The
Final Decades of the Shogunate
nDuring the first half of the 19th century the shogunate continued to combine a central bureaucracy with semi-feudal alliances between regional daimyos and samurai.
nThe government encountered financial problems because taxation was based on agriculture while the economy was becoming more commercialized.
•Reform spurts met revenue gaps until the 1840s when an unsuccessful effort weakened the government and hampered responses to Western pressure.
•Japanese intellectual and cultural life continued to expand under the Tokugawa.
•Neo-Confucianism kept its hold among the elite at the expense of Buddhism.
