The Meiji Restoration and modernisation

Opening up. In 1853 the USA sent Commodore Matthew Perry to demand that Japan sign a treaty allowing trade and diplomatic relations, which it did in 1854. (Japan lay on the route to China, a market the USA wanted, and American whaling ships needed a place to refuel.) Perry's 'black ships' became a symbol of Japan's 'opening', though scholars now argue Japan had never been fully closed: it traded in East Asia and learnt about the world through the Dutch and the Chinese.

The Meiji Restoration. Perry's arrival made the long-powerless emperor a central figure again. In 1868, a movement forcibly removed the shogun and brought the emperor to Edo, which became the capital and was renamed Tokyo ('eastern capital'). Japanese leaders knew European powers were building empires in India and elsewhere, and had heard of China's defeat by Britain. Some wanted to learn from Europe; others to keep Europeans out while adopting their technology.

The new government's slogan was 'fukoku kyohei': 'rich country, strong army'. To avoid being colonised like India, Japan had to build its economy and army, and turn subjects into citizens with a sense of nationhood.

• It built the 'emperor system': the emperor, together with the bureaucracy and the military, held power. Officials studied European monarchies as models. The emperor was revered as a descendant of the Sun Goddess and also presented as the leader of modernisation, with edicts in his name setting up new institutions.
• The Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) urged people to pursue learning, advance the public good and promote common interests.

Schools for everyone. From the 1870s a new school system was built. Schooling was compulsory for boys and girls, fees were minimal, and by 1910 it was almost universal. The curriculum drew on Western models but stressed loyalty and Japanese history; 'moral culture' taught children to respect parents and be loyal citizens. Japanese is written with Chinese characters (kanji) together with two phonetic alphabets, hiragana and katakana, so learning to read spread quickly from the elite to everyone.

A modern state. Old village and domain boundaries were redrawn into units that could fund schools and health care. All young men over twenty did military service, and a modern army was built. Laws controlled political groups and meetings and imposed censorship. The military and bureaucracy were placed directly under the emperor, outside the government's control, a tension with far-reaching consequences.

Modernising the economy:

• Money came from an agricultural tax. The first railway, from Tokyo to the port of Yokohama, was built in 1870 to 1872.
• Textile machinery was imported, foreign experts hired, and students sent abroad. Modern banks began in 1872.
• Firms like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo were helped to become major shipbuilders, so Japan's trade sailed in Japanese ships. Huge family-controlled business houses, the zaibatsu, dominated the economy until after the Second World War.
• The population grew from 35 million (1872) to 55 million (1920); the government encouraged migration to Hokkaido, home of the Ainu, and to Hawaii, Brazil and the colonies. City dwellers rose to 32 per cent of the population by 1935.

Workers and the environment. People in manufacturing rose from 700,000 in 1870 to 4 million in 1913, mostly in workshops of fewer than five people. Over half of those in modern factories were women, and it was women who organised Japan's first modern strike, in 1886; men came to outnumber women only in the 1930s. Rapid, unregulated industry damaged the environment. Tanaka Shozo, a farmer's son elected to the first parliament, led 800 villagers in Japan's first protest against industrial pollution in 1897, against a copper mine poisoning the Watarase river; the company was forced to control the pollution.