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The modernization of the Japanese artillery throughout the Bakumatsu period was the result of both Western military and trade breakthroughs in East Asia since the end of the eighteenth century, and domestic tensions over the counteractions policies launched by the shogunate. This article details the various ways that the bakufu and the fiefs introduced and adapted Western military innovations and warfare, and depicts the numerous political, economic, and technological obstacles they had to overcome. It also points out the role of artillery in the military reforms promoted during the 1860s, in order to create a new military apparatus along Western standards, and their social impact on a status society dominated by a highly hierarchical class of warriors.