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This introductory chapter outlines the three goals of the book and situates its contribution against existing scholarship. The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko offers a fresh perspective on what it meant to be a woman and a political activist in the late Tokugawa period; it enriches our understanding of ideology and society in nineteenth-century Japan by blurring the line between rational and irrational; and nuances our understanding of Japan’s transition into the modern era by illuminating simultaneously the well-known historical moments and the microcosm of the single individual.

This chapter examines Tokiko’s connections with peers, mentors, and informants near and far. By tracing the contours of her social circles it identifies the space where her worldview and her subsequent plan for action took roots and blossomed. It also looks at the precise historical moment when circumstances coalesced into an invitation to act: the Year of the Horse Ansei 5 (1858).

This chapter follows Tokiko’s 1859 journey to and sojourn in Kyoto, challenging the common view that she accomplished the mission entirely alone. Both her political awakening and her feats of activism occurred within the safety net of poetic/loyalist circles, the members of which offered information and support.

This two-part chapter deals with transitions large and small, public and private. With her banishment in 1859 and the deaths of Tokugawa Nariaki and Ii Naosuke in 1860, Tokiko’s foray into engaged activism came to a close. Four years later Tokiko chronicled the Mito civil war. With the balance between chaos and cosmos compromised by these transitional moments, Tokiko adapted to times that kept on changing, while still using the cosmic forces to restore harmony in the face of discordance.

In 1930s Mito, Tokiko’s accomplishments were a source of local pride. The stories that came out of Mito, however, differed from the ones produced elsewhere. Whereas the “real” Tokiko had often felt displaced and disoriented in her transition from the Tokugawa to the Meiji orders, the heroine of 1930 Mito apologists fit right in with the modern and her story was presented as an unmitigated success.

Here the narrative returns to historical development to discuss the role that a movement called ‘Late Mito Thought’ played in the years prior to the Restoration. Here we find a revival of the Neo-Confucian–Shintō amalgam developed by Yamazaki Ansai. The ‘young Turks’ at Mito were highly critical of how the country was being run and argued for a moral revival on Confucian lines in order to effectively counter the threat from Russia and Britain. The most important of these figures was Aizawa Seishisai, whose writings were influential with many young samurai concerned that Japan was heading for disaster. In the end this ideology of total exclusion was not to succeed as the pressure from outside proved too powerful to resist. It was then realized that an opening up of the country controlled by Japan itself was infinitely preferable to the alternative.

This chapter deals with the politics of religion in the early years of the Tokugawa period. It does so by taking up two very different examples, one in the domain of Mito and the other in the Okayama domain. In the former, Buddhist temples were rationalized in order to save both money and space and we see the first attempts to clarify the distinction between Buddhism and Shintō, which had up to that point been inextricably intertwined. This process went much further in Okayama, although in neither case was the attempt really successful. The main aim of the chapter, however, is to analyse the unusual phenomenon of arguments in favour of a synthesis between Shintō and Confucianism. This had already begun with the work of Hayashi Razan but was further developed by Yamazaki Ansai, whose influence proved to be crucial and long-lasting.