Bakumatsu (幕末 bakumatsu, a compound word, translatable as "the end" or matsu of the military government or baku, which abbreviates bakufu, in turn literally meaning "tent-government") refers to the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ends.

Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ends its isolationist foreign policy known as sakoku and changes from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the pre-modern empire of the Meiji government.

The major ideological-political divide during this period is between the pro-imperial nationalists called ishin shishi and the shogunate forces, which include the elite shinsengumi swordsmen.

These two groups aere the most visible powers.

There are two other main driving forces for dissent: first, growing resentment on the part of the tozama daimyō (or outside lords), and second, growing anti-Western sentiment following the arrival of Matthew C. Perry.

The first relates to those lords whose predecessors had fought against Tokugawa forces at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and had, from that point on, been excluded permanently from all powerful positions within the shogunate.

The second is to be expressed in the phrase sonnō jōi, or "revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians".