Perry's Black Ships and the Meiji Restoration
American warships force Japan to open; within fifteen years the shogunate falls, and a new government ruling in the emperor's name transforms Japan into a modern industrial state.
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
- Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912 — Donald Keene, Columbia University Press (2002)
- Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period — Carol Gluck, Princeton University Press (1985)
In July 1853 four American warships under Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Edo Bay. The Japanese called them the “black ships”. Perry demanded that Japan open its ports, and the next year the shogunate signed the Treaty of Kanagawa. Unequal treaties with Western powers followed in 1858, granting foreigners extraterritoriality and low tariffs, much like the treaties imposed on China after the Opium Wars, whose fate Japanese leaders watched with alarm.
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
The fall of the shogunate
The shogunate’s weakness in the face of the foreigners discredited it. Young samurai, especially from the southwestern domains of Satsuma and Chōshū, rallied under the slogan “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”. After clashing with Western navies, they concluded that expelling the foreigners was impossible and that Japan had to learn from them instead. In January 1868 they declared the restoration of direct imperial rule under the teenage emperor Mutsuhito, whose reign name, Meiji, means “enlightened rule”. The brief Boshin War defeated the shogun’s supporters.
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
- Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912 — Donald Keene, Columbia University Press (2002)
Remaking a country
The emperor moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo, “eastern capital”. The Charter Oath of 1868 promised that “knowledge shall be sought throughout the world”. In a few years the new leaders abolished the domains and replaced them with prefectures (1871), ended the samurai class and its privileges, introduced conscription (1873), compulsory education and a land tax, and built railways, a postal service and modern factories.
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
The Iwakura Mission of 1871–73 toured the United States and Europe to study Western institutions. Writers like Fukuzawa Yukichi popularised Western learning. The last great samurai revolt, the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 led by Saigō Takamori, was crushed by the new conscript army; Saigō became a romantic hero.
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
- The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa — Fukuzawa Yukichi, trans. Eiichi Kiyooka, Columbia University Press (1966)
Emperor and nation
The Meiji Constitution of 1889, modelled partly on Prussia’s, created an elected Diet but placed sovereignty in the “sacred and inviolable” emperor, who commanded the army and navy. The Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) taught loyalty and filial piety, and schoolchildren bowed to the emperor’s portrait. Carol Gluck has shown how this emperor-centred ideology was deliberately built by the state, and how it would later be turned to militarism.
- Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period — Carol Gluck, Princeton University Press (1985)
- Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912 — Donald Keene, Columbia University Press (2002)
Who paid
Modernisation had costs at home. Peasants bore heavy taxes and rose in hundreds of protests. Japan colonised Hokkaido, pressing the Indigenous Ainu to assimilate, and in 1879 annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom as Okinawa Prefecture.
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
Equal with the West
By 1911 Japan had revised its unequal treaties, and victories over China (1894–95) and Russia (1904–05) made it a recognised great power. Many Japanese still see Meiji as proof of what the country can do when it pulls together, and its leaders feature in countless novels and TV dramas. For Japan’s neighbours, the same story is the beginning of an empire built at their expense.
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
- The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 — Peter Duus, University of California Press (1995)
Visionary young samurai from Satsuma and Chōshū overthrew a decaying shogunate, restored the emperor, and through the Charter Oath, the 1889 constitution and universal education built a modern nation that won equality with the West.
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
- Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912 — Donald Keene, Columbia University Press (2002)
The "restoration" was a coup by a small oligarchy that built an authoritarian state around an emperor cult. Its modernisation came at the cost of peasants, the Ainu and Ryukyuans, and laid the ideological and military foundations for later expansion and war.
- Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period — Carol Gluck, Princeton University Press (1985)
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
The Meiji model impressed Chinese reformers, and thousands of Chinese students went to Japan to learn from it, but it also produced the empire that invaded Korea and China.
- The Search for Modern China — Jonathan D. Spence, W. W. Norton (1990)
- The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 — Peter Duus, University of California Press (1995)
Why it matters today
The Meiji era is remembered as Japan's great success story: a country that avoided colonisation by modernising at astonishing speed. Its institutions, from schools and railways to the national army and the modern emperor system, made modern Japan, and its legacy of rapid catch-up and "Japanese spirit, Western technology" still shapes how Japanese think about their place in the world.