MEIJI
Life before Meiji can be described briefly as "community and THIS"
hierarchy
This man led the American fleet that sailed into Edo Bay in 1853.
Commodore Matthew Perry
The Treaty of Kanagawa
agreement that opened several Japanese ports to trade
(how can you remember this? KANAGAWA opened PORTS to SHIPS...think of the painting the GREAT WAVE OF KANAGAWA, which has waves and boats.)
Under the Tokoguwa shogunate (back before the Meiji Restoration), the Tokugawa shogunate maintained formal relations only with the nation of ____.
Korea.
In Meiji Japan, who were forbidden to use their swords?
Samurai
A loan from which country allowed the Japanese to build a railway?
England
What does Sat-Cho stand for in the Sat-Cho Alliance?
SATSUMA and CHOSHU were two southern daimyo territories that were opposed to having relations with the West
What did the new Japanese navy do in 1904 in the Tsushima Strait near the Japanese coast?
defeated a Russian Baltic fleet, stunning the world and making Japan one of the Great Powers.
Under the Meiji Constitution, the real power (executive authority) was in the hands of the __________ and a cabinet of ministers, not in the hands of the _______.
Under the Meiji Constitution, the real power (executive authority) was in the hands of the PRIME MINISTER and a cabinet of ministers, NOT in the hands of the EMPEROR.
The Meiji reformers wanted to create a modern political system based on the Western model. They signed a ________, which promised to create a legislative assembly within the existing imperial (emperor) system.
Charter of Oath
Treaty of Shimonoseki
Treaty in which the Manchu rulers of China
1) recognized the independence of Korea
and
2) ceded Taiwan and the Liaodong peninsula (including Port Arthur) to Japan
What was the first nation to recognize the Japanese annexation of Korea under the Treaty of Shimonoseki?
Did Japanese women achieve full emancipation (e.g., voting rights, etc) during the Meiji Reformation?
no
Why can the influence of Western politics, economics and technology be found in the changes that take place in Japan during the late nineteenth century?
Because under the Meiji reform, Japan intentionally adopted the political, economic and technological systems of the West.
What are the zaibatsu?
zaibatsu = large Japanese financial and industrial corporation; these were a characteristic of the Meiji economic model
What did Shidehara diplomacy try to achieve?
Japan had been handling their materials and markets trade problems by seizing territories and making them part of the Japanese empire. But the world (including the US) was growing anxious about this aggression, so in the 1920s onward, Japan tried to play by the rules of the Washington Conference and used the principle of Shidehara diplomacy to solve their problems (including materials and markets trade problems) diplomatically rather than aggressively
Why was the new Meiji land tax so burdensome for peasants?
Under the old tax system, peasants paid a percentage of the harvest, so they didn't owe taxes in years of poor harvests.
Under the new system, peasants had to pay the tax every year, regardless of the quality of the harvest. As a result, during poor harvest years, many peasants couldn't pay the taxes and were forced to sell their land.
What did President Millard Fillmore send to Japan in 1905?
A letter asking for better treatment of sailors shipwrecked on the Japanese islands, and the opening of foreign relations between the US and Japan
DEFINE daimyo and prefecture
daimyo were the rulers under the old system, who, under the Meiji transformation, were then stripped from their titles and lands and made governors of the territories they once owned, which were now called prefectures. Japan today is divided into more than 40 prefectures.
An insurrection is defined as
"a rebellion against the established government"