Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration marked the end of more than two and a half centuries of rule by the Tokugawa shogunate, which had governed Japan from 1603 while keeping the emperor as a largely ceremonial figure. By the 1850s and 1860s the shogunate had been weakened by internal discontent and by the pressure of Western powers, beginning with the arrival of the American fleet under Commodore Matthew Perry, which forced Japan to abandon its long policy of seclusion and open its ports to foreign trade.

Resentment at these humiliating treaties and at the shogunate's apparent weakness fueled a movement among reform-minded samurai, especially from the domains of Satsuma and Choshu, who rallied around the slogan of restoring the emperor. In 1868 their forces overthrew the last Tokugawa shogun and proclaimed the restoration of direct imperial rule under the young emperor Mutsuhito, who reigned under the era name Meiji, meaning enlightened rule.

The new government abolished the feudal domains and the privileged samurai class, established a centralized administration, and launched a sweeping program of modernization. Japan rapidly built railways, factories, a modern army and navy, a national education system, and a constitutional government modeled in part on Western states. Within a few decades these reforms transformed Japan from an isolated feudal society into a major industrial and military power, the first Asian nation to do so.