Word: meiji
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Kyoto and into the shogun's castle at Edo, which they renamed "eastern capital": Tokyo. A British infantry unit, on guard in a new European settlement, piped the Emperor to his new home to the tune of The British Grenadiers. The Emperor took for his reign the name Meiji (enlightened rule), and so in 1868 began the Meiji Restoration. It dedicated itself to the overnight transformation of a feudal anachronism into a world power...
...contrast to the Chinese, who clung to the belief in their own cultural superiority despite repeated European humiliations, the Japanese decided early to learn the barbarians' ways. They sent inquiring envoys abroad and hired many foreign experts. Some of the lessons were basic. The Meiji rulers abolished feudalism in 1871, and all fiefs reverted to the Emperor. The samurai, warriors who had formed a ruling caste under the shogunate, were pensioned off. They were forbidden to carry swords or even to wear their traditional topknots. When the samurai rose in revolt, they were suppressed by new armies of conscripts...
Underlying many of the Meiji innovations was a specific purpose: to combat the "unfair" treaties that the Western powers had forced on Japan. Since those treaties imposed low tariffs to open the way for Western goods, the Meiji rulers spent heavily to subsidize their own development of textile mills, shipping, banking and other industries. Still broader results derived from the Meiji hope of renegotiating the treaties. The Westerners had insisted on extraterritoriality for their own citizens in Japan, for example, on the ground that Westerners could not be subject to antiquated feudal laws. Thus the modernized Japanese legal codes...
...Meiji unveiled their most ambitious effort to impress the world...
When the official in charge of the project went to Europe for expert guidance, he spent less time in London than in the Germany of Bismarck, and the Meiji constitution was Japan's parallel to Bismarckian conservatism: sovereignty belonged not to the people but to the Emperor. The Cabinet was responsible not to the legislature but to the throne...