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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 18 min read
The Edo Bloodless Surrender occurred on the eleventh day of the fourth month of Keiō 4 (May 3, 1868), when, on the very day the imperial government's general assault on Edo Castle was scheduled, the castle was handed over without battle through negotiations between Saigō Takamori, the chief strategist of the imperial forces, and Katsu Kaishū, the former shogunate's naval commissioner. At that time, Edo was one of the largest cities in the world with a population exceeding one million; an urban battle there would have been catastrophic. The decision to avoid this tragedy became one of the most celebrated events in Japanese history, known as a "bloodless revolution."
On the third day of the first month of Keiō 4, approximately twenty-five days after the Imperial Restoration Proclamation of the ninth day of the twelfth month of Keiō 3, the Battle of Toba-Fushimi erupted. The imperial government forces (imperial army), with Satsuma and Chōshū as the main powers, routed the former shogunate's army, and Tokugawa Yoshinobu escaped by sea from Osaka Castle to Edo. Upon his return to Edo, Yoshinobu adopted a posture of submission, personally shaving his head and withdrawing to Kan'eiji Temple in Ueno.
However, the hard-liners within the new government insisted on the complete destruction of Yoshinobu and the conquest of Edo, and the imperial forces began their advance toward Edo from three directions: the Tōkaidō, Tōsandō, and Hokuriku roads. The vanguard was the main force led by Saigō Takamori, advancing along the Tōkaidō, and by mid-March, it had already reached Sunpu (present-day Shizuoka City). As the imperial forces closed in on Edo Castle, the hardline resistance faction within the former shogunate—including the Shōgitai and remnants of the Shinsen-gumi—were preparing for battle.
In this crisis, a crucial role was played by Harry Parkes, the British Minister. Parkes, representing the British government, took a strong stance toward the new government, stating that "combat in the streets of Edo and casualties among civilians would not be tolerated." At that time, Japan was bound by unequal treaties with various Western powers, and their wishes could not be ignored. It is confirmed in later reflections that Saigō Takamori kept this external pressure in mind.
On the shogunate side, Katsu Kaishū, the former naval commissioner, took the lead in negotiations. From the outset, Katsu held the conviction that "Edo must not become a battleground," and while supporting Yoshinobu's posture of submission, he functioned as the channel for negotiations. Through correspondence to the Satsuma domain residence, Katsu sought the opportunity for direct talks with Saigō.
The meeting took place over two days, the thirteenth and fourteenth of the third month of Keiō 4, at the Satsuma domain residence in Shiba and Takanawa (present-day Tamachi area). It was a historic moment when two of the most contrasting warriors in the history of the Restoration faced each other: Saigō Takamori and Katsu Kaishū.
The main conditions for the surrender that Saigō accepted were as follows: the handover of Edo Castle (a bloodless surrender), the disposition of Tokugawa Yoshinobu (into the custody of the Bizen domain, later changed to Mito), the transfer of warships and ammunition, the guarantee of peace and order in the city of Edo, and the prohibition of arson and plunder in the castle town. These conditions were ones Katsu had prepared in advance, and Saigō accepted them almost in their entirety.
On the eleventh day of the fourth month of Keiō 4, the day the general assault was scheduled, the imperial forces entered Edo Castle without encountering any resistance. A great metropolis of one million souls changed hands—without a single gunshot, without a single sword wound.
What deserves particular emphasis in this surrender is the decisiveness and human greatness of the two men involved. Katsu Kaishū was a pragmatist who had established Japan's Western-style navy, and he was a thorough realist. While suppressing the hardliners within the shogunate, he chose the path that would save the lives of Edo's one million inhabitants. His negotiations prioritized "the lives of the people" over "the honor of the samurai," and they are regarded as one of the greatest acts of rational judgment of the bakumatsu period.
Saigō Takamori was a swordsman of the Satsuma Jigen-ryū tradition and a rare warrior on the battlefield. Yet he restrained the hard-liners within the new government and chose a flexible political resolution. Saigō later left the words: "Direct your mind toward heaven, not toward people," and the Edo bloodless surrender was an event that embodied this philosophy.
Both men wore swords at their meetings, yet they moved history without drawing those swords. The paradox of "samurai settling matters without using their swords" is the essence of the Edo bloodless surrender and the greatest paradoxical moment in the cultural history of the Japanese blade.
The Edo bloodless surrender was an extremely significant event from the perspective of sword culture. The samurai of the former shogunate side, including the Shōgitai, wore celebrated blades and were prepared to stake their lives in the defense of Edo Castle. Even after the surrender, the approximately two thousand members of the Shōgitai who had withdrawn to the heights of Ueno refused to surrender and continued their resistance until their destruction in the Battle of Ueno on the fifteenth day of the fifth month of Keiō 4.
The celebrated swords that had been passed down through generations of Tokugawa shoguns—works by Soshu Masamune, Soshu Yoshihiro, Rai Kunitsugu, Osafune Mitsutada, and others—flowed out of Edo Castle following this surrender and were dispersed in various directions. The Meiji government confiscated the assets of the former shogunate, and Edo Castle was converted into an imperial palace. Part of the shogun's sword collection came under the control of the Meiji government and is preserved today in the Tokyo National Museum and other institutions, while many others have disappeared.
Various traditions have been passed down concerning the sword that Katsu Kaishū wore at his meeting with Saigō. The hilt grasped by Katsu, who had survived the turbulent final days of the shogunate, has been handed down as a symbol of a man who lived between the pride of the samurai and the demands of realpolitik.
The Edo bloodless surrender is a rare instance in world history of a "megacity's bloodless transfer." In the nineteenth century, comparable transitions of power in both the Western and Eastern worlds were invariably accompanied by massive bloodshed, yet this was avoided for Edo, then among the largest cities in the world.
Through this surrender, the imperial forces took control of Edo, and the Meiji government renamed the city "Tokyo" in the seventh month of Keiō 4. In the tenth month of the same year, the Meiji Emperor entered Tokyo, and thereafter Tokyo became Japan's capital. Edo Castle became the imperial palace, and the symbol of over 260 years of shogunal rule was transformed into the center of the modern nation-state under imperial rule. The historic decision made by Katsu Kaishū and Saigō Takamori continues to be widely spoken of today as "the pride of the Japanese people," and the swords they wore but ultimately never drew have been eternally inscribed in the cultural history of the Japanese blade as the greatest legacy of this event.
Even after the opening of Edo Castle, the approximately two thousand members of the Shōgitai who had withdrawn to Kan'eiji Temple refused to surrender. On the fifteenth day of the fifth month of Keiō 4 (July 4, 1868), they came under a general assault by the imperial forces (the Battle of Ueno). The Shōgitai's destruction in a single day is recorded in history as the moment when the samurai spirit of the Edo period was defeated before the guns and artillery of the modern age. Many of the swords worn by the Shōgitai warriors were dispersed in this battle, and some fell into the hands of the imperial forces as spoils of war.
Six months after the opening of Edo, on the fourth day of the twelfth month of Meiji 1 (January 17, 1869), the battle of Hakodate's Goryōkaku, which would be the final conflict, saw the surrender of Enomoto Takeaki and other former shogunate forces, bringing the Boshin War to an end. The Edo bloodless surrender did not mean the complete end of internal strife, but as a decision that saved a metropolis of one million inhabitants, its historical value remains unchanged to this day. Katsu Kaishū continued to be active in politics and diplomacy after the Meiji Restoration and died at the age of seventy-seven in 1899 (Meiji 32). Saigō Takamori later fell in the Satsuma Rebellion (1877), but his final moments, too, are remembered as those of "the last of the samurai." The lives of these two warriors embodied the tumultuous era from the bakumatsu to the Meiji period.
Many celebrated swords collected by successive shoguns remained in the former Edo Castle, which became the imperial palace following the bloodless surrender. After the surrender, some of these swords were confiscated by the new government and came under the control of the Imperial Household Ministry, and are now preserved in the Imperial Household Agency (imperial collections) and the Tokyo National Museum. The swords transmitted through the shogun's house—blades beloved by the founder Ieyasu, celebrated swords presented during the reigns of Hidetada and Iemitsu—live as witnesses to the history of 265 years of shogunal rule, still bearing in their blades the memory of history. The Edo bloodless surrender not only avoided armed conflict but also minimized the dispersal of such cultural heritage, and is highly valued from the perspective of cultural property preservation.