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Like many games based on Japanese history,Rise Of The Roninis a tale of swords and samurai. As a result, some gamers might be confused when they’re tasked with things like infiltrating an American consulate or facing industrial-era Gatling guns. This is because Rise Of The Ronin takes place at a fascinating intersection of traditional Japanese culture and the quickly-modernizing world.
The Meiji Restoration is possibly the single most important point in Japan’s long history, as it marked a rapid cultural shift that brought the country from an isolated feudal kingdom to a world power in a matter of decades.
What Is The Tokugawa Shogunate?
To understand the setting of Rise Of The Ronin, whichtakes place in 1863,you need to turn back the clock more than 250 years. In the 16th century, Japan was a very loose feudal monarchy. The Emperor was considered the divine ruler of all Japan, claiming descent from the goddess Amaterasu, but was mostly sequestered in his palace, above petty concerns like taxation and warfare. The actual ruler of the empire was theshogun, the top military commander.
While the shogun technically had the fealty of Japan’s warrior nobility, thedaimyos, they were closer to independent kingdoms and duchies that only paid lip service to the ruler in the capital, Kyoto. The daimyos fought constant wars with one another, hoping to gain more land and prestige.
By 1568, the ruling Ashikaga Shogunate had fallen into decline, prompting the ambitious daimyo Oda Nobunaga to seize power. Nobunaga was in turn betrayed and killed by his subordinate, Akechi Mitsuhide, triggering a civil war. This conflict is often portrayed in games likeSamurai WarriorsandNobunaga’s Ambition.
When the dust settled,Tokugawa Ieyasuheld the shogunate, with enough power and wealth to enforce his will over all the daimyos. Leery of Western influence (firearms purchased from European merchants had played a role in the wars of the previous century) and unwilling to commit to foreign conquests, the new Tokugawa Shogunate enforced the Sakoku Law. Entering or leaving Japan was punishable by death, and Western goods ranging from guns to playing cards were banned. Japan would remain isolated from the rest of the world for centuries.
Matthew Perry And The Unequal Treaties
By the time Rise Of The Ronin takes place,the capital had been moved to Edo, which is now Tokyo. Japan may have wanted nothing to do with the outside world, but the outside world had designs on Japan. The United States in particular wanted ports in Asia to help them compete with European traders.
In 1852, President Millard Filmore sentCommodore Matthew Perry, one of America’s highest-ranking naval officers, to force Japan to open its ports to the United States. Perry arrived the following year,blockading Edowith his state-of-the-art steamships and threatening to bombard coastal towns if the Japanese government wouldn’t cooperate.
If we take the initiative, we can dominate. If we do not, we will ourselves be dominated.
-Shimazu Nariakira, 1809-1858
Faced with a technologically superior threat, the Shogunate was forced to sign theUnequal Treaties, which opened ports to the West and gave American and European powers most of the profits. While the Shogun and his loyalists wanted to continue keeping the West at arms' length, other daimyos, particularly in the southwest, believed that Japan would only be saved from exploitation by embracing Western institutions and technology - fighting fire with fire. “If we take the initiative, we can dominate,” Daimyo Shimazu Nariakira is recorded as having said at the time; “If we do not, we will ourselves be dominated.”
What Is The Meiji Restoration?
Knowing they would have to fight, the pro-Westernization faction (who came to be known as the Ishin Shishi, or Nationalist Patriots) proclaimed that it was time for the Shogun to return power to the Emperor, the true ruler of Japan. Figures likeSakamoto Ryomacalled for Japan to become an industrialized nation with a modern military and the Emperor at its head.
While tensions between the Shogunate and the Nationalists would eventually lead to war, in Rise Of The Ronin open conflict is still a few years off. Plotting, murders, and skirmishes all play a part in the game, like they did in history. However, many of Rise Of The Ronin’s set-piece quests and boss battles are far from historical;Townsend Harris, the US Ambassador to Japan, left in 1861, two years before the game takes place, andCommodore Perrydied in New York City in 1858.
Despite efforts to maintain the status quo that includedassassinating Sakamoto Ryoma in 1867, the Shogunate was forced into a civil war against the Nationalists the following year. TheBoshin Warended with the surrender of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who was stripped of his rank by the Meiji Emperor, ending the Shogunate.
The Meiji Emperor, whose given name wasMutsuhito, was a young man. He had inherited the throne at fifteen years old, and was sixteen when the Boshin War made him the ruler of Japan. Supported by the Nationalists, he aggressively modernized Japan’s military and economy, and it became a world power that was able todefeat the Russian Empireby 1905.
The end of the Shogunate also lifted the ban on playing cards, which in 1889 led Kyoto merchant Yamauchi Fusajiro to start mass-producing them through his brand-new company, Nintendo.
