Emperor Meiji and Japan's Transformation

The man known to history as Emperor Meiji was born on the 3rd of November 1852 near the Imperial Palace at Kyoto in central Honshu, the main island of the Japanese island archipelago. In his earliest years, he was known as Prince Sachi or Sachi no Miya. His father was the Emperor Komei. the ceremonial ruler of Japan during what is known as the Edo period. Komei had succeeded to the imperial throne in 1846, when he was still just a teenager. He was a traditionalist and believed that Japan should maintain its centuries-long political, social, and cultural structures, even in the face of a modernizing world. Sachi's mother was Nakayama Yoshiko. She was a concubine of the emperors, but because Komei's wife, the Empress Eisho, only had two children, and both died in infancy, Prince Sachi would subsequently rise to the position of imperial heir. When he was born in 1852, Japan was about to enter into the most transformative period in its entire history. The country was still ruled in the mid-19th century in the same way which it had been for centuries. This was effectively a feudal society, one over which the emperors served as a kind of spiritual or ceremonial head. at the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto in central Honshu. But real power in Japan lay with the Shogun. The Tokugawa Shogunate had been established all the way back in 1603, and the Shoguns ruled Japan as a kind of feudal king or de facto ruler from the city of Edo, which would soon become known as Tokyo. These Shoguns ruled over a sprawling landscape of approximately 200 daimyos, and the Shogunate was the only one to have a or lordships into which Japan was divided, each administering a feudal han or region. Some of these were more powerful than others. For instance, the Chonshu domain occupied a very significant place in the western extremity of Honshu, the main island of the Japanese archipelago. Similarly, the Satsuma Han covered much of the southern half of the island of Kyushu, the southwesternmost of the large islands of the chain. Each of these daimyos or feudal lords had large numbers of samurai who served under them, ostensibly as military warriors. But during the prolonged period of peace which the Tokugawa shogunate constituted, many of these samurai had effectively become bureaucrats and administrative officials. While the Tokugawa shogunate had ensured political stability since the start of the 17th century, Japanese culture and society was even more deeply rooted. The country was firmly traditional in its religious, cultural, and social values, with Neo-Confucianism an offshoot of the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, underpinning many of the values of Japanese society. Moreover, because Japan had successfully fended off efforts over the centuries by the Chinese, Koreans, and Mongols to either settle across the Japanese archipelago or invade it, The country was extremely homogenous in its values, culture, and racial landscape. As a result, when European interlopers from Portugal, the Dutch Republic, and England first began arriving in Japan in the 16th and early 17th century, a skeptical view was taken of them. When they began to send Jesuit missionaries to Christianize the Japanese, the Shoguns quickly responded by effectively expelling the Europeans from Japan, apart from a few trading stations. which they were allowed restricted access to, and this is how Japan would spend the next 200 or so years. The country was effectively sealed from outside influences and retained its remarkably stable political and social system, free from European intervention. Japan's ability to avoid outside interference in its affairs was in many ways determined by its geography. In the early 17th century, when it closed its borders, Europeans were only just beginning to strike out and colonize the world. When they headed too far from Europe, they were usually reliant on finding allies amongst the natives to do the conquering for them. Such was the case with Hernán Cortés in Mexico, the Portuguese and later the British in India, and a great many other powers. When they relied on settling their own small colonies and expanding them gradually, they had to do so closer to home on the other side of the Atlantic. Japan was too far away. and even if they had been able to get there easily, the Japanese would not have been an easy military power to defeat in the 17th century. However, by the early 19th century that had begun to change. European technology had increased dramatically, with highly efficient rifles and heavy artillery having completely replaced traditional close quarters with combat. Moreover, inventions like the railways and the steamship were about to make the world a much smaller place. Japan would not be able to retain its stance of isolation from the rest of the world for much longer in this changed environment. By the time the future emperor was born in 1852, the British had just imposed themselves into China, another nation which had tried to cut itself off from European interference. In the years that followed, the British, Americans, Dutch and French, became interested in developing trading and diplomatic ties to Japan as well. A harbinger of future developments was seen the year after Prince Sachi was born when a United States Navy Commodore by the name of Matthew Perry arrived to Japan and sailed into Edo Harbor. There he fired off his cannons and refused commands to move to the port of Nagasaki, the only one in Japan open to Westerners. Eventually, he delivered a message saying he would return a year later to negotiate a treaty. This he did, leading to the Convention of Kanagawa, an agreement whereby the Tokugawa shogunate was effectively forced to end its policy of isolation and open several ports to American traders. In the years that followed, as the future Emperor Meiji was growing up, Japan was suddenly exposed to all manner of political, economic, social and cultural innovations from the outside world. brought in by American, British, Dutch and French traders and diplomats. In the process, a divide began to emerge within Japanese politics and society at large. Should it try to resist these Western innovations? Or should it embrace them as the best means of ensuring Japanese independence? In essence, was the only way to protect Japan from Western dominance, to become more like the Westerners? This was the question. which would define Japan in the second half of the 19th century. Because the life of the imperial court in Kyoto was lived largely in secrecy and behind closed doors, there is very little known about the early life of the man who would grow up to reign over Meiji era Japan. He was described in some accounts as being athletic and excelling in traditional Japanese physical activities, such as sumo wrestling and sword fighting. However, Many of these accounts were written years later when he was already emperor, and it is impossible to know if they were flattering descriptions written to compliment the emperor or not. At some stage in his youth, Prince Sachi was given the more honorific title of Prince Mutsuhito. This occurred as it became clear he would succeed his father as emperor one day. Despite the supposedly isolated nature of the imperial palace and life at Kyoto, the He was evidently being exposed to many of the new ideas which were arriving to the country as he was growing up. The striking manner in which he presided over the modernization of Japan in the 1870s and 1880s makes it apparent that he was inculcating such ideas during his formative years. Clearly he was also a headstrong individual from a young age. Of that there can be no doubt, as before he reached his 20th year, he had already presided over a striking shift in Japan's history. This was made possible by the premature death of his father at the end of January 1867. Thus, on the 3rd of February, at just 14 years of age, Mutsuhito became the 122nd emperor of Japan. He would subsequently be given the name Meiji, and this was also applied to the reign at his death. Meiji came to the throne during a period of time when he was the king of Japan. period which has been referred to by historians as Bakumatsu, meaning roughly, the end of the Tent government, or the end of rule by military commanders like the Shoguns. During this, in the late 1850s and into the 1860s, Japan became increasingly divided between a conservative faction, which continued to support the Tokugawa Shogunate and which was skeptical about opening Japan up to too much outside influence, and a reform faction, which which had favored a reduction in the power of the Shogun or the complete destruction of the Shogunate in favor of a more powerful Imperial administration. This Imperial faction tended to favor reform of Japanese society and the introduction of Western ideas, but the major dividing line was whether one was opposed to or in favor of the Shogunate. Many of the clans and Daimyos had effectively been excluded from power for decades and this had created resentment movement amongst many senior Japanese lords towards the Shogun, Tokugawa Iyomochi. When he died in the early autumn of 1866, a reformer, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, succeeded him, but while he tried to introduce western ideas and political reforms, it was too late. What is known as the Meiji Restoration was initiated in January 1868 to effectively end the shogunate and create a new system of government with the emperor playing a more prominent role in politics. This was led by three of the great Japanese lords of the time, Saigo Takamori of the powerful Satsuma clan, Okubo Toshimichi from the same clan and Kido Takeyoshi of the Choshu province. The latter was one of the most powerful lords of the time. powerful daimyos in Japan controlling much of the southern end of Honshu and who had been opposed to the shogunate for many years. In early January 1868, these three lords with contingents of Satsuma, Choshu and other samurai effected a coup across Japan. They seized control of the imperial palace at Kyoto, securing Meiji and then convincing him to issue a decree that the shogunate was at an end and henceforth he would begin to rule more directly as Emperor of Japan. This done, the revolutionaries began seizing full control of the government, which they had been able to secure owing to the fortuitous confluence of a teenage emperor, succeeding at almost exactly the same time as a new young shogun came to power. Moreover, the political turmoil caused by the rapid opening up of the country had also contributed to the overturning of the political system, which had prevailed for over two and a half years. half centuries. The Meiji Restoration did not go unopposed. It quickly triggered a civil war between those who had seized power and the supporters of the shogunate. The Boshin War, meaning War of the Year of the Yang Earth Dragon, might roughly be said to have been a war between the major daimyos of southern Japan, Choshu, Satsuma, and their allies, with the main supporters of the shogunate, such as the powerful Aitsu, Shonai, and the Shogunate. and Echigo daimyos, which between them ruled much of the northern half of Honshu island. In its initial stages, the conflict focused on efforts by the Satsuma and Choshu-led alliance to capture Edo from the shogunate faction. This was achieved after Saigo Takamori won a considerable victory at the Battle of Koshu-Katsunuma on the way to Edo on the 29th of March 1868. The capital was captured shortly afterwards, and the shogun, Yoshinobu thereafter, was captured. agreed to renounce his claims to the title. This effectively brought the shogunate to an official end, but the Boshin War continued throughout the remainder of 1868 and into early 1869, with resistance continuing in northern Honshu and on the northern island of Hokkaido. A breakaway Republic of Ezo was formed on Hokkaido. This was the last area to hold out against the new Meiji regime, with the Republic of Ezo only finally brought to an end in the summer of 1869, signaling the complete triumph of the revolution and the full inception of the Meiji era. Even before the Boshin War was brought to an end, major steps had been undertaken to create a new form of government. The main aspects of this were codified in the Charter Oath which was promulgated by Meiji at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto on the 6th of April 1868. This contained five main clauses. The first proclaimed that deliberative assemblies would be established to promote open discussion. This essentially proclaimed that Japan would now become a democracy with a parliament, although in practice it was over 20 years before a constitution would be finalized and the first parliament would sit in the country. The second clause proclaimed the end of the Japanese feudal state, as well as the social hierarchies which underpinned it. In tandem, The third clause asserted that all people would be free to engage in whatever occupation they wished. However, it was the fourth and fifth clauses which signified the greatest break with the past. These asserted that Japan would end its reliance on the, quote, evil customs of the past, and would now begin to seek knowledge about all matter of things from around the world with a view to strengthening Japanese society and the new imperial government. We can safely assume that Meiji was not responsible for drafting the Charter Oath. He was still not 16 years of age, but he agreed to promulgate it, and he never betrayed even the slightest reservation about upholding its strictures in later life. The Charter Oath was followed by further practical political changes. In the autumn of 1868, it was announced that, while Kyoto would remain the spiritual home of the imperial family, Henceforth the emperor would reside at Edo, the heart of government. The city would be renamed Tokyo, literally meaning Eastern Capital. Here a new government, modelled along western lines was created, with ministers responsible for different aspects of the governance. of the country. The most crucial reform which was undertaken at this early stage was the ending of the feudal system. Beginning in 1869, the Daimyo were requested to relinquish their authority over their lordships to the emperor. The government would then begin directly administering them. This process was pursued more aggressively in the early 1870s, and in 1872 it was declared that the approximately 200 provinces were now returned into the emperor's hands, and in their place, Japan would be governed through a system of 72 imperial prefectures, each presided over by an imperial governor. Some resisted this, but the process was amicable in many ways, and a good many of the senior lords were either given positions within the central government or made governors of the new prefectures. In the first years of modernization, and when he was just about 18 years of age, Meiji was involved in a decision to dispatch a major fact-finding mission abroad to both North America and Europe. The objective of launching such a mission had been directly alluded to in the Fifth Clause of the Charter Oath of 1868. The Iwakura mission was so named for the leader of it, Iwakura Tomomi, a prominent Japanese politician who had represented much of the nobility prior to the Meiji Restoration. and who had facilitated the transition to the modernizing government. The party consisted of just over 100 Japanese politicians, diplomats, scholars, and their staff. The mission departed from Japan in the final days of 1871, and would not return until September 1873. In the near two-year period, they went firstly to the United States, spending much time on the East Coast where they visited the center of government in Washington, and several American universities and industrial factories in cities like Boston and New York. From there they proceeded to Europe, where they spent an extended period in the United Kingdom, even having an official meeting with Queen Victoria. A whirlwind tour of continental Europe followed in the first half of 1873, before a return trip via the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. The Iwakura mission was at once designed to proclaim to the Americans and the European nations that a new type of Japan had emerged and wished to be recognized as such on the world stage, whilst also gathering extensive information on industry, politics, and commerce from the countries which were leading modernity's charge. The Iwakura mission, combined with the gradual introduction of Western innovations and methods which had been underway since the 1850s and the hiring of thousands of Western experts by the Japanese government from the late 1860s onwards, ushered in a transformation of Japan's economy which would take place during Meiji's long reign. Much of this mirrored the onset of industrialization in Britain a century earlier, in that the textile industry was one of the key aspects of it. By the late 1870s, domestic workshops and small factories were beginning to emerge for cotton and silk weaving. This was necessarily small scale at first, But the introduction of coal-powered steam engines to operate large weaving machines and establish more elaborate factories soon saw the Japanese textile industry begin to expand very significantly. By the 1890s, the industry had grown to the point where increased demand within Japan itself was being met and a considerable excess was being produced for export overseas to China, British India or Europe, where silk in particular still fetched a large price. The industry employed women in the main, and the excess capital which was created from it in the years that followed created money for investment in further industries by the 1890s and 1900s. Another major factor in the economic expansion of Japan was the advent of the railways in the country. The industry was enjoying a global boom at the time of the Meiji Restoration, with British and American industrialists such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, making enormous fortunes from railway development. As soon as the Meiji Restoration occurred, the first steam locomotive was introduced into Japan, and a major railway line was soon under development between Tokyo and the port of Yokohama. By the late 1870s, lines between all of the major cities on the main island of Honshu were under development or consideration, while smaller lines were also being constructed to major coal mines which were in operation to begin feeding Japan's growing industrial needs. Indeed, by the 1880s, the boom in railway construction in Japan and the massive amount of investment involved in companies like the Nippon Railway Company was such that many perceived an economic bubble to be developing such as had occurred with the railway mania in Britain back in the 1840s. Japan, though, avoided this speculative damage which had occurred in Britain decades earlier, and by the 1900s, had an entirely modern railway network connecting most of the major urban centres across its islands. The textile industry, coal mining and railway development were just three of the most prominent aspects of Japan's rapid industrialization and economic transformation in the four decades between the 1860s and the 1900s. Many other factors were at play, notably the reform of the traditional feudal society towards a more capitalist market-orientated labor and financial system. To that end, where each province had issued its own currency in the shogunate period, a national currency called the yen was introduced in 1871. It was given parity with the Mexican silver dollar, and mints were established to issue coins. By the early 1880s, the financial system was advanced enough that the Bank of Japan was set up. Agricultural output also increased across Japan. The overall impact of all of this was a considerable increase in the country's ability to feed itself and its national industrial output as well as a growing consumer society however there is a widespread debate down to the present day as to how much this actually improved the living standards of the average japanese person the country was after all very highly developed even before the meiji restoration and in 1700 living standards there had been on a par with many parts of europe Thus, the degree to which the economic advances of the post-1870 period benefited individual Japanese men and women is open to dispute, although the increasing occurrence of strikes and labor disputes by the 1890s and 1900s would suggest that many were not happy with the new dispensation in Meiji's Japan. The first years of the Meiji era also saw a concerted move away from the traditional military system used in Japan towards a modern army. A national army did not exist in Japan under the shogunate, rather the shoguns had called on the individual daimyos to provide military contingents to serve under them when needed. A debate continued for some time after 1868 about what new shape the national army should take, with some looking to build a small but elite force of samurai. trained in modern military methods. Eventually though, in the early 1870s, the view won out that a large conscript army from amongst the Japanese peasantry using European military methods should be used. To that end, in January 1873, a conscription ordinance was issued under Meiji's hand. This called for all adult males to serve in the new military for a period of time, and then for further years in reserve. Yet in theory exemptions could be purchased by the wealthier, and this was not a universal conscription. It did, though, lead swiftly to a major growth in the Japanese Imperial Army, with the number in arms quickly doubling from around 17,000 in 1873 to 35,000 in 1875. In the decade that followed, it expanded further to near 100,000, with tens of thousands of more partially trained reservists. The new Japanese army was largely trained by French military experts. A series of missions were sent by the French government to Japan from the late 1860s right through to the early 20th century. These helped establish training schools and shooting ranges as well as arsenals for guns and munitions, gun foundries and gunpowder factories in Tokyo and elsewhere. Through these measures, by the mid 1870s, the Japanese army had been able to The Japanese Imperial Army was evolving into a force which relied on lines of modern rifle-bearing inventory, backed by field artillery and machine guns. In addition, a military academy to train new Japanese military officers was set up at Ichigaya, outside Tokyo in 1875. Moreover, the Japanese had also quickly begun building a modern navy. In 1867, even before the Meiji Restoration, Japan had acquired its first ever ironclad warship, when it purchased the CSS Stonewall from the United States government, renaming it the Kotetsu. From the 1870s onwards, and during the 1880s in particular, the French began to provide technical advice to the Japanese on the construction of an expanded new national navy, one complete with ironclad cruisers and torpedo ships, and eventually modern battleships. The new army and navy were overseen by accomplished generals like Yamagata Aritomo, and Nozu Michitsura, but even at this early stage in the post-Shogunate era, there was a worrying tendency for the leading figures of the Japanese armed forces to obtain the most senior positions in government. This increased military capacity was not put into action on the world stage for many years, but the new Japanese state under Meiji was becoming more aggressive diplomatically from its very inception. This aggression was directed toward Japan's nearest neighbor. the Kingdom of Korea, which was ruled over by the Joseon Dynasty. Like Japan and China, Korea had opted hundreds of years earlier upon first contact with the Portuguese, Dutch, and British who began arriving to the Far East in the 16th century. to shut itself off from outside influences. Indeed, so severe was this self-imposed isolation in Korea that Western observers had come to refer to the country as the Hermit Kingdom. Ironically, Japan, which had itself only just abandoned its own long-held policy of isolation, became central to efforts to end Korean isolation in the early 1870s. This came about as part of efforts to demand that the Korean government acknowledge the changed political situation in Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Despite the sending of several envoys to the nearby peninsula state, the Joseon government continued to rebuff Japanese diplomatic endeavors, leading one of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration, Saigo Takamori, to propose a military expedition to Korea in 1873, an option which was not opted for. but which was given serious consideration. The debate in 1873 did not bring an end to deliberations on Korea. As the closest point of mainland Eastern Asia to the Japanese archipelago, the government in Tokyo considered Korea a vital national interest. Consequently, in 1875, Meiji's government began engaging in gunboat diplomacy to bring the situation to a head. A Japanese warship, the Onyo, was dispatched to patrol off the coast of Ganghwa Island off the western coast of Korea. When the local garrison was goaded into opening fire, Tokyo used this as an excuse to intensify its diplomatic moves against Korea. Additional warships were dispatched to the waters off Korea, and war was threatened if a new diplomatic arrangement was not arrived at between the two nations. The outcome was the Japan-Korea Treaty of Amity, which was signed in February 1876. Under the terms of this, the Koreans were forced to open several ports to Japanese trade. The Japanese Navy was also given considerable rights to search Korean ships off the coast of Korea, and Japanese merchants and other business interests were to be allowed to lease land and property in the Japanese ports. The highly unequal treaty not only required Korea to abandon its centuries-long isolation, but also began a gradual process of Japanese encroachments into Korea. As the process of modernization intensified in the aftermath of the Iwakura mission and other developments in the early 1870s, there was a growing drive amongst those who favored a complete modernization of Japanese society to begin dissolving the other administrative system which had prevailed for centuries, specifically the samurai order. As we have seen, these were not necessarily all warriors, but many were bureaucrats, teachers, clerks, and scholars. who worked with the traditional Japanese lords to rule their provinces, as much as 5% of the Japanese population belonged to the samurai class at the time of the Meiji Restoration. So they made up a huge proportion of the country's people, which meant that they were also an equally large drain on the country's finances. In many regions they were still the beneficiaries of payments which the modernizers in Tokyo believed should now be paid into the central exchequer. Thus, beginning in 1873, when these stipends, which the samurais received as payments for their work, were taxed for the first time by the government, the samurai class was gradually dismantled. In tandem, payments were offered to some samurai, whose work was now obsolete, to allow them to diversify into business or agriculture, thus reforming the social structure of Japanese society and benefiting its economy at the same time. This dissolution campaign was not entirely unwelcome to some. Many samurai joined the new Japanese military or became bureaucrats within the imperial administration. Others entered business or studied or took new occupations. However, it was opposed by many, particularly older samurai, who found it harder to adjust, as well as the more traditional daimyos. In particular, orders to stop wearing traditional samurai dress or carrying samurai weapons created major resentment. This was especially the case in the southwestern island of Kyushu, much of which was dominated by the powerful Satsuma clan. This was ruled over by Sayugo Takamori, one of the most powerful Japanese lords of the 1860s, who had actually been central to ensuring the success of the Meiji Restoration, and who had subsequently served as a senior political figure in the late 1860s and early 1870s. But he had since become disillusioned. perceiving that the modernization program had gone too far and believing it was robbing Japan of its traditional values. From 1874 onwards, he had been building his own samurai school on Kyushu. By 1876, concerns about Takamori's plans were considerable enough in Tokyo that Meiji's government attempted to assassinate Takamori that winter. The effort failed, but the discovery of the plot triggered an open revolt, the Satsuma Rebellion or Seinan War. lasted for much of 1877, with the government dispatching tens of thousands of its modern troops to Kyushu to see it off. At its end, in mid-September 1877, Takamori and many of his closest followers made a last stand against an imperial army with rifles and modern weaponry in a battle which, for many reasons, has been viewed as marking the symbolic end of the samurai order in Meiji-era Japan. Shortly after the crushing of the Satsuma rebellion, the issue of the succession was given greater clarity in Japan. Back in 1869, not long after the restoration, Meiji had married Masako Ichijo. She became known as the Empress Shoken and was the first imperial wife in centuries to be given the honorific Kogo, meaning Emperor's Consort. However, it became clear in the course of the 1870s that she was unable to bear children. Her husband consequently turned to several concubines, a not uncommon arrangement in Japanese imperial life as the emperor himself was the product of such a union. It was to one of Meiji's concubines, Sawarabi no Tsubone, a lady-in-waiting of the imperial court that a son named Prince Yoshihito was born in August 1879. He was actually the fifth of Meiji's children, with two boys and two girls, having been born between 1873 and 1878, each of whom died in infancy. In recognition of her place as the biological mother of the future emperor, Sawarabi was given the honorific title of Imperial Concubine, but the prince was partially raised by the emperors. Arrangements of different kinds were worked out for Meiji's other children. He eventually had fifteen children, ten girls and five boys, eight of whom were born to Sonosachiko. a concubine of the emperors in the 1880s and 1890s. Only five in total survived past infancy, a very low number even for a society and time where infant mortality was cruelly high. While we have a general view of how Meiji's family life developed, there is a frustrating lack of information about how he actually conducted himself during his reign and what day-to-day life was like. As with the time of the shogunate, the imperial palace was a secretive place, though the emperor now spent his time in Tokyo rather than in Kyoto, as his forebears had. There he was consulted regularly by the government and officially signed off on many official documents, but it is unclear to this day exactly how substantial his role was in the formation of policy and whether it was largely directed by leading ministers such as Okuma Shigenobu and Itagaki Taisuke. who formed some of Japan's earliest political parties, the Constitutional Progressive Party, and the Freedom and People's Rights Movement. Meiji's signature and seal abound across documents, but did he have a say in drafting them, or was he merely signing off what others had decided? It is very unclear. Additionally, Meiji did not keep a diary and engaged in little personal correspondence. Unsurprisingly, historians have developed widely divergent views of him. with some perceiving the emperor to be a powerful autocratic figure who ruled Japan entirely behind the scenes and others attributing little real authority to him. Of his behavior in his personal life, little is also known. The destruction of the Satsuma rebellion in the mid-1870s opened up an issue for Japan which could be viewed as both a problem and an opportunity. Over two and a half centuries earlier, in 1609, the Satsuma clan had invaded the Ryukyu Islands, a chain of small islands running from Kyushu southwest toward the island of Formosa, which we know today as Taiwan. Until then, it had been ruled as an independent Ryukyu Kingdom, but from 1609 it became a tributary or vassal state of Satsuma province. However, it retained a nominal independence and when Satsuma became involved in full-scale war with the Meiji government in 1877, the Ryukyu Islands did not participate. However, this did not imply that the islands were now independent again. In 1872, Meiji had issued a declaration in which the islands were said to be a Ryukyu domain or territory of Japan. In 1879, this was acted further on and the Ryukyu Islands were re-categorized into Okinawa Prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture. At the same time, Japanese troops were sent to the islands and the last king of Ryukyu, Shōtai, was forced to relocate to Tokyo and abdicate his throne. This was a sign of growing imperial ambitions on the part of Meiji's government and also provided an important geographical bridgehead near the larger island of Formosa. The 1880s saw steps taken to formalize the creation of a new constitution for Japan. The resulting Meiji Constitution of 1889, or Constitution of the Empire of Japan, was was in many ways simply a rubber stamping of political changes which had been initiated since 1868, but it also worked out many elements of the constitutional framework of the country as well. Through it the emperor was made the supreme leader of the country, with a prime minister and cabinet serving underneath him. The prime minister would serve as the head of government, but the formal constitution, which was based on a mix of the British and German constitutions, did place significant powers in Meiji's hands. He was not simply a figurehead as the emperors had been under the Tokugawa shogunate. For instance, while an imperial diet or parliament was provided for under this constitution, the prime minister and cabinet ministers were not directly appointed by the members of it. Rather, Meiji and the and others had a large say in this, while the emperor was given extensive powers over Japan's foreign policy, a stipulation which was of considerable significance for the decades ahead. In terms of enfranchisement, the constitution of 1889 can hardly be said to have created a democracy. Only a very small percentage of wealthy or landed Japanese were eligible to vote, and women would have to wait until after the Second World War before being allowed to vote in Japan. This was the constitution which Meiji signed into law on the 11th of February 1889. The first imperial Diet was duly elected and sat in 1890. Just as the Meiji constitution was being signed into law, diplomatic relations in the Western Pacific were beginning to alter in ways which would have major consequences down to the middle of the 20th century. In the immediate aftermath of the Meiji Restoration, the emperor's government had established amicable relations with Qing Dynasty China. Both countries had common interests. Their nations had been forced to end their policies of isolation from the Western world in recent times, Britain having effectively gone to war with China in 1839 to force it to buy British opium produced in India in return for selling Chinese luxury commodities like silk, porcelain, and tea. Just fourteen years later, Matthew Perry had sailed into Tokyo Harbor and demanded that the country open itself up to foreign influences. Both realized they had to modernize to avoid being reduced to the same state of subservience which had occurred, for instance, in British India a century earlier. To this end, in 1871, the two nations agreed the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty, one which involved a loose agreement by the two sides. to act in shared interest against foreign interventions in the Far East and which reduced trade tariffs on commerce between the two countries. No sooner had this agreement been negotiated in 1871 than points of contention began to emerge between China and Japan. There were two major flashpoints. One was in Korea, which, as we have seen, the Japanese had begun to interfere in from the early 1870s onwards. even threatening an invasion of the country. This was viewed with disapproval by China, which had exerted control over the Korean peninsula at various times in the past. An even more contentious issue was Taiwan, or Formosa as it was then known. Japan had long had ambitions to control the large island, going back as far as the 1590s, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a Japanese daimyo who united the country in advance of the inception of the Tokugawa shogunate, attempted to claim the island. A diplomatic incident arose in the early 1870s which saw these claims resurrected and in 1874, after negotiations between Tokyo and Beijing broke down, Meiji and his government sanctioned the dispatch of an expedition of some 3,000 troops to Formosa. In this instance, the government decided to recall the troops after the Qing dynasty government sent its own reinforcements to Formosa. But the episode further soured Sino-Japanese relations. There were also now two flashpoints, Korea and Formosa, which could lead to renewed tensions in the future. The flashpoint for war eventually came in Korea. The country was struck by a crisis, including economic collapse and famine in the early 1880s. This gave the Qing dynasty government an opportunity to try to reassert Chinese influence on the peninsula. a development which caused concern in Tokyo and initiated over a decade of political intrigue by both Japan and China to grow their respective factions and blocks of supporters in Korea. Eventually, what sparked outright war was a series of events in 1894. First, a pro-Japanese Korean political figure, Kim Ok-gyun, was killed whilst visiting Shanghai. His body was subsequently sent to Korea, where the imperial government there had it hacked up and displayed in the Korean provinces as a warning to pro-Japanese elements. This angered Meiji's government in Tokyo, and the resentment was compounded as the Qing government accepted a request by the Korean administration during the course of 1894 to send Chinese troops into Korea to suppress a rebellion amongst tens of thousands of followers of the Donggak religion in Gubu province. When the Chinese did so without liaising with the Japanese government, to inform them of their intentions, the Meiji regime determined to act and that June gave orders for the sending of troops to Korea. The Japanese intervention soon escalated into outright conflict with China, the first Sino-Japanese war. Despite the fact that Chinese intervention in Korea was the spark for the conflict, the Qing regime was not capable of waging a war against Japan. Since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese had created a modern army with well-trained divisions of men, armed with rifles and supported by machine guns. Moreover, the Japanese navy included modern ironclad cruisers. torpedo ships, and even a European-style battleship. The Qing army, by way of contrast, was archaic, with 40% of Chinese troops still being without rifles and the rank and file lacking discipline and effective commanders. As a result, the conflict quickly descended into an unbroken series of military victories for the Japanese. For instance, at the Battle of Pyongyang on 15 September 1894, a superior force of nearly 15,000 Chinese troops were heavily defeated by an inferior Japanese force of not much more than 10,000, with half of the Chinese either killed or wounded compared to just a few hundred Japanese casualties. The Korean peninsula was under Japanese control by the end of 1894, by which time they took the war onto Chinese soil with the seizure of the port of Weihaiwei in northeastern China in January 1895. The Qing government sued for peace. The resulting Treaty of Shimonoseki, which followed, was a humiliation for China. Under its terms, it was forced to acknowledge Korea as a Japanese sphere of influence and to promise not to intervene there going forward. A huge indemnity was also to be paid to Tokyo. Formosa was also included in it, with China relinquishing control of the island to Japan, which directly annexed it. Finally, A further provision stipulated that a portion of northeastern China incorporating the Liaodong Peninsula in the north of the Yellow Sea was also to be annexed by Japan. This included the strategic Port Arthur. However, this particular aspect of the treaty was overturned when Russia, France, and Germany objected and threatened to go to war with Japan if they insisted on this measure in an act known as the Triple Intervention. This initiative was effectively taken at the behest of Russia, which had interests in the region and which leased Port Arthur from the Chinese shortly afterwards. This would be viewed as a great national issue in Japan and would soon lead to a further war, but for the present, the First Sino-Japanese War had established Meiji's Japan as the pre-eminent power in the Far East. China's political woes continued unabated in the years that followed. and soon led to further intervention in the country by Meiji's Japan, this time in association with the other major powers. In 1899 a massive revolt broke out across the country. This was led by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known as the Boxers in English. This was a secret society which had emerged in China in the late 19th century which was virulently anti-Western, anti-colonial and anti-Christian. When the revolt erupted across northern China and spread across the coastal regions during the course of 1899, the great powers determined to initiate a limited military intervention with the goal of protecting its foreign legations and trading stations in cities like Beijing, and also to provide aid to the Qing dynasty in suppressing the revolt. The result was the Eight Nation Alliance, a coalition comprised of military and naval contingents from Japan, the US, Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. Meiji's government contributed the single largest contingent of troops and warships of any of the eight nations. The expedition became highly punitive by 1901, with the Allies pillaging Beijing and other cities, and then forcing China to sign the Boxer Protocol, which demanded that the imperial government suppress the Boxer Society, pay indemnities to the eight nations, and issue apologies to the foreign governments for attacks. which had occurred against foreign emissaries in China. The next several years saw an increasing drift of Japan towards Britain diplomatically. This was largely in response to the triple intervention at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War and the leasing of Port Arthur by Russia from China in its aftermath. Both Britain and Japan had common cause for concern at this. For Japan, Russia's interference here was a national issue. as it had prevented Japan from obtaining a territorial bridgehead on the mainland of Asia and essentially stripped them of territory they had secured through the war. For Britain, Russian expansion in East Asia was viewed with disapproval as the British had a huge interest in this entire section of the world, not least because of its control of trade through Southeast Asia from Hong Kong to Singapore and onwards to British India. Accordingly, in January 1902, Japan and Britain signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a landmark agreement which saw Britain end its long-held policy of splendid isolation. Under its terms, both sides agreed that, if they were drawn into a war with China, the other party would remain neutral. and not compromise the other's interests. However, if they became involved in a war with two other powers at any one time, the other would declare war on that adversary. This was effectively a statement that if either went to war with Russia, and Russia called on its ally France, then the other would come to their aid. Thus did Meiji's Japan enter its first major alliance in modern times on an equal footing with one of the great powers. The alliance with Britain was soon very nearly called on. Even as it was being signed in 1902, tensions were rising between Japan and Russia. Meiji's government in Tokyo was willing to compromise with Moscow and agree that it would recognize Manchuria, the northeastern part of China along Russia's southeastern border, as a sphere of Russian influence, if the government of Tsar Nicholas II in turn conceded that Korea was a sphere of Japanese influence. in which the Russians would not interfere. Nicholas II, though, was unwilling to agree to such a compromise, secure in the ultimately mistaken belief that if war erupted, Russia would emerge victorious. After all, the great European powers had not lost a major war against an Asian or African nation in centuries. Thus, Russia not only refused Tokyo's reasonable offer of agreeing respective spheres of influence in Manchuria and Korea, but proposed the creation of a neutral buffer zone in Korea, in an area which the Japanese had considered largely under their control since 1895. It was a terrible miscalculation, as Tokyo responded to this diplomatic insult by launching a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur on the morning of the 8th of February 1904, initiating the Russo-Japanese War. The brief conflict was fought by Russia and Japan alone. France refused to come to the aid of its Russian ally, as it disapproved of Russian expansion in Eastern Asia, which in turn ensured Britain was not obliged to come to Japan's aid under the terms of their two-nations alliance. The Japanese made rapid gains early on, reoccupying Korea and moving towards Russia's territory in Manchuria. In response, Nicholas II in Moscow. ordered the dispatch of Russia's main fleet in the Baltic Sea in northern Europe to the other side of the world to attack the Japanese. They set off in October 1904 and did not finally near the waters between Japan and the Asian mainland until May 1905. When it did, the fleet attempted to enter the Russian port of Vladivostok to resupply and prepare for combat after the long voyage, but the Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo Heihachiro was waiting and engaged the Russians in the Tsushima Strait between Korea and southern Japan on the 27th of May 1905. In the naval battle which followed, the Russian fleet held a superior number of battleships, but was outnumbered in terms of cruisers and smaller vessels. Moreover, the Japanese had over 40 torpedo ships which were used to good effect. The battle lasted nearly 20 hours before the Russians surrendered early on the morning of the 28th, having lost nearly half their ships by this stage. Japanese victory at the Battle of Tsushima sent shockwaves through Europe when news of it arrived. The Russians did not even attempt to fight on, and entered peace negotiations which led to the Treaty of Portsmouth the following September. Under the terms of this, the Russians agreed to relinquish the lease of Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula, which they had acquired from China following the triple intervention in 1895. They also pulled back from Manchuria. and fully recognized Japan's influence over Korea. This was a humiliation for Russia and led directly to domestic unrest in St. Petersburg and Moscow in what many view as a prelude to the Russian Revolution of 1917. However, beyond the Russian reaction and the peace terms, the other major powers of Europe and the United States now had to acknowledge that Japan was one of their equals, not an Asian minnow which could be easily intimidated. It was a sign of how Japan had changed during Meiji's reign that it was able to defeat one of the great powers in a war by 1905, where 50 years earlier the country had been powerless to resist US demands that it open its country up to foreign trade and western influences. In the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War, having defeated both of its rivals for control over Korea, Japan moved to solidify its presence on the peninsula. In 1907, it forced the Imperial government of Hanseong, the former name of Seoul, in the early 20th century to sign a New Japan-Korea Treaty which allowed for the arrival of Japanese officials to the country and the appointment of a Japanese Resident General. This was effectively a Japanese governor. and the country was now a colony of Japan's in all but name. That situation was formalized three years later, when Meiji's regime determined to force the last Korean emperor of the Joseon dynasty, Emperor Junghye, to abdicate, following which the country was annexed to the Empire of Japan. Thus, after forty years of interference in the peninsula from the earliest days of Meiji's reign, Japan had finally acquired direct control of the country. It would form the first step in the creation of a large territorial empire of Japan in decades to come. As this was occurring on the mainland of Eastern Asia, the Emperor and his government were distracted back in Japan by a conspiracy against Meiji's life. The High Treason Incident, as it subsequently became known, was the result of the growth of radical left politics within Japan. In 1908, a major communist rally known as the Red Flag Incident had been held in Tokyo. Many of the participants were later implicated in the high treason incident. The plan was for a group of radical socialists to attempt to assassinate the emperor as a first step in the inception of a socialist revolution in Japan. But beginning in mid-May 1910, several of the conspirators had their houses searched and were arrested. In the months that followed, dozens were arrested and many were imprisoned or executed. There seems little doubt that there was a genuine plot against Meiji's life, but the high treason incident was also exaggerated by the government as it provided a basis for arresting many other radical socialists and anarchists who had nothing to do with the plot, but of whose activities the government was wary nonetheless. The high treason incident occurred at a time when the emperor was increasingly ill. For years he had suffered from a number of ailments including gastroenteritis, and nephritis, but his major malady was diabetes. By 1911 it had deteriorated to a considerable extent and was resulting in uremia or worsening kidney function. The following summer the situation became chronic and in late July 1912 the emperor died when he was 59 years of age. The official date of his death was released as having occurred in the early hours of the 30th of July, but he more likely died late on the 29th, as was usual in Japan. the emperor's remains lay in state for 45 days, so it wasn't until the 13th of September that his funeral was held in Tokyo. After the funeral, the body was taken on a ceremonial convoy to the ancient imperial city of Kyoto, where Meiji was interred with his forebears in the imperial mausoleum. He was succeeded by his only surviving son Prince Yoshihito, who became Emperor Taisho. Following the death of the emperor, The period of his reign was ceremonially reframed as the Meiji era, in keeping with Japanese tradition. Over the next 30 years, the processes which had begun during his reign accelerated. Industrialization, further expansion of the military, and the economic growth of Japan made it the superpower of the Western Pacific at a time when China was descending into decades of civil war. For a time, Japan moved towards increased democratization. and allied with some of the western powers during the First World War and its aftermath. But from the late 1920s onwards, things took a much darker turn following the accession of Meiji's grandson, the Emperor Hirohito, in 1926. The Empire of Japan became far more aggressive on the world stage, invading Manchuria in northeastern China in 1931 and turning it into a puppet state, before then going on to launch a full-scale war against China. from 1937 onwards. Eventually, in a strategically misguided effort to dominate the Western Pacific, the Imperial government attacked the United States in December 1941. The country which had been an isolated, feudal society, caught in time less than a century earlier, conquered nearly all of Eastern Asia, including much of China, Indochina, and as far as the borders of the British Raj. Atrocities and mass murder followed the Japanese every step of the way. It was a brutal end to the process of Japan being opened up to the world. There is no doubting the critical significance of Emperor Meiji and his reign for the history of modern Japan, shortly after his succession as Emperor of Japan. As a teenager in 1867, a political revolution was initiated in Japan, one which overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled the country for over two and a half centuries. In its place, a new state, headed by the emperor, prime minister, and cabinet of other government ministers was created. This led to an about-turn in Japanese society, where for over two centuries the country had done everything in its power to avoid the introduction of foreign ideas. or Western influences, it now set out to positively embrace them, sending a fact-finding mission around the world and initiating deep-reaching reforms of the Japanese economy, military and social structure. Meiji cannot be credited with being the mastermind of the so-called Meiji Restoration of 1868 which initiated these changes, he was too young at the time, and it involved many other prominent figures. Moreover, the events that led to it were in effect set in motion. when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor and demanded that Japan end its policy of isolation in 1853. However, Meiji could have begun to reverse the processes which were beginning in the 1870s when he became old enough to exercise his own independent thought. The fact that he didn't ensured that Japan continued on its path of modernization. There is an understandable tendency to view the emperor's long reign which followed over a period of more than four decades as one in which the empire of Japan began its rise as the power which would bring war on an unprecedented scale to the Pacific in the 1930s and 1940s, and that as such, Meiji laid the roots of that period of brutality. Indeed, there is no doubting that the new modern Japan quickly became an imperial power. waging successful wars against Korea, China and Russia. However, this was entirely in keeping for a major power at that time, and the British, French, US and others were all involved in imperial wars in the 1890s and 1900s. The period of growing authoritarianism and malevolence in the Empire of Japan largely belongs to the period from the late 1920s onwards. Instead, what Meiji's reign witnessed was the transformation of Japan into a modern society at an unprecedented speed. The success of that program of modernization was the triumph of Meiji's reign, and it allowed Japan to emerge in the early 20th century as virtually the only nation outside of Europe and the Americas which was not either a colony of the European powers or ravaged by internal discord like China was. As such, Meiji's reign set in motion the emergence of modern Japan. despite what happened in the decades that followed. What do you think of Emperor Meiji? Was he a brilliant innovator who pulled Japan into the modern world and so allowed the country to avoid becoming dominated by the United States and other major European powers? Or was he a ruthless power monger whose actions paved the way for the worst crimes of the Empire of Japan in the 1930s and 1940s? Please let us know in the comment section. And in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. We'll be right back.

the ceremonial ruler of Japan during what is known as the Edo period. Komei had succeeded to the imperial throne in 1846, when he was still just a teenager. He was a traditionalist and believed that Japan should maintain its centuries-long political, social, and cultural structures, even in the face of a modernizing world. Sachi's mother was Nakayama Yoshiko.

She was a concubine of the emperors, but because Komei's wife, the Empress Eisho, only had two children, and both died in infancy, Prince Sachi would subsequently rise to the position of imperial heir. When he was born in 1852, Japan was about to enter into the most transformative period in its entire history. The country was still ruled in the mid-19th century in the same way which it had been for centuries.

This was effectively a feudal society, one over which the emperors served as a kind of spiritual or ceremonial head. at the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto in central Honshu. But real power in Japan lay with the Shogun.

The Tokugawa Shogunate had been established all the way back in 1603, and the Shoguns ruled Japan as a kind of feudal king or de facto ruler from the city of Edo, which would soon become known as Tokyo. These Shoguns ruled over a sprawling landscape of approximately 200 daimyos, and the Shogunate was the only one to have a or lordships into which Japan was divided, each administering a feudal han or region. Some of these were more powerful than others. For instance, the Chonshu domain occupied a very significant place in the western extremity of Honshu, the main island of the Japanese archipelago.

Similarly, the Satsuma Han covered much of the southern half of the island of Kyushu, the southwesternmost of the large islands of the chain. Each of these daimyos or feudal lords had large numbers of samurai who served under them, ostensibly as military warriors. But during the prolonged period of peace which the Tokugawa shogunate constituted, many of these samurai had effectively become bureaucrats and administrative officials. While the Tokugawa shogunate had ensured political stability since the start of the 17th century, Japanese culture and society was even more deeply rooted. The country was firmly traditional in its religious, cultural, and social values, with Neo-Confucianism an offshoot of the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, underpinning many of the values of Japanese society.

Moreover, because Japan had successfully fended off efforts over the centuries by the Chinese, Koreans, and Mongols to either settle across the Japanese archipelago or invade it, The country was extremely homogenous in its values, culture, and racial landscape. As a result, when European interlopers from Portugal, the Dutch Republic, and England first began arriving in Japan in the 16th and early 17th century, a skeptical view was taken of them. When they began to send Jesuit missionaries to Christianize the Japanese, the Shoguns quickly responded by effectively expelling the Europeans from Japan, apart from a few trading stations.

which they were allowed restricted access to, and this is how Japan would spend the next 200 or so years. The country was effectively sealed from outside influences and retained its remarkably stable political and social system, free from European intervention. Japan's ability to avoid outside interference in its affairs was in many ways determined by its geography.

In the early 17th century, when it closed its borders, Europeans were only just beginning to strike out and colonize the world. When they headed too far from Europe, they were usually reliant on finding allies amongst the natives to do the conquering for them. Such was the case with Hernán Cortés in Mexico, the Portuguese and later the British in India, and a great many other powers. When they relied on settling their own small colonies and expanding them gradually, they had to do so closer to home on the other side of the Atlantic. Japan was too far away.

and even if they had been able to get there easily, the Japanese would not have been an easy military power to defeat in the 17th century. However, by the early 19th century that had begun to change. European technology had increased dramatically, with highly efficient rifles and heavy artillery having completely replaced traditional close quarters with combat.

Moreover, inventions like the railways and the steamship were about to make the world a much smaller place. Japan would not be able to retain its stance of isolation from the rest of the world for much longer in this changed environment. By the time the future emperor was born in 1852, the British had just imposed themselves into China, another nation which had tried to cut itself off from European interference.

In the years that followed, the British, Americans, Dutch and French, became interested in developing trading and diplomatic ties to Japan as well. A harbinger of future developments was seen the year after Prince Sachi was born when a United States Navy Commodore by the name of Matthew Perry arrived to Japan and sailed into Edo Harbor. There he fired off his cannons and refused commands to move to the port of Nagasaki, the only one in Japan open to Westerners. Eventually, he delivered a message saying he would return a year later to negotiate a treaty.

This he did, leading to the Convention of Kanagawa, an agreement whereby the Tokugawa shogunate was effectively forced to end its policy of isolation and open several ports to American traders. In the years that followed, as the future Emperor Meiji was growing up, Japan was suddenly exposed to all manner of political, economic, social and cultural innovations from the outside world. brought in by American, British, Dutch and French traders and diplomats. In the process, a divide began to emerge within Japanese politics and society at large. Should it try to resist these Western innovations?

Or should it embrace them as the best means of ensuring Japanese independence? In essence, was the only way to protect Japan from Western dominance, to become more like the Westerners? This was the question. which would define Japan in the second half of the 19th century. Because the life of the imperial court in Kyoto was lived largely in secrecy and behind closed doors, there is very little known about the early life of the man who would grow up to reign over Meiji era Japan.

He was described in some accounts as being athletic and excelling in traditional Japanese physical activities, such as sumo wrestling and sword fighting. However, Many of these accounts were written years later when he was already emperor, and it is impossible to know if they were flattering descriptions written to compliment the emperor or not. At some stage in his youth, Prince Sachi was given the more honorific title of Prince Mutsuhito. This occurred as it became clear he would succeed his father as emperor one day. Despite the supposedly isolated nature of the imperial palace and life at Kyoto, the He was evidently being exposed to many of the new ideas which were arriving to the country as he was growing up.

The striking manner in which he presided over the modernization of Japan in the 1870s and 1880s makes it apparent that he was inculcating such ideas during his formative years. Clearly he was also a headstrong individual from a young age. Of that there can be no doubt, as before he reached his 20th year, he had already presided over a striking shift in Japan's history. This was made possible by the premature death of his father at the end of January 1867. Thus, on the 3rd of February, at just 14 years of age, Mutsuhito became the 122nd emperor of Japan. He would subsequently be given the name Meiji, and this was also applied to the reign at his death.

Meiji came to the throne during a period of time when he was the king of Japan. period which has been referred to by historians as Bakumatsu, meaning roughly, the end of the Tent government, or the end of rule by military commanders like the Shoguns. During this, in the late 1850s and into the 1860s, Japan became increasingly divided between a conservative faction, which continued to support the Tokugawa Shogunate and which was skeptical about opening Japan up to too much outside influence, and a reform faction, which which had favored a reduction in the power of the Shogun or the complete destruction of the Shogunate in favor of a more powerful Imperial administration. This Imperial faction tended to favor reform of Japanese society and the introduction of Western ideas, but the major dividing line was whether one was opposed to or in favor of the Shogunate. Many of the clans and Daimyos had effectively been excluded from power for decades and this had created resentment movement amongst many senior Japanese lords towards the Shogun, Tokugawa Iyomochi.

When he died in the early autumn of 1866, a reformer, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, succeeded him, but while he tried to introduce western ideas and political reforms, it was too late. What is known as the Meiji Restoration was initiated in January 1868 to effectively end the shogunate and create a new system of government with the emperor playing a more prominent role in politics. This was led by three of the great Japanese lords of the time, Saigo Takamori of the powerful Satsuma clan, Okubo Toshimichi from the same clan and Kido Takeyoshi of the Choshu province.

The latter was one of the most powerful lords of the time. powerful daimyos in Japan controlling much of the southern end of Honshu and who had been opposed to the shogunate for many years. In early January 1868, these three lords with contingents of Satsuma, Choshu and other samurai effected a coup across Japan. They seized control of the imperial palace at Kyoto, securing Meiji and then convincing him to issue a decree that the shogunate was at an end and henceforth he would begin to rule more directly as Emperor of Japan.

This done, the revolutionaries began seizing full control of the government, which they had been able to secure owing to the fortuitous confluence of a teenage emperor, succeeding at almost exactly the same time as a new young shogun came to power. Moreover, the political turmoil caused by the rapid opening up of the country had also contributed to the overturning of the political system, which had prevailed for over two and a half years. half centuries.

The Meiji Restoration did not go unopposed. It quickly triggered a civil war between those who had seized power and the supporters of the shogunate. The Boshin War, meaning War of the Year of the Yang Earth Dragon, might roughly be said to have been a war between the major daimyos of southern Japan, Choshu, Satsuma, and their allies, with the main supporters of the shogunate, such as the powerful Aitsu, Shonai, and the Shogunate.

and Echigo daimyos, which between them ruled much of the northern half of Honshu island. In its initial stages, the conflict focused on efforts by the Satsuma and Choshu-led alliance to capture Edo from the shogunate faction. This was achieved after Saigo Takamori won a considerable victory at the Battle of Koshu-Katsunuma on the way to Edo on the 29th of March 1868. The capital was captured shortly afterwards, and the shogun, Yoshinobu thereafter, was captured. agreed to renounce his claims to the title. This effectively brought the shogunate to an official end, but the Boshin War continued throughout the remainder of 1868 and into early 1869, with resistance continuing in northern Honshu and on the northern island of Hokkaido.

A breakaway Republic of Ezo was formed on Hokkaido. This was the last area to hold out against the new Meiji regime, with the Republic of Ezo only finally brought to an end in the summer of 1869, signaling the complete triumph of the revolution and the full inception of the Meiji era. Even before the Boshin War was brought to an end, major steps had been undertaken to create a new form of government.

The main aspects of this were codified in the Charter Oath which was promulgated by Meiji at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto on the 6th of April 1868. This contained five main clauses. The first proclaimed that deliberative assemblies would be established to promote open discussion. This essentially proclaimed that Japan would now become a democracy with a parliament, although in practice it was over 20 years before a constitution would be finalized and the first parliament would sit in the country. The second clause proclaimed the end of the Japanese feudal state, as well as the social hierarchies which underpinned it. In tandem, The third clause asserted that all people would be free to engage in whatever occupation they wished.

However, it was the fourth and fifth clauses which signified the greatest break with the past. These asserted that Japan would end its reliance on the, quote, evil customs of the past, and would now begin to seek knowledge about all matter of things from around the world with a view to strengthening Japanese society and the new imperial government. We can safely assume that Meiji was not responsible for drafting the Charter Oath.

He was still not 16 years of age, but he agreed to promulgate it, and he never betrayed even the slightest reservation about upholding its strictures in later life. The Charter Oath was followed by further practical political changes. In the autumn of 1868, it was announced that, while Kyoto would remain the spiritual home of the imperial family, Henceforth the emperor would reside at Edo, the heart of government. The city would be renamed Tokyo, literally meaning Eastern Capital.

Here a new government, modelled along western lines was created, with ministers responsible for different aspects of the governance. of the country. The most crucial reform which was undertaken at this early stage was the ending of the feudal system. Beginning in 1869, the Daimyo were requested to relinquish their authority over their lordships to the emperor. The government would then begin directly administering them.

This process was pursued more aggressively in the early 1870s, and in 1872 it was declared that the approximately 200 provinces were now returned into the emperor's hands, and in their place, Japan would be governed through a system of 72 imperial prefectures, each presided over by an imperial governor. Some resisted this, but the process was amicable in many ways, and a good many of the senior lords were either given positions within the central government or made governors of the new prefectures. In the first years of modernization, and when he was just about 18 years of age, Meiji was involved in a decision to dispatch a major fact-finding mission abroad to both North America and Europe.

The objective of launching such a mission had been directly alluded to in the Fifth Clause of the Charter Oath of 1868. The Iwakura mission was so named for the leader of it, Iwakura Tomomi, a prominent Japanese politician who had represented much of the nobility prior to the Meiji Restoration. and who had facilitated the transition to the modernizing government. The party consisted of just over 100 Japanese politicians, diplomats, scholars, and their staff. The mission departed from Japan in the final days of 1871, and would not return until September 1873. In the near two-year period, they went firstly to the United States, spending much time on the East Coast where they visited the center of government in Washington, and several American universities and industrial factories in cities like Boston and New York.

From there they proceeded to Europe, where they spent an extended period in the United Kingdom, even having an official meeting with Queen Victoria. A whirlwind tour of continental Europe followed in the first half of 1873, before a return trip via the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. The Iwakura mission was at once designed to proclaim to the Americans and the European nations that a new type of Japan had emerged and wished to be recognized as such on the world stage, whilst also gathering extensive information on industry, politics, and commerce from the countries which were leading modernity's charge. The Iwakura mission, combined with the gradual introduction of Western innovations and methods which had been underway since the 1850s and the hiring of thousands of Western experts by the Japanese government from the late 1860s onwards, ushered in a transformation of Japan's economy which would take place during Meiji's long reign.

Much of this mirrored the onset of industrialization in Britain a century earlier, in that the textile industry was one of the key aspects of it. By the late 1870s, domestic workshops and small factories were beginning to emerge for cotton and silk weaving. This was necessarily small scale at first, But the introduction of coal-powered steam engines to operate large weaving machines and establish more elaborate factories soon saw the Japanese textile industry begin to expand very significantly.

By the 1890s, the industry had grown to the point where increased demand within Japan itself was being met and a considerable excess was being produced for export overseas to China, British India or Europe, where silk in particular still fetched a large price. The industry employed women in the main, and the excess capital which was created from it in the years that followed created money for investment in further industries by the 1890s and 1900s. Another major factor in the economic expansion of Japan was the advent of the railways in the country.

The industry was enjoying a global boom at the time of the Meiji Restoration, with British and American industrialists such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, making enormous fortunes from railway development. As soon as the Meiji Restoration occurred, the first steam locomotive was introduced into Japan, and a major railway line was soon under development between Tokyo and the port of Yokohama. By the late 1870s, lines between all of the major cities on the main island of Honshu were under development or consideration, while smaller lines were also being constructed to major coal mines which were in operation to begin feeding Japan's growing industrial needs. Indeed, by the 1880s, the boom in railway construction in Japan and the massive amount of investment involved in companies like the Nippon Railway Company was such that many perceived an economic bubble to be developing such as had occurred with the railway mania in Britain back in the 1840s. Japan, though, avoided this speculative damage which had occurred in Britain decades earlier, and by the 1900s, had an entirely modern railway network connecting most of the major urban centres across its islands.

The textile industry, coal mining and railway development were just three of the most prominent aspects of Japan's rapid industrialization and economic transformation in the four decades between the 1860s and the 1900s. Many other factors were at play, notably the reform of the traditional feudal society towards a more capitalist market-orientated labor and financial system. To that end, where each province had issued its own currency in the shogunate period, a national currency called the yen was introduced in 1871. It was given parity with the Mexican silver dollar, and mints were established to issue coins.

By the early 1880s, the financial system was advanced enough that the Bank of Japan was set up. Agricultural output also increased across Japan. The overall impact of all of this was a considerable increase in the country's ability to feed itself and its national industrial output as well as a growing consumer society however there is a widespread debate down to the present day as to how much this actually improved the living standards of the average japanese person the country was after all very highly developed even before the meiji restoration and in 1700 living standards there had been on a par with many parts of europe Thus, the degree to which the economic advances of the post-1870 period benefited individual Japanese men and women is open to dispute, although the increasing occurrence of strikes and labor disputes by the 1890s and 1900s would suggest that many were not happy with the new dispensation in Meiji's Japan.

The first years of the Meiji era also saw a concerted move away from the traditional military system used in Japan towards a modern army. A national army did not exist in Japan under the shogunate, rather the shoguns had called on the individual daimyos to provide military contingents to serve under them when needed. A debate continued for some time after 1868 about what new shape the national army should take, with some looking to build a small but elite force of samurai. trained in modern military methods. Eventually though, in the early 1870s, the view won out that a large conscript army from amongst the Japanese peasantry using European military methods should be used.

To that end, in January 1873, a conscription ordinance was issued under Meiji's hand. This called for all adult males to serve in the new military for a period of time, and then for further years in reserve. Yet in theory exemptions could be purchased by the wealthier, and this was not a universal conscription.

It did, though, lead swiftly to a major growth in the Japanese Imperial Army, with the number in arms quickly doubling from around 17,000 in 1873 to 35,000 in 1875. In the decade that followed, it expanded further to near 100,000, with tens of thousands of more partially trained reservists. The new Japanese army was largely trained by French military experts. A series of missions were sent by the French government to Japan from the late 1860s right through to the early 20th century. These helped establish training schools and shooting ranges as well as arsenals for guns and munitions, gun foundries and gunpowder factories in Tokyo and elsewhere. Through these measures, by the mid 1870s, the Japanese army had been able to The Japanese Imperial Army was evolving into a force which relied on lines of modern rifle-bearing inventory, backed by field artillery and machine guns.

In addition, a military academy to train new Japanese military officers was set up at Ichigaya, outside Tokyo in 1875. Moreover, the Japanese had also quickly begun building a modern navy. In 1867, even before the Meiji Restoration, Japan had acquired its first ever ironclad warship, when it purchased the CSS Stonewall from the United States government, renaming it the Kotetsu. From the 1870s onwards, and during the 1880s in particular, the French began to provide technical advice to the Japanese on the construction of an expanded new national navy, one complete with ironclad cruisers and torpedo ships, and eventually modern battleships. The new army and navy were overseen by accomplished generals like Yamagata Aritomo, and Nozu Michitsura, but even at this early stage in the post-Shogunate era, there was a worrying tendency for the leading figures of the Japanese armed forces to obtain the most senior positions in government. This increased military capacity was not put into action on the world stage for many years, but the new Japanese state under Meiji was becoming more aggressive diplomatically from its very inception.

This aggression was directed toward Japan's nearest neighbor. the Kingdom of Korea, which was ruled over by the Joseon Dynasty. Like Japan and China, Korea had opted hundreds of years earlier upon first contact with the Portuguese, Dutch, and British who began arriving to the Far East in the 16th century. to shut itself off from outside influences.

Indeed, so severe was this self-imposed isolation in Korea that Western observers had come to refer to the country as the Hermit Kingdom. Ironically, Japan, which had itself only just abandoned its own long-held policy of isolation, became central to efforts to end Korean isolation in the early 1870s. This came about as part of efforts to demand that the Korean government acknowledge the changed political situation in Japan following the Meiji Restoration.

Despite the sending of several envoys to the nearby peninsula state, the Joseon government continued to rebuff Japanese diplomatic endeavors, leading one of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration, Saigo Takamori, to propose a military expedition to Korea in 1873, an option which was not opted for. but which was given serious consideration. The debate in 1873 did not bring an end to deliberations on Korea.

As the closest point of mainland Eastern Asia to the Japanese archipelago, the government in Tokyo considered Korea a vital national interest. Consequently, in 1875, Meiji's government began engaging in gunboat diplomacy to bring the situation to a head. A Japanese warship, the Onyo, was dispatched to patrol off the coast of Ganghwa Island off the western coast of Korea. When the local garrison was goaded into opening fire, Tokyo used this as an excuse to intensify its diplomatic moves against Korea.

Additional warships were dispatched to the waters off Korea, and war was threatened if a new diplomatic arrangement was not arrived at between the two nations. The outcome was the Japan-Korea Treaty of Amity, which was signed in February 1876. Under the terms of this, the Koreans were forced to open several ports to Japanese trade. The Japanese Navy was also given considerable rights to search Korean ships off the coast of Korea, and Japanese merchants and other business interests were to be allowed to lease land and property in the Japanese ports. The highly unequal treaty not only required Korea to abandon its centuries-long isolation, but also began a gradual process of Japanese encroachments into Korea.

As the process of modernization intensified in the aftermath of the Iwakura mission and other developments in the early 1870s, there was a growing drive amongst those who favored a complete modernization of Japanese society to begin dissolving the other administrative system which had prevailed for centuries, specifically the samurai order. As we have seen, these were not necessarily all warriors, but many were bureaucrats, teachers, clerks, and scholars. who worked with the traditional Japanese lords to rule their provinces, as much as 5% of the Japanese population belonged to the samurai class at the time of the Meiji Restoration. So they made up a huge proportion of the country's people, which meant that they were also an equally large drain on the country's finances. In many regions they were still the beneficiaries of payments which the modernizers in Tokyo believed should now be paid into the central exchequer.

Thus, beginning in 1873, when these stipends, which the samurais received as payments for their work, were taxed for the first time by the government, the samurai class was gradually dismantled. In tandem, payments were offered to some samurai, whose work was now obsolete, to allow them to diversify into business or agriculture, thus reforming the social structure of Japanese society and benefiting its economy at the same time. This dissolution campaign was not entirely unwelcome to some. Many samurai joined the new Japanese military or became bureaucrats within the imperial administration.

Others entered business or studied or took new occupations. However, it was opposed by many, particularly older samurai, who found it harder to adjust, as well as the more traditional daimyos. In particular, orders to stop wearing traditional samurai dress or carrying samurai weapons created major resentment. This was especially the case in the southwestern island of Kyushu, much of which was dominated by the powerful Satsuma clan.

This was ruled over by Sayugo Takamori, one of the most powerful Japanese lords of the 1860s, who had actually been central to ensuring the success of the Meiji Restoration, and who had subsequently served as a senior political figure in the late 1860s and early 1870s. But he had since become disillusioned. perceiving that the modernization program had gone too far and believing it was robbing Japan of its traditional values. From 1874 onwards, he had been building his own samurai school on Kyushu. By 1876, concerns about Takamori's plans were considerable enough in Tokyo that Meiji's government attempted to assassinate Takamori that winter.

The effort failed, but the discovery of the plot triggered an open revolt, the Satsuma Rebellion or Seinan War. lasted for much of 1877, with the government dispatching tens of thousands of its modern troops to Kyushu to see it off. At its end, in mid-September 1877, Takamori and many of his closest followers made a last stand against an imperial army with rifles and modern weaponry in a battle which, for many reasons, has been viewed as marking the symbolic end of the samurai order in Meiji-era Japan.

Shortly after the crushing of the Satsuma rebellion, the issue of the succession was given greater clarity in Japan. Back in 1869, not long after the restoration, Meiji had married Masako Ichijo. She became known as the Empress Shoken and was the first imperial wife in centuries to be given the honorific Kogo, meaning Emperor's Consort.

However, it became clear in the course of the 1870s that she was unable to bear children. Her husband consequently turned to several concubines, a not uncommon arrangement in Japanese imperial life as the emperor himself was the product of such a union. It was to one of Meiji's concubines, Sawarabi no Tsubone, a lady-in-waiting of the imperial court that a son named Prince Yoshihito was born in August 1879. He was actually the fifth of Meiji's children, with two boys and two girls, having been born between 1873 and 1878, each of whom died in infancy. In recognition of her place as the biological mother of the future emperor, Sawarabi was given the honorific title of Imperial Concubine, but the prince was partially raised by the emperors.

Arrangements of different kinds were worked out for Meiji's other children. He eventually had fifteen children, ten girls and five boys, eight of whom were born to Sonosachiko. a concubine of the emperors in the 1880s and 1890s. Only five in total survived past infancy, a very low number even for a society and time where infant mortality was cruelly high. While we have a general view of how Meiji's family life developed, there is a frustrating lack of information about how he actually conducted himself during his reign and what day-to-day life was like.

As with the time of the shogunate, the imperial palace was a secretive place, though the emperor now spent his time in Tokyo rather than in Kyoto, as his forebears had. There he was consulted regularly by the government and officially signed off on many official documents, but it is unclear to this day exactly how substantial his role was in the formation of policy and whether it was largely directed by leading ministers such as Okuma Shigenobu and Itagaki Taisuke. who formed some of Japan's earliest political parties, the Constitutional Progressive Party, and the Freedom and People's Rights Movement.

Meiji's signature and seal abound across documents, but did he have a say in drafting them, or was he merely signing off what others had decided? It is very unclear. Additionally, Meiji did not keep a diary and engaged in little personal correspondence. Unsurprisingly, historians have developed widely divergent views of him.

with some perceiving the emperor to be a powerful autocratic figure who ruled Japan entirely behind the scenes and others attributing little real authority to him. Of his behavior in his personal life, little is also known. The destruction of the Satsuma rebellion in the mid-1870s opened up an issue for Japan which could be viewed as both a problem and an opportunity. Over two and a half centuries earlier, in 1609, the Satsuma clan had invaded the Ryukyu Islands, a chain of small islands running from Kyushu southwest toward the island of Formosa, which we know today as Taiwan.

Until then, it had been ruled as an independent Ryukyu Kingdom, but from 1609 it became a tributary or vassal state of Satsuma province. However, it retained a nominal independence and when Satsuma became involved in full-scale war with the Meiji government in 1877, the Ryukyu Islands did not participate. However, this did not imply that the islands were now independent again.

In 1872, Meiji had issued a declaration in which the islands were said to be a Ryukyu domain or territory of Japan. In 1879, this was acted further on and the Ryukyu Islands were re-categorized into Okinawa Prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture. At the same time, Japanese troops were sent to the islands and the last king of Ryukyu, Shōtai, was forced to relocate to Tokyo and abdicate his throne.

This was a sign of growing imperial ambitions on the part of Meiji's government and also provided an important geographical bridgehead near the larger island of Formosa. The 1880s saw steps taken to formalize the creation of a new constitution for Japan. The resulting Meiji Constitution of 1889, or Constitution of the Empire of Japan, was was in many ways simply a rubber stamping of political changes which had been initiated since 1868, but it also worked out many elements of the constitutional framework of the country as well. Through it the emperor was made the supreme leader of the country, with a prime minister and cabinet serving underneath him. The prime minister would serve as the head of government, but the formal constitution, which was based on a mix of the British and German constitutions, did place significant powers in Meiji's hands.

He was not simply a figurehead as the emperors had been under the Tokugawa shogunate. For instance, while an imperial diet or parliament was provided for under this constitution, the prime minister and cabinet ministers were not directly appointed by the members of it. Rather, Meiji and the and others had a large say in this, while the emperor was given extensive powers over Japan's foreign policy, a stipulation which was of considerable significance for the decades ahead.

In terms of enfranchisement, the constitution of 1889 can hardly be said to have created a democracy. Only a very small percentage of wealthy or landed Japanese were eligible to vote, and women would have to wait until after the Second World War before being allowed to vote in Japan. This was the constitution which Meiji signed into law on the 11th of February 1889. The first imperial Diet was duly elected and sat in 1890. Just as the Meiji constitution was being signed into law, diplomatic relations in the Western Pacific were beginning to alter in ways which would have major consequences down to the middle of the 20th century. In the immediate aftermath of the Meiji Restoration, the emperor's government had established amicable relations with Qing Dynasty China.

Both countries had common interests. Their nations had been forced to end their policies of isolation from the Western world in recent times, Britain having effectively gone to war with China in 1839 to force it to buy British opium produced in India in return for selling Chinese luxury commodities like silk, porcelain, and tea. Just fourteen years later, Matthew Perry had sailed into Tokyo Harbor and demanded that the country open itself up to foreign influences.

Both realized they had to modernize to avoid being reduced to the same state of subservience which had occurred, for instance, in British India a century earlier. To this end, in 1871, the two nations agreed the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty, one which involved a loose agreement by the two sides. to act in shared interest against foreign interventions in the Far East and which reduced trade tariffs on commerce between the two countries.

No sooner had this agreement been negotiated in 1871 than points of contention began to emerge between China and Japan. There were two major flashpoints. One was in Korea, which, as we have seen, the Japanese had begun to interfere in from the early 1870s onwards. even threatening an invasion of the country.

This was viewed with disapproval by China, which had exerted control over the Korean peninsula at various times in the past. An even more contentious issue was Taiwan, or Formosa as it was then known. Japan had long had ambitions to control the large island, going back as far as the 1590s, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a Japanese daimyo who united the country in advance of the inception of the Tokugawa shogunate, attempted to claim the island. A diplomatic incident arose in the early 1870s which saw these claims resurrected and in 1874, after negotiations between Tokyo and Beijing broke down, Meiji and his government sanctioned the dispatch of an expedition of some 3,000 troops to Formosa. In this instance, the government decided to recall the troops after the Qing dynasty government sent its own reinforcements to Formosa.

But the episode further soured Sino-Japanese relations. There were also now two flashpoints, Korea and Formosa, which could lead to renewed tensions in the future. The flashpoint for war eventually came in Korea.

The country was struck by a crisis, including economic collapse and famine in the early 1880s. This gave the Qing dynasty government an opportunity to try to reassert Chinese influence on the peninsula. a development which caused concern in Tokyo and initiated over a decade of political intrigue by both Japan and China to grow their respective factions and blocks of supporters in Korea.

Eventually, what sparked outright war was a series of events in 1894. First, a pro-Japanese Korean political figure, Kim Ok-gyun, was killed whilst visiting Shanghai. His body was subsequently sent to Korea, where the imperial government there had it hacked up and displayed in the Korean provinces as a warning to pro-Japanese elements. This angered Meiji's government in Tokyo, and the resentment was compounded as the Qing government accepted a request by the Korean administration during the course of 1894 to send Chinese troops into Korea to suppress a rebellion amongst tens of thousands of followers of the Donggak religion in Gubu province. When the Chinese did so without liaising with the Japanese government, to inform them of their intentions, the Meiji regime determined to act and that June gave orders for the sending of troops to Korea.

The Japanese intervention soon escalated into outright conflict with China, the first Sino-Japanese war. Despite the fact that Chinese intervention in Korea was the spark for the conflict, the Qing regime was not capable of waging a war against Japan. Since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese had created a modern army with well-trained divisions of men, armed with rifles and supported by machine guns. Moreover, the Japanese navy included modern ironclad cruisers.

torpedo ships, and even a European-style battleship. The Qing army, by way of contrast, was archaic, with 40% of Chinese troops still being without rifles and the rank and file lacking discipline and effective commanders. As a result, the conflict quickly descended into an unbroken series of military victories for the Japanese.

For instance, at the Battle of Pyongyang on 15 September 1894, a superior force of nearly 15,000 Chinese troops were heavily defeated by an inferior Japanese force of not much more than 10,000, with half of the Chinese either killed or wounded compared to just a few hundred Japanese casualties. The Korean peninsula was under Japanese control by the end of 1894, by which time they took the war onto Chinese soil with the seizure of the port of Weihaiwei in northeastern China in January 1895. The Qing government sued for peace. The resulting Treaty of Shimonoseki, which followed, was a humiliation for China. Under its terms, it was forced to acknowledge Korea as a Japanese sphere of influence and to promise not to intervene there going forward. A huge indemnity was also to be paid to Tokyo.

Formosa was also included in it, with China relinquishing control of the island to Japan, which directly annexed it. Finally, A further provision stipulated that a portion of northeastern China incorporating the Liaodong Peninsula in the north of the Yellow Sea was also to be annexed by Japan. This included the strategic Port Arthur.

However, this particular aspect of the treaty was overturned when Russia, France, and Germany objected and threatened to go to war with Japan if they insisted on this measure in an act known as the Triple Intervention. This initiative was effectively taken at the behest of Russia, which had interests in the region and which leased Port Arthur from the Chinese shortly afterwards. This would be viewed as a great national issue in Japan and would soon lead to a further war, but for the present, the First Sino-Japanese War had established Meiji's Japan as the pre-eminent power in the Far East. China's political woes continued unabated in the years that followed. and soon led to further intervention in the country by Meiji's Japan, this time in association with the other major powers.

In 1899 a massive revolt broke out across the country. This was led by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known as the Boxers in English. This was a secret society which had emerged in China in the late 19th century which was virulently anti-Western, anti-colonial and anti-Christian. When the revolt erupted across northern China and spread across the coastal regions during the course of 1899, the great powers determined to initiate a limited military intervention with the goal of protecting its foreign legations and trading stations in cities like Beijing, and also to provide aid to the Qing dynasty in suppressing the revolt.

The result was the Eight Nation Alliance, a coalition comprised of military and naval contingents from Japan, the US, Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. Meiji's government contributed the single largest contingent of troops and warships of any of the eight nations. The expedition became highly punitive by 1901, with the Allies pillaging Beijing and other cities, and then forcing China to sign the Boxer Protocol, which demanded that the imperial government suppress the Boxer Society, pay indemnities to the eight nations, and issue apologies to the foreign governments for attacks.

which had occurred against foreign emissaries in China. The next several years saw an increasing drift of Japan towards Britain diplomatically. This was largely in response to the triple intervention at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War and the leasing of Port Arthur by Russia from China in its aftermath.

Both Britain and Japan had common cause for concern at this. For Japan, Russia's interference here was a national issue. as it had prevented Japan from obtaining a territorial bridgehead on the mainland of Asia and essentially stripped them of territory they had secured through the war. For Britain, Russian expansion in East Asia was viewed with disapproval as the British had a huge interest in this entire section of the world, not least because of its control of trade through Southeast Asia from Hong Kong to Singapore and onwards to British India. Accordingly, in January 1902, Japan and Britain signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a landmark agreement which saw Britain end its long-held policy of splendid isolation.

Under its terms, both sides agreed that, if they were drawn into a war with China, the other party would remain neutral. and not compromise the other's interests. However, if they became involved in a war with two other powers at any one time, the other would declare war on that adversary.

This was effectively a statement that if either went to war with Russia, and Russia called on its ally France, then the other would come to their aid. Thus did Meiji's Japan enter its first major alliance in modern times on an equal footing with one of the great powers. The alliance with Britain was soon very nearly called on. Even as it was being signed in 1902, tensions were rising between Japan and Russia. Meiji's government in Tokyo was willing to compromise with Moscow and agree that it would recognize Manchuria, the northeastern part of China along Russia's southeastern border, as a sphere of Russian influence, if the government of Tsar Nicholas II in turn conceded that Korea was a sphere of Japanese influence.

in which the Russians would not interfere. Nicholas II, though, was unwilling to agree to such a compromise, secure in the ultimately mistaken belief that if war erupted, Russia would emerge victorious. After all, the great European powers had not lost a major war against an Asian or African nation in centuries. Thus, Russia not only refused Tokyo's reasonable offer of agreeing respective spheres of influence in Manchuria and Korea, but proposed the creation of a neutral buffer zone in Korea, in an area which the Japanese had considered largely under their control since 1895. It was a terrible miscalculation, as Tokyo responded to this diplomatic insult by launching a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur on the morning of the 8th of February 1904, initiating the Russo-Japanese War. The brief conflict was fought by Russia and Japan alone.

France refused to come to the aid of its Russian ally, as it disapproved of Russian expansion in Eastern Asia, which in turn ensured Britain was not obliged to come to Japan's aid under the terms of their two-nations alliance. The Japanese made rapid gains early on, reoccupying Korea and moving towards Russia's territory in Manchuria. In response, Nicholas II in Moscow. ordered the dispatch of Russia's main fleet in the Baltic Sea in northern Europe to the other side of the world to attack the Japanese. They set off in October 1904 and did not finally near the waters between Japan and the Asian mainland until May 1905. When it did, the fleet attempted to enter the Russian port of Vladivostok to resupply and prepare for combat after the long voyage, but the Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo Heihachiro was waiting and engaged the Russians in the Tsushima Strait between Korea and southern Japan on the 27th of May 1905. In the naval battle which followed, the Russian fleet held a superior number of battleships, but was outnumbered in terms of cruisers and smaller vessels.

Moreover, the Japanese had over 40 torpedo ships which were used to good effect. The battle lasted nearly 20 hours before the Russians surrendered early on the morning of the 28th, having lost nearly half their ships by this stage. Japanese victory at the Battle of Tsushima sent shockwaves through Europe when news of it arrived.

The Russians did not even attempt to fight on, and entered peace negotiations which led to the Treaty of Portsmouth the following September. Under the terms of this, the Russians agreed to relinquish the lease of Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula, which they had acquired from China following the triple intervention in 1895. They also pulled back from Manchuria. and fully recognized Japan's influence over Korea. This was a humiliation for Russia and led directly to domestic unrest in St. Petersburg and Moscow in what many view as a prelude to the Russian Revolution of 1917. However, beyond the Russian reaction and the peace terms, the other major powers of Europe and the United States now had to acknowledge that Japan was one of their equals, not an Asian minnow which could be easily intimidated.

It was a sign of how Japan had changed during Meiji's reign that it was able to defeat one of the great powers in a war by 1905, where 50 years earlier the country had been powerless to resist US demands that it open its country up to foreign trade and western influences. In the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War, having defeated both of its rivals for control over Korea, Japan moved to solidify its presence on the peninsula. In 1907, it forced the Imperial government of Hanseong, the former name of Seoul, in the early 20th century to sign a New Japan-Korea Treaty which allowed for the arrival of Japanese officials to the country and the appointment of a Japanese Resident General.

This was effectively a Japanese governor. and the country was now a colony of Japan's in all but name. That situation was formalized three years later, when Meiji's regime determined to force the last Korean emperor of the Joseon dynasty, Emperor Junghye, to abdicate, following which the country was annexed to the Empire of Japan.

Thus, after forty years of interference in the peninsula from the earliest days of Meiji's reign, Japan had finally acquired direct control of the country. It would form the first step in the creation of a large territorial empire of Japan in decades to come. As this was occurring on the mainland of Eastern Asia, the Emperor and his government were distracted back in Japan by a conspiracy against Meiji's life. The High Treason Incident, as it subsequently became known, was the result of the growth of radical left politics within Japan. In 1908, a major communist rally known as the Red Flag Incident had been held in Tokyo.

Many of the participants were later implicated in the high treason incident. The plan was for a group of radical socialists to attempt to assassinate the emperor as a first step in the inception of a socialist revolution in Japan. But beginning in mid-May 1910, several of the conspirators had their houses searched and were arrested.

In the months that followed, dozens were arrested and many were imprisoned or executed. There seems little doubt that there was a genuine plot against Meiji's life, but the high treason incident was also exaggerated by the government as it provided a basis for arresting many other radical socialists and anarchists who had nothing to do with the plot, but of whose activities the government was wary nonetheless. The high treason incident occurred at a time when the emperor was increasingly ill.

For years he had suffered from a number of ailments including gastroenteritis, and nephritis, but his major malady was diabetes. By 1911 it had deteriorated to a considerable extent and was resulting in uremia or worsening kidney function. The following summer the situation became chronic and in late July 1912 the emperor died when he was 59 years of age.

The official date of his death was released as having occurred in the early hours of the 30th of July, but he more likely died late on the 29th, as was usual in Japan. the emperor's remains lay in state for 45 days, so it wasn't until the 13th of September that his funeral was held in Tokyo. After the funeral, the body was taken on a ceremonial convoy to the ancient imperial city of Kyoto, where Meiji was interred with his forebears in the imperial mausoleum.

He was succeeded by his only surviving son Prince Yoshihito, who became Emperor Taisho. Following the death of the emperor, The period of his reign was ceremonially reframed as the Meiji era, in keeping with Japanese tradition. Over the next 30 years, the processes which had begun during his reign accelerated. Industrialization, further expansion of the military, and the economic growth of Japan made it the superpower of the Western Pacific at a time when China was descending into decades of civil war. For a time, Japan moved towards increased democratization.

and allied with some of the western powers during the First World War and its aftermath. But from the late 1920s onwards, things took a much darker turn following the accession of Meiji's grandson, the Emperor Hirohito, in 1926. The Empire of Japan became far more aggressive on the world stage, invading Manchuria in northeastern China in 1931 and turning it into a puppet state, before then going on to launch a full-scale war against China. from 1937 onwards.

Eventually, in a strategically misguided effort to dominate the Western Pacific, the Imperial government attacked the United States in December 1941. The country which had been an isolated, feudal society, caught in time less than a century earlier, conquered nearly all of Eastern Asia, including much of China, Indochina, and as far as the borders of the British Raj. Atrocities and mass murder followed the Japanese every step of the way. It was a brutal end to the process of Japan being opened up to the world.

There is no doubting the critical significance of Emperor Meiji and his reign for the history of modern Japan, shortly after his succession as Emperor of Japan. As a teenager in 1867, a political revolution was initiated in Japan, one which overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled the country for over two and a half centuries. In its place, a new state, headed by the emperor, prime minister, and cabinet of other government ministers was created. This led to an about-turn in Japanese society, where for over two centuries the country had done everything in its power to avoid the introduction of foreign ideas. or Western influences, it now set out to positively embrace them, sending a fact-finding mission around the world and initiating deep-reaching reforms of the Japanese economy, military and social structure.

Meiji cannot be credited with being the mastermind of the so-called Meiji Restoration of 1868 which initiated these changes, he was too young at the time, and it involved many other prominent figures. Moreover, the events that led to it were in effect set in motion. when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor and demanded that Japan end its policy of isolation in 1853. However, Meiji could have begun to reverse the processes which were beginning in the 1870s when he became old enough to exercise his own independent thought.

The fact that he didn't ensured that Japan continued on its path of modernization. There is an understandable tendency to view the emperor's long reign which followed over a period of more than four decades as one in which the empire of Japan began its rise as the power which would bring war on an unprecedented scale to the Pacific in the 1930s and 1940s, and that as such, Meiji laid the roots of that period of brutality. Indeed, there is no doubting that the new modern Japan quickly became an imperial power.

waging successful wars against Korea, China and Russia. However, this was entirely in keeping for a major power at that time, and the British, French, US and others were all involved in imperial wars in the 1890s and 1900s. The period of growing authoritarianism and malevolence in the Empire of Japan largely belongs to the period from the late 1920s onwards. Instead, what Meiji's reign witnessed was the transformation of Japan into a modern society at an unprecedented speed.

The success of that program of modernization was the triumph of Meiji's reign, and it allowed Japan to emerge in the early 20th century as virtually the only nation outside of Europe and the Americas which was not either a colony of the European powers or ravaged by internal discord like China was. As such, Meiji's reign set in motion the emergence of modern Japan. despite what happened in the decades that followed.

What do you think of Emperor Meiji? Was he a brilliant innovator who pulled Japan into the modern world and so allowed the country to avoid becoming dominated by the United States and other major European powers? Or was he a ruthless power monger whose actions paved the way for the worst crimes of the Empire of Japan in the 1930s and 1940s?

Please let us know in the comment section. And in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. We'll be right back.

Transcript for:Emperor Meiji and Japan's Transformation

Transcript for:
Emperor Meiji and Japan's Transformation