schirokauer, 188). With these ideas at the top of their agenda they were ready to undertake massive changes in the governmental system. In 1868 the Charter Oath was issued, it outlined some of the changes that the new rule wished to enact. Another main point that they agreed upon was the fact that the Emperor needed to move to Tokyo, formerly Edo. In 1871 the Emperor moved into the imperial palace which was formerly the Shogun’s palace. The Charter Oath is the defining piece of the Meiji Restoration. In Schirokauer’s book it states that the Japanese go much farther than the Chinese ever would have (189). The fifth point of the Charter Oath is most likely the point that the Chinese would have had the most problem with. The fifth point reads “kno...
