Absolutely not. The strong Satsuma clan in southern Kyushu and the Choshu clan were just on the other side of Honshu. The Tosa were in Shikoku. These were just the factions which came together against the bakufu government.
No, Japan was too far away from support bases for allow a permanent blockage such as what the Northern States imposed on the South in the Civil war.
Prior to modernization, the Japanese did not require a navy, as Korea was never strong enough to invade Japan and China was never interested, nor had the navy. Unlike Europe where the British Isles were close enough to the continent, the Sea of Japan was large enough to permit isolation.
No, it would not have been possible. There was a very brief window at the end of the seclusion, so in the late 1850s and early 1860s when the difference in military might between the Western powers and Japan was at their highest. The so-called Anglo-Satsuma War and the Shimonoseki Campaign proved that Western navies could bombard Japanese coasts at will, but there is simply no way for them to have been able to subdue even the entire Kanto region, let alone all of Honshu, saying nothing of the Japanese archipelago. Which Western power would have the ability? The British had a strong navy, but her army was weak and otherwise engaged in the Crimean War and the Indian Rebellion in the last 1850s.
The Germans and French were busy getting ready to fight each other, and neither one would have been able to spare their entire army to take on the Japanese.
By the late 1860s, the Japanese forces were modernizing quickly enough that it was impossible for a foreign power to invade and defeat them. It wasn’t until WWII when the ten-fold plus size of the American industrial machine, combined with other Allies that would have allowed for a successful invasion.
As noted, the Japanese could count on material assistance from other Western powers
I think many people are forgetting that the great scramble for colonies didn’t occur until the 1870s and lasted until WWI. In 1870 only 10% of Africa was colonized by Western powers, by 1914 it was up to 90%, with only Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Liberia still independent.
By this point, Japan was well on its way to becoming strong enough to defeat any Western power who would have been foolish enough to attempt to invade.
Not really. Japan was seen as a potential market and trading partner but the motivation was not for them to become allied in exploiting China.
It’s not simply that the trade routes were land based, in China the vast majority of the people lived inland. The majority of Japanese lived near the sea and were vulnerable to foreign attacks.
This question has fascinated me for the almost 34 years since I first lived in Japan. Why was a feudal system dismantled by the very people who benefited by it? It’s called the Meiji Restoration but also called the Meiji Revolution as it was truly a complete change in society.
It seems that the people who started the stone rolling weren’t as intent on making the all the changes, but the revolution started to take a life of its own. It really is an interesting period of history.