���Sovereignty��� and ���Nation��� in a Precondition of the Meiji Restoration

In this paper, the basic condition that became the premise of the various political trends in the Meiji Restoration will be considered from the point of view of ���sovereignty��� and ���nation.��� Researchers until now have been considered that the will of people in the Edo period is not reflected in society. They also have been considered that the Meiji Restoration was a democratic movement that opposed the dictatorship. It is, however, my argument that the aforementioned understanding is not correct. In recent years, researchers in the field of International Relations have reviewed the received theory that sovereign state system was established in the mid 17 th century in Europe and promoted the deconstruction of so-called the Myth of Westphalia. However, the matter they have denied is not external sovereignty, but internal sovereignty. In other words, in Europe, external sovereignty was established first, and the democratic movement of people and penetration of internal sovereignty had been advanced under this condition. A reverse process had been in progress in Japan. Of course, researchers recently have pointed out that there existed movements of goods, informations, and humen from abroad to the ���mouth of the four��� in the Edo period: Matsumae, Tsushima, Nagasaki, Ryukyu. However, ���diplomacy��� in that situation was thoroughly an indirect one and was not monopolized by the Tokugawa Shogunate. In other words, the power structure was decentralized. In the Meiji Restoration, councilor of Tokugawa Shogunate could not get a valid response to this contradiction and the government fell into chaos. In that time, it was more of how to produce external sovereignty and national will against the overflowing will of people than of how to increase people will against the dictatorship that was essential