The 14-year period that began in 1854, when the shogun’s government (called the bakufu) signed Perry’s treaty ending Japan’s centuries of isolation, was a tumultuous period of Japanese history. The bakufu struggled to solve the problems resulting from Japan’s forced opening. Ultimately, the shogun failed, because the opening triggered unstoppable changes in Japanese society and government. Those changes in turn led to the shogun’s overthrow by his Japanese rivals, and then to much more far-reaching changes under the new government that was led by those rivals.
