The Meiji Restoration of 1868: The Birth of Modern Japan

Описание: To begin to understand the path that led to Japan's involvement and actions in WWII, we must first go back to 1868 with the famed Meiji Restoration that saw the end of almost three centuries of feudal rule under the Tokugawa Shogunate and the rapid transition to a modernizing and industrializing state under the rule of the Japanese emperor.
The Meiji Restoration wasn't something that sprang out of nowhere, it had origins in several issues plaguing Japan for decades. The bakufu system of government established by the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1600 had relatively worked for Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries, keeping it free of foreign influence through isolation, ensuring peace and economic prosperity, and a growth in Japanese culture and population. However, new challenges in the 19th century challenged that system immensely.
The most notable of these challenges was that of foreign influence. In 1853 Japan officially opened itself to international trade after American warships landed in Edo Bay. Forced to accept unfair trade agreements with other Western nations, the Tokugawa Shogunate became despised in Japan for being weak and not defending the sovereignty of Japan. Many Japanese daimyos had heard of what the Western European powers had done in neighboring China and feared that unless a Japan modernized, and a stronger, more effective government was implemented, Japan would be turned into a colony.
Loyalty to the emperor was also a factor in the Meiji Restoration. The Japanese by the 19th century had come to see the emperor as a descendant of the gods and thus saw his rule as divine and that of the Tokugawa illegitimate. The support they received from Emperor Komei in the 1860s to resist the foreign "barbarians" confirmed that the emperor himself was with the anti-Tokugawa forces. When young 16-year-old Emperor Meiji ascended the throne in 1867, many of the anti-Tokugawa forces would rally around him, wanted to create a new government with him at the head.
In 1868 a combination of these factors would come together to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate after 268 years of rule. The new nation state that followed would be a Japan that would not only achieve modernization and industrialization in less than 30 years, but a Japan in heavy desire to carve out an empire of its own in Asia.