Causes
While the emperor kept his title throughout Japanese history, true executive power was held by this military dictatorship. However, famine, corruption, and peasant uprisings eroded its power during the late Tokugawa period, to the point that the emperor was able to regain control.
What is the shogunate?
While the Meiji Restoration's reforms were beneficial to Japan, they required money and workers. Thus, recruiters could be found in the slums of Japan, offering loans to impoverished families in exchange for sending their daughters to work in factories of this industry.
What is the textile industry?
As Japan started to flex its imperial muscles, Europe felt threatened. However, there was no direct conflict until a dispute over Korea and Manchuria culminated in this war, where Japan surprised the entire world by defeating a European power.
What is the Russo-Japanese War?
This code of honor was used by samurai for centuries with many interpretations. However, the Meiji regime pushed its ideas of loyalty and self-sacrifice to be used as propaganda in its developing empire.
What is bushidō?
The Meiji regime was very quick to reorganize Japan. By 1871, they had replaced the territories owned and run by these feudal lords with the prefectures used today.
Who are the daimyo?
In 1853, the United States sent this commodore with a fleet of gunships to force Japan to sign unequal treaties and end over a century of isolationism.
Who is Matthew Perry?
While introduction of Western ideas during the Meiji Restoration greatly helped reform, there was the side effect of intellectual unrest - especially during the time of worldwide interest in this new philosophy.
What is socialism?
While World War I did not happen until two years after the end of the Meiji period, an alliance made in that period between Japan and this European empire meant Japan allied with the Triple Entente.
What is the United Kingdom?
The Japanese emperor had always been an important figurehead, and the Meiji regime used that. They replaced the national religion, Buddhism, with this native religion that depicts the emperor as the descendant of a god.
What is Shinto?
Reforms began as soon as Emperor Meiji gained power, including many administrative and social changes. The first one was to move the imperial capital from Kyoto to this city, later renamed Tokyo.
What is Edo?
Despite being the lowest class in the Japanese hierarchy, stable networks between rural and urban areas made these people much wealthier. They were so wealthy that even the upper class took loans from them, disrupting Japanese society.
What are merchants?
In an effort to modernize the country, the Meiji government created and sold many consumer industries to private investors. Some of the people who built these industries went on to form these massive conglomerates, which controlled the Japanese industrial sector.
What are zaibatsu?
As the Japanese government made drastic reforms to their military, they began to set their sights on the Korean peninsula, which was a kingdom subservient to China at the time. China, of course, was opposed to this, but Japan easily defeated it in this war.
What is the First Sino-Japanese War?
Although Japan was becoming increasingly modernized, its traditional art still remained in the form of this style, literally meaning "Japanese-style painting".
What is Nihonga?
In order to increase national pride and military might, the Meiji government put this institution in place in 1872.
What is conscription?
During the Tokugawa period, education and literacy spiked throughout Japan, which laid the foundation for the Meiji Restoration - all encouraged by this philosophy.
What is Confucianism?
During the Meiji period, poor women experienced horrid conditions in factories. While some escaped through paying off their contracts or committing suicide, others organized strikes or other political movements. One extreme example is when this woman was hanged in 1911 for plotting to assassinate the emperor.
Who is Kanno Sugako?
As the Japanese military became more structured and modernized under Meiji rule, samurai became obsolete and were forced into early retirement. However, many of them were outraged and subsequently staged this rebellion, only to be crushed by the reformed military and wiped out once and for all.
What is the Satsuma Rebellion?
The Meiji Restoration introduced many Western ideas to Japan, which influenced its art so much that this style of painting was created, literally meaning "Western-style painting".
What is Yōga?
The adoption of Western ideas caused the growth of a popular rights movement calling for a constitutional government. To quell the unrest, a constitution was presented as a gift from the emperor to his people. It established an elected parliament with limited power, called this.
What is the Imperial Diet?
By the mid-1860s, the Tokugawa regime was greatly unstable, but it all came to a head when two provinces formed this alliance to restore the emperor to power.
What is the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance, or the Satchō Alliance?
As gambling and playing cards became tolerated during the Meiji Period, entrepreneur Fusajiro Tamauchi founded this company selling special cards called Hanafuda. Today, while creating a much different type of entertainment, it is one of the most well-known Japanese companies in the world.
What is Nintendo?
Throughout history, transitions between regimes have been invariably bloody. That is why it is unsurprising that the first two years of the Meiji Era were spent fighting the Tokugawa regime in this civil war.
What is the Boshin War?
While the Meiji Restoration introduced wide political and socioeconomic changes, one part of Japanese society that remained the same was gender discrimination. Women were legally prohibited from engaging in public life, such as with this 1887 law that excluded women from politics.
What is the Peace Preservation Law?
One of the most important parts of the economic reforms during the Meiji Restoration was the creation of a uniform currency - yen - with this act in 1871.
What is the New Currency Act?