Word: meiji
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...unable to dominate his nation's ruthless army. In 1941, for example, Japan's leaders turned to Hirohito while deliberating whether to join the war. Without explanation, the poker-faced monarch proceeded to recite a gnomic waka (a traditional 31-syllable poem) composed by his grandfather, the Meiji emperor: "On the seas surrounding all quarters of the globe/ All people are kin to each other/ Why then do winds and waters of conflict/ Disturb peace among us?" He said no more on the subject...
...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...
...typical programmed celebration was the recent wedding of Koji Takahashi, 26, an architect, to Kazuko Hasegawa, 23, at Meiji Memorial Hall, Tokyo's most prestigious marriage parlor. After the simple Shinto ceremony, capped by a sip of ritual sake, the groom, in cutaway coat and silk tie, and the bride, in a dazzling kimono, sat down with their 125 guests to consume a banquet, including lobster salad and ice cream. The master of ceremonies introduced important people from the couple's life-parents, teachers, bosses and friends. The guests offered presents. The current favored gift in Japan...
Nonetheless, China has felt the hunger to modernize before. Near the end of the Ch'ing dynasty in 1898, under the Emperor Kuang Hsu, the Chinese tried to imitate the Japanese Emperor Meiji's transformation of Japan, from feudalism in the last half of the 19th century. In the early days of Sun Yat-sen's Republican China, an effort to streamline the society with foreign help ended in a bitter failure that eventually turned China toward puritanical socialism. The Chinese, wrote Historian C.P. FitzGerald, "became disillusioned with the false gods of the West They turned restlessly to some other...