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May 3, 1868 (11th day of the 4th month of Keiō 4)
Edo Castle (present-day Imperial Palace, Tokyo)
Forces
New Government Forces (Imperial Army)
Former Shogunate (Edo Castle defense)
About 14 min read
The Bloodless Surrender of Edo Castle was a historic event in which, on May 3, 1868 (Keiō 4/4/11), following a meeting between Saigō Takamori, staff officer of the imperial army, and Katsu Kaishū, Army Commissioner of the former shogunate, Edo Castle was handed over without any fighting. At that time Edo had a population exceeding one million and was one of the largest cities in the world, and urban warfare there would inevitably have caused an unprecedented disaster. Having averted that tragedy, this surrender is counted among the most celebrated events in Japanese history as a “revolution without bloodshed.”
On the 3rd day of the 1st month of Keiō 4 (1868), about 25 days after the Proclamation of the Restoration of Imperial Rule on the 9th day of the 12th month of Keiō 3 (1867), the Battle of Toba–Fushimi broke out. The new government forces (imperial army), centered on Satsuma and Chōshū, defeated the forces of the former shogunate, and Tokugawa Yoshinobu escaped by sea from Ōsaka Castle to Edo. Returning to Edo, Yoshinobu showed an attitude of “submission” and moved to Kan'ei-ji in Ueno, where he confined himself.
However, hardliners within the new government insisted on Yoshinobu's complete subjugation and the capture of Edo, and the imperial army began advancing on Edo from three directions: the Tōkaidō, Tōsandō, and Hokurikudō. The vanguard was the main force led by Saigō Takamori along the Tōkaidō, which had already reached Sunpu (present-day Shizuoka City) by early in the 3rd month. Facing the imperial army closing in on Edo Castle, the die-hard resistance faction within the former shogunate (remnants of the Shōgitai, Shinsengumi, and others) was preparing for battle.
The key figure in this crisis was the British minister Harry Parkes. Parkes is said to have strongly protested to the new government's envoys that attacking Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who was showing submission, violated international law. At that time Japan was bound by unequal treaties with various countries, and the intentions of the Western powers could not be ignored. There is a theory that this “pressure from Parkes” influenced Saigō's decision.
On the shogunate's side, Katsu Kaishū, Army Commissioner of the former shogunate, acted as the negotiator. From an early stage Katsu held the conviction that “Edo must not be made a battlefield,” and while supporting Yoshinobu's submission, he served as the channel for negotiations. Katsu entrusted a letter addressed to Saigō to Yamaoka Tesshū, who was heading to the Great Eastern Expedition Headquarters at Sunpu, thereby opening the path to negotiation.
The talks were held over two days, on the 13th and 14th days of the 3rd month of Keiō 4 (1868), at the Satsuma Domain residence in Takanawa, Shiba (present-day area around Tamachi). It was a historic setting in which Saigō Takamori and Katsu Kaishū, two of the most contrasting figures in the history of the Restoration, faced each other.
The main conditions of the surrender were as follows: the handover of Edo Castle; the disposition of Tokugawa Yoshinobu (placed under the custody of the Bizen Domain, later changed to confinement in Mito); the surrender of warships and weapons; the confinement of retainers within the castle; and the pacification of citizens and samurai who might rise in rash action. These were the seven articles Saigō presented to Yamaoka Tesshū at Sunpu on the 9th day of the 3rd month of Keiō 4 (1868). At the talks on the 14th, Katsu presented a reply requesting revisions to them. Trusting Katsu and the others, Saigō called off the all-out attack that had been scheduled for the following day, the 15th, and took Katsu's reply back to the new government in Kyoto.
On the 11th day of the 4th month of Keiō 4 (1868), Edo Castle was handed over to the new government forces without any fighting. A great city of a million people was released from the hands of its ruling power without a single gunshot or a single sword wound.
What deserves special mention in this surrender is the decisiveness and greatness of character of the two principal figures. Katsu Kaishū was a practical man who had been involved in building up the shogunate's Western-style navy, and a thoroughgoing realist. He chose a path that saved the lives of the people of Edo while restraining the hardliners within the shogunate. His negotiation prioritized “the lives of real people” over “samurai pride,” and it is regarded as one of the most rational judgments of the late Edo period.
Saigō Takamori stood at the head of the imperial army as staff officer of the Great Eastern Expedition Headquarters. However, he suppressed the hardline arguments within the new government and chose a flexible political solution. Saigō later left the words "Do not deal with men; deal with Heaven." The surrender of Edo was an event that embodied that philosophy.
Both men wore swords, yet they moved history without drawing them. The paradox that “samurai settled the matter without using their swords” is the essence of the Bloodless Surrender of Edo, and it is the greatest paradoxical scene in the cultural history of the Japanese sword.
The Bloodless Surrender of Edo is also an extremely important event from the perspective of sword culture. Samurai on the former shogunate's side, including the Shōgitai, wore famous swords and were prepared to stake their lives on defending Edo Castle. The Shōgitai, who held out on Ueno Hill even after the surrender, continued to resist until they were destroyed in the Battle of Ueno on the 15th day of the 5th month of Keiō 4 (1868).
After the surrender, Edo Castle was taken over by the new government and later became the Imperial Palace.
Viewed from a global perspective, the Bloodless Surrender of Edo is a rare example of the bloodless transfer of a megacity. Regime changes of similar scale in nineteenth-century Western and Eastern societies were almost without exception accompanied by large-scale bloodshed, yet in Edo, then one of the largest cities in the world, that bloodshed was avoided.
Through this surrender the eastern expeditionary army came to control Edo, and in the 7th month of Keiō 4 (1868) the Meiji government renamed Edo “Tokyo.” In the 10th month of the same year, Emperor Meiji entered Tokyo, and Tokyo has been the capital of Japan ever since. Edo Castle became the Imperial Palace, and the symbol of more than 260 years of shogunate rule was reborn at the heart of the modern imperial state. The historic decisions of Katsu Kaishū and Saigō Takamori are still widely passed down today as a source of “Japanese pride,” and the swords they wore but never drew are permanently recorded in the cultural history of the Japanese sword as the greatest legacy of this event.
Even after the surrender of Edo, the Shōgitai, who had holed up at Kan'ei-ji in Ueno, refused to surrender. On July 4, 1868 (Keiō 4/5/15), they came under an all-out attack by the imperial army (the Battle of Ueno). The Shōgitai, destroyed in a single day, are recorded in history as the moment when the samurai spirit of the Edo period was defeated by modern guns and cannon.
About a year after the surrender, on June 27, 1869 (Meiji 2/5/18), the former shogunate forces led by Enomoto Takeaki surrendered in the final battle, the Battle of Hakodate / Goryōkaku, and the Boshin War came to an end. The Bloodless Surrender of Edo did not mean the complete end of the civil war, but as a decision that saved a city of a million people, its historical value remains unchanged today. Katsu Kaishū remained active in politics and diplomacy after the Meiji era and died in 1899 (Meiji 32) at the age of 75. Saigō Takamori later lost his life in the Satsuma Rebellion (1877), and his end is also passed down as that of “the last samurai.” The lives of these two warriors embodied the turbulent era from the late Edo period through Meiji.