Introduction Robert Hellyer and Harald Fuess; Part I. Global Connections: 1. Japan and the world conjuncture of 1866 Mark Metzler; 2. Western whalers in 1860s Hakodate: how the Nantucket of the North Pacific connected Restoration-era Japan to global flows Noell H. Wilson; 3. Small town, big dreams: a Yokohama merchant and the transformation of Japan Simon Partner; 4. The global weapons trade and the Meiji Restoration: dispersion of means of violence in a world of emerging nation-states Harald Fuess; Part II. Internal Conflicts: 5. Mountain demons from Mito - the arrival of civil war in Echizen in 1864 Maren Ehlers; 6. 'Farmer-soldiers' and local leadership in late Edo period Japan Brian Platt; 7. A military history of the Boshin War H¿ya T¿ru; 8. Imai Nobuo: a Tokugawa stalwart's path from the Boshin War to personal reinvention in the Meiji nation-state Robert Hellyer; Part III. Domestic Resolutions: 9. Settling the frontier and defending the North: the 'farmer-soldiers' in Hokkaido's colonial development and national reconciliation Steven Ivings; 10. Locally ancient and globally modern: Restoration discourse and the tensions of modernity Mark Ravina; 11. Ornamental diplomacy: Emperor Meiji and the monarchs of the modern world John Breen; 12. The restoration of the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto and international cultural legitimacy in Meiji Japan Takagi Hiroshi.