The shogunate has never achieved true unification, and the daimyo under it are still working in their own ways, and the shogunate is the largest and leading big brother. However, it was easy to rely on his fists to fight for the position of the eldest brother, and of course the Tokugawa family had to gather their younger brothers.

During the reign of the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, in order to further consolidate the authority of the shogunate and weaken the power of the feudal lords in various regions, he established the system of "visiting the pilgrimage and giving an account". The so-called "pilgrimage confession" means that the daimyo in each region had to purchase a mansion in the town of Edo Castle and place their wives and children in it as hostages to the shogunate, while the daimyo himself spent one year in the domain and one year in Edo, alternating between them (the daimyo in the Kanto region rotated every six months). The daimyo traveled thousands of miles to Edo to serve the shogun, and the expenses of the honor guard on the road and the living expenses of living in Edo had to be paid for by themselves, and the shogunate did not subsidize it, which made the financial burden very heavy. Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu used this system to weaken the economic power of the feudal domains, so that they could no longer compete with the shogunate.

Although the bad trick of "visiting the pilgrimage and confessing" is good, with the development of history, it has gradually become impossible to suppress the daimyo below. The so-called new government army was not a team pulled up by the emperor's brother himself, but mainly feudal soldiers, and their owners were all old acquaintances of the Tokugawa family. The rise of Satsuma, Nagasu, Tosa, and Hizen, these powerful feudal clans in the southwest, brought the contradictions between the Shimazu clan, the Mori clan, and the Tokugawa clan more than 200 years ago to the modern era.

Let's talk about the Shimazu clan in Satsuma first, at the end of the Warring States period, this ancient family suddenly swelled, and almost unified the entire Kyushu region, but then it was defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Western Sea Expeditionary Force, and was forced to retreat back to Satsuma and Osumi. During the Shimazu Yushi Shinsai (Yoshihiro) era, he still wanted to take advantage of the opposition between the East and the West to fish in the waters, but he suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Sekigahara and fled back to his main castle of Kagoshima in a panic. Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered his princes to crusade against the Shimazu clan, but Shinsai's son, Tadatsune, managed to keep his territory from being changed.

After that, the Shimazu clan, which is located in the southwesternmost part of Japan, began to struggle in peacetime, and the biggest enemy they faced changed from external troubles to internal worries. Satsuma was a barren land and a much more backward social structure than other feudal domains, and there were a large number of so-called "villagers" who were both farmers and soldiers, and even after the entire Edo period, the separation of soldiers and peasants was not realized. So many samurai, even low-level samurai, also want to receive money and eat. The Shimazu clan had no possibility of external expansion except for a brief attack on the Ryukyus, so it was financially constrained and its finances were on the verge of bankruptcy several times. Of course, there was also the "credit" of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the daimyō's system of "visiting and confessing" did less damage to the feudal clan closer to Edo, and the farther away the feudal clan, the greater the damage, and of course the farthest Shimazu clan suffered the most.

In the third year of the Hori, the shogunate ordered the Shimazu clan to contribute money to the management of the Kiso River, and the elder of the family, Hirata Masa, shouldered this burden and led thousands of people to the Noo area to carry out water control projects. Under the planning and supervision of officials dispatched by the shogunate, the Satsuma people worked hard and finally completed the task successfully, but after the fact, the cost was an astronomical amount that they could not afford. As a result, Hirata committed suicide, and the feudal lord Shimazu Shigeneni (Kumen) died of grief soon after.

Shimazu Shigeyo succeeded Shimazu Shigeyo as lord of the Satsuma domain, and as soon as he took office, Shigehiro devoted himself to political refreshment and enacted various reforms to alleviate the financial crisis. Because at this time, if he did not make up his mind to carry out reforms, the Shimazu clan would simply not be able to survive, and the annual income of the entire feudal domain was 150,000 taels, but the loans of the wealthy merchants of the three capitals (Osaka, Kyoto, and Edo) were as high as 5 million taels, with an annual interest rate of more than 250,000 taels! Even if it's really Yin, he can't pay it back at all.

In order to cultivate human resources and reform politics, Shigehiro Shimazu set up the Shogunate Shinshi Museum and the Medical Museum to import and study Rangaku without the help of the shogunate. His efforts soon paid off, and a large group of lower- and middle-ranking samurai grew up and were put to good use, contributing to the revival of the Satsuma Domain, the most famous of which was Chosho Hirogo.

In the 10th year of the civil administration, Guangxiang held the post of Damu Fu, and basically grasped the real power in the domain, and he immediately launched a series of reform measures. First, Hirogo used coercion to force creditors to agree to abolish the annual interest rate and allow the Shimazu clan to repay the debt of 5 million taels in installments over 250 years. In fact, this kind of method of relying on interest and repaying debts has been carried out by the shogunate many times, and it has not caused a serious financial crisis, but the investigation office Hirogo has not been as domineering and domineering as the shogunate elders. Of course, it is also because of his status and status, he can't be domineering if he wants to. He promised to allow the wealthy merchants of the Sandu who were among the creditors to obtain the rights to the products of Samot, and at the same time allowed the merchants of the feudal clan among the creditors to inherit the family business of the samurai. In this way, he fought and pulled, and finally temporarily unloaded the huge debt burden he was carrying.

At the same time, he ordered a large area of cash crops to be planted in the southern part of Satsuma, and the feudal clan monopolized the sale of sugar, and he secretly increased the volume of trade between the Ryukyus and China, gradually rebuilding the feudal domain's finances. However, the paper could not contain the fire after all, and the secret trade was finally found out by the shogunate, and the shogunate sent people to interrogate it, and in order to avoid implicating the feudal lord, Hirogo took all the responsibility on himself, so he committed suicide.

Although the Hirogo Sho was dead and the secret trade could no longer be carried out for the time being, the Satsuma Domain continued many of the policies of "colonizing and prospering" in Hirogo, and not only completely got rid of the financial crisis, but also introduced a large number of advanced Western-style weapons, began to reorganize armaments, expanded its strength, and finally was able to regain its dominance in the West Sea.

Satsuma has a wide township, and on the other hand, Choshu has a Murata breeze. The so-called Choshu refers to the Aki Mori clan in the Warring States period. After the Battle of Sekigahara, the territory of the Mori clan was drastically reduced, and only the two countries of Shufu and Nagato remained. However, because it was the gateway to the Seto Inland Sea, the trade in goods had been active since ancient times, so it was an important target of the shogunate's suppression, and although there were a large number of retainers to support, it was somewhat richer than the Satsuma Domain.

In order to enhance its economic strength, the Choshu Domain began to implement a * system for paper, wax, blue and other special products very early, because the feudal officials often forcibly purchased the above-mentioned specialties of the peasants at low prices, and controlled the circulation of goods, which led to the continuous riots in the domain in the early nineteenth century, especially in the eighth year of Tenpo, more than 60,000 peasants participated, and the great rebellion lasted for three whole months, and the peasants demanded the abolition of the * right, the reduction of the annual tribute ratio, and the liberalization of commodity circulation. Under this pressure, the lord of the Choshu domain, Mori Keiko, was forced to appoint Murata Kiyofu, a mid-ranking samurai with 50 koku, to preside over the administration of the domain and carry out all-round reforms.

Murata Kiyokaze once expounded the five principles of "Correcting Abuses" in his book "Opinions on the Correction of Abuses" to Mori's relatives, such as "Correcting Discipline," "Employing Talents," "Reforming Education and the Military System," "Renewing the Civil and Military Forces," and "Revitalizing Industry." After he came to power, he hired wealthy businessmen Nakano Hanzaemon, Shiraishi Shoichiro and others to participate in the management of commodity circulation and vigorously develop foreign trade - in fact, similar means Tanuma Yoshichi had done it, but at the same time it deeply damaged the interests of middle and lower class samurai and civilians while emphasizing business, how did Murata Seifu solve this problem?

It turned out that while supporting the wealthy merchants, in order to help the poor middle and lower rank samurai, the feudal government announced that they would repay all debts in thirty-seven years, and at the same time encouraged the samurai to cultivate martial arts and learning. For the urban poor and peasants, he made certain concessions by easing the restrictions on the "four whites" (rice, salt, wax, and paper) of Choshu, allowing cotton and cotton cloth to circulate freely, and exempting the newly reclaimed wasteland from annual tribute. In this way, in just five years, more than half of the 85,000 yen foreign debt of the Choshu Domain had been repaid, and the situation within the domain gradually stabilized.

While rebuilding the finances of the Choshu Domain, Murata Kiyokaze also vigorously cultivated and promoted talented middle- and lower-ranking samurai, promoted Ranggaku, and purchased new weapons, thus strengthening Choshu's military power. In the 14th year of Tenbo, Mori Keijin held a large-scale military exercise in Hagadai, with a total of 14,000 troops, high morale and excellent equipment, which caused a great sensation.

In addition to the Satsuma and Choshu feudal domains, many princes also carried out similar reform measures, such as the Yamauchi domain of Tosa Kochi, the Nabeshima domain of Hizen Saga, and one of the three royal families of Hitachi Mito. Before the Tenpo period, most of the reforms were carried out from the top down, and how the shogunate reformed it, the feudal domains also followed suit, and the shogunate reform failed, and the feudal clans only lost even more. However, after the reform of the liberal administration, the feudal lords saw that the shogunate was declining, so they started to learn from the lessons and implemented a series of truly effective reform measures in their own domains, compared to the reform of these feudal domains, the shogunate's tenpo reform was a big joke.

The common denominator of the successful reforms was the vigorous development of commerce, the rebuilding of the feudal government's finances, and the promotion and reuse of middle and lower samurai to bring the wealthy merchants and rich peasants closer to each other, replacing the important ministers of the feudal dynasty as the core force of the feudal government. Many of the princes of Kansai gradually weakened the power of the important ministers in the Taiping era, so that although this reform may not be smooth sailing, it also came naturally, while many princes of Kanto, especially the pro-feudal and genealogical dynasties of the shogunate, eventually returned because the conservative forces were too strong. For example, in the Mito Domain, the lord of the domain, Tokugawa Saiaki, was known as the "virtuous king", but the reform measures he pushed for failed one by one and did not improve.

In this way, the gradual rise of the southwestern feudal domain inevitably shook the rule of the Edo shogunate, and it happened that at this time, the great powers also invaded Japan, and the magnificent reform movement of the end of the Edo shogunate began.