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Why did the Meiji government ban samurai from wearing swords?

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The emperor Meiji — Meiji Restoration After the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Meiji emperor became the formal head of a new imperial government under whose reign Japan was transformed from an isolated feudal society into a modern, industrialized global power.

The Meiji government’s decision to ban samurai from wearing swords was part of a broader effort to dismantle the rigid feudal class system and modernize Japan following the Meiji Restoration of 1868.12

Under the previous Tokugawa shogunate, society was formally divided into a four-tiered hierarchy, with the samurai occupying a privileged administrative and military role and wearing two swords as a symbol of their social status. To transform Japan into a centralized, industrialized nation-state capable of resisting Western encroachment, the new leadership sought to abolish these traditional class privileges.12

By officially ending feudalism in 1871 and establishing a national army supported by universal conscription, the government rendered the samurai’s traditional military role and their status-based right to carry weapons obsolete. These reforms were essential to the government's goal of creating a unified, modern society where all citizens were subject to the same laws and national authority, rather than the decentralized, caste-based order of the past.12