Bakumatsu were the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as sakoku and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government. The major ideological-political divide during this period was between the pro-imperial nationalists called ishin shishi and the shogunate forces, which included the elite shinsengumi swordsmen.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. is a Japanese multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group and its automobile division is the predecessor of Mitsubishi Motors.
Mitsubishi Corporation is Japan's largest trading company and a member of the Mitsubishi keiretsu. As of 2022, Mitsubishi Corporation employs over 80,000 people and has ten business segments, including energy, industrial finance, banking, machinery, chemicals, and food.
Sir Ernest Mason Satow,, was a British diplomat, scholar and Japanologist. He is better known in Japan, where he was known as Satō Ainosuke, than in Britain or the other countries in which he served as a diplomat. He was a key figure in late 19th-century Anglo-Japanese relations.
Thomas Blake Glover was a Scottish merchant in Bakumatsu and Meiji-period Japan.
William George Aston was an Anglo-Irish diplomat, author, and scholar of the languages and histories of Korea and Japan.
The foreign cemeteries in Japan are chiefly located in Tokyo and at the former treaty ports of Kobe, Hakodate, Nagasaki, and Yokohama. They contain the mortal remains of long-term Japan residents or other foreigners who died in Japan, and are separate from any of the military cemeteries.
Joseph Heco was the first Japanese person to be naturalized as a United States citizen and the first to publish a Japanese language newspaper.
Yokohama Chinatown is located in Yokohama, Japan, which is located just south of Tokyo. It was established in the late 19th century, and has a population of about 3,000 to 4,000.
The Icarus affair was an incident involving the murder of two Royal Navy sailors in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1867, leading to increased diplomatic tensions between the United Kingdom and the Bakumatsu period Tokugawa shogunate.
The Yokohama Specie Bank was a Japanese bank founded in Yokohama in 1880, which dominated the Japanese market for trade finance in subsequent decades. During the 1920s, it accounted for nearly 50 per cent of foreign exchange transactions for Japanese exports and imports, and in 1929 was Japan's largest and most profitable bank aside from the Bank of Japan. It also played a significant role in Japanese colonial ventures, not least in Manchuria and elsewhere in China.
TMEIC is a joint venture between Toshiba and Mitsubishi Electric headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in industrial electric and automation systems for industrial plants. The company develops and produces power electronics apparatus, electric motors, drives, and uninterruptible power supplies. TMEIC has worldwide operations with approximately 4500 employees.
The Kobe Naval Training Center was a naval training institute in Bakumatsu period Japan, established by the Military Commissioner of the Tokugawa shogunate, Katsu Kaishū in May 1864.
A foreign settlement was a special area in a treaty port, designated by the Japanese government in the second half of the nineteenth century, to allow foreigners to live and work.
The Kobe incident, also known in Japanese as the Bizen incident and in English as the Bizen affray or Bizen affair, was a diplomatic incident between Imperial Japan and several Western powers, caused by a skirmish on February 4, 1868, between Bizen soldiers and foreign sailors. It developed into a crisis in Franco–Japanese relations, becoming the first major international affairs challenge for the fledgling Imperial faction.
Onohama Shipyards was one of the first modern commercial shipyards in Japan, and was active in the early Meiji period. It was located in what is now part of Kobe, Japan.
Francis Hall (1822–1902) was an upstate New York book dealer who went to Japan in 1859 and became the founder of Walsh, Hall and Co., America's leading trading house in 19th-century Japan. Hall served as Japan correspondent for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, publishing nearly 70 articles in the Tribune. While in Japan he kept a detailed journal that has become a major source on life in Japan during the middle of the 19th century. Having made a fortune in trade between Japan and the United States he returned home in 1866 and became a philanthropist and world traveler.
Alexander Nelson Hansell was a British architect known primarily for his activities in Kobe, Japan. In 1891 he became a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects He had an apprentice named Yokoyama Eikichi.
The Kobe foreign settlement, also known as the Kobe foreign concession, was a foreign settlement located about 3.5 kilometers east of the Port of Kobe, in the future Chūō-ku of Kobe, Japan. Established based on the Ansei Treaties, it existed from January 1, 1868, to July 16, 1899.
The Kawaguchi foreign settlement, or known as the Old Kawaguchi settlement, was a foreign settlement located in north Kawaguchi, straddling in western present-day Nishi-ku, Osaka as well. It was also called the former Osaka settlement and the former Osaka-Kawaguchi settlement.
