And this only further motivated the daimyo and the samurai who were ready to give the Tokugawa the boot within a few years, they would. So what does this have to do with nationalism? Well, plenty. First off, even though the Americans and the Japanese didn't go to war, yet, the perceived threat provided an impetus for Japan to start thinking about itself differently. It also resulted in the Japanese being convinced that if they wanted to maintain their independence, they would have to reconstitute their country as a modern nation-state. This looks a lot like what was happening in Egypt or even in Germany, with external pressures leading to calls for greater national consolidation. So the Tokugawa didn't give up without a fight, but the civil war between the stronger daimyo and the Bokufu eventually led to the end of the shogunate.