[New Series] Japan Will Be Reborn as a Small Nation NHK’s Emerging “New Bakumatsu History”

 

[New Series] Japan Will Be Reborn as a Small Nation

NHK’s Emerging “New Bakumatsu History”

Oguri Kozukenosuke and the Origins of Japan’s Small‑Nation Strategy

In recent years, NHK has been steadily moving away from a “victors’ history” of the Bakumatsu–Meiji Restoration,
and instead has been trying to reinterpret Japan within the broader flow of world history.

That trajectory has become clearer year by year:

• 2024: NHK Special reporting team’s book “Retsugō vs. Nippon” (“The Great Powers vs. Japan”)
• 2025: NHK blog (first episode commentary for the Taiga drama “The Shogun’s Traitor Retainers”)
• February 2026: NHK blog (detailed statement of the production intent behind “The Shogun’s Traitor Retainers”)

These three outputs are formally independent,
but in fact they are deeply connected by a single underlying perspective:

“Late‑Tokugawa Japan was groping for a survival strategy as a small nation.”

And this perspective resonates strongly with the theme of my new series,
“Japan Will Be Reborn as a Small Nation.”

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1. 2024 – NHK Special Book “The Great Powers vs. Japan”:

The Bakumatsu as the Center of World History

This book portrays late‑Tokugawa Japan not as a mere “domestic civil war,” but as

a strategic crossroads in the global struggle for hegemony among Britain, France, Russia, and the United States.

Several points are particularly striking:

• The Tsushima Incident as part of the Anglo‑Russian rivalry
• The Shimonoseki War as an extension of Britain’s plan for a full‑scale war against Japan
• The “money wars” among Oguri, Parkes, and Roches
• The maneuvers of arms merchants like Jardine Matheson and Glover
• The shadow of Prussia behind the Northern Alliance (Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei)
• Enomoto Takeaki’s line:

  “We did not lose to Satsuma and Chōshū. We lost to Britain.”

The book’s conclusion is clear:

Bakumatsu Japan stood at the very center of the Great Game.
And we are still walking along the extension of that line today.

This implies that:

Japan had the option not of “becoming a great power,”
but of choosing a small‑nation survival strategy.

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2. 2025 – NHK Blog (First‑Episode Commentary for “The Shogun’s Traitor Retainers”):

The Bakumatsu Seen from the Losers’ Side

The NHK blog published in 2025,
as a commentary on the first episode of the Taiga drama “The Shogun’s Traitor Retainers,”
explains clearly why Oguri Kozukenosuke was chosen as the protagonist.

The production team states:

• The story will depict the Bakumatsu from the side of the “losers,” the shogunate.

• Oguri was “a father of Meiji” who was later erased from official history.

• The Bakumatsu era resembles contemporary Japan in striking ways:

  • Rising prices
  • Widening inequality
  • Information chaos
  • Pressure from great powers
  • Social fragmentation

And the decisive line is this:

“The Bakumatsu was not merely a domestic civil war,
but a period in which Japan sought a way to survive amid a changing world order.”

This strongly suggests the perspective:

The Bakumatsu is a mirror image of contemporary Japan.

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3. February 2026 – NHK Blog (Production Intent of “The Shogun’s Traitor Retainers”):

The Core of Oguri Kozukenosuke’s Thought

In the latest official NHK blog published in February 2026,
the production team delves even deeper into Oguri Kozukenosuke’s ideas.

The Oguri that emerges here is completely different from the conventional “traitor” image:

• Oguri sought to protect national independence and social stability.
• He designed diplomacy, public finance, technology, and information warfare as an integrated whole.
• His ideas are described as “precisely what contemporary Japan needs.”
• The structural crisis of the Bakumatsu is presented as identical in form to that of present‑day Japan.

The production team goes so far as to declare:

“The Bakumatsu era was truly very similar to the present.”

In other words, NHK is clearly suggesting that:

Oguri Kozukenosuke’s thought is one of the most important national strategies
for Japan 150 years later.

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4. What These Three NHK Outputs Share:

A “New Bakumatsu History” Centered on Small‑Nation Strategy

Although the three projects are independent,
they converge completely on one crucial point:

Bakumatsu Japan was not aiming to become a great power,
but was searching for a survival strategy as a small nation.

And at the center of that search stood:

Oguri Kozukenosuke.

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5. Next Preview – Why Is Oguri Kozukenosuke the Origin of Japan’s Small‑Nation Strategy?

Just as postwar Japan’s small‑nation strategy (the Yoshida Doctrine) produced a “miracle,”
there was also a source of small‑nation thinking in the Bakumatsu.

At its core was Oguri Kozukenosuke.

In the next installment, I will explore:

Why Oguri’s ideas resonate so strongly
with Japan’s contemporary recovery strategy as a small nation,

through five lenses:

• Public finance
• Diplomacy
• Technology
• Naval power
• State design

The political thought of a “loser” of the Bakumatsu
may hold the most important clues for Japan 150 years later—

In the coming piece, I will carefully unravel why that is so.