The Meiji Era 1868-1912
The reign of Emperor Meiji , as Mutsuhito was posthumously known, saw vast changes taking place in Japan. A policy of modernization , termed fukoku kyohei (enrich the country, strengthen the military), was adopted. Railways were built, compulsory education and military service introduced, the solar calendar adopted and the feudal fiefs and the class system abolished. Such rapid changes were bound to create resistance and in 1877, Saigo Takamori , a hero of the restoration, led an army of 40,000 in the Satsuma Rebellion (named after the area of Kyushu in which it erupted) . In the 1880s, even more changes were rubber-stamped by the ruling oligarchy of Meiji Restoration leaders, who imported thousands of foreign advisers ( yatoi ) for assistance. As a craze for Japanese objets d'art swept Europe, Western architecture, fashions, food (such as beef, referred to as "mountain whale") and pastimes were de rigueur in Japan. But as Japan adopted a Western-style constitution in 1889, drawn up by the emperor's trusted adviser Ito Hirobumi , the seeds of the country's later troubles were being sown. The Meiji Constitution , modelled after Germany's, created a weak parliament (the Diet), the lower house of which less than twenty percent of the population were entitled to vote for. In effect the oligarchy, and in particular the military, was still in charge, a situation enforced with the Imperial Rescript on Education in 1890, which enshrined almost as law loyalty to the emperor, family and state. Shinto, which emphasized emperor-worship became the state religion, while Buddhism, associated too closely with the previous order, was disestablished. Having taken their lead from the West in terms of material change, Japan's rulers began to copy their territorial ambitions. The island of Hokkaido, previously left pretty much to the native Ainu , was actively colonized, partly to ward off a rival takeover by Russia. Territorial spats with the ailing empire of China developed into the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, over the Chinese tributary state of Korea. The fighting lasted less than a year, with a treaty being signed in Shimonoseki in 1895 which granted Korea independence, and indemnities, economic concessions and territory to Japan, including Taiwan, then called Formosa. This unexpected victory brought Japan into conflict with the colony-hungry Western powers, and in particular Russia who had her eye on China's Liaodong peninsula for a naval base at Port Arthur. After cordial relations with Britain were cemented in the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan felt bold enough to launch her navy on a successful rout of the Russian fleet in February 1904. The land battles of the Russo-Japanese War were less decisive, but in a US-mediated treaty in September 1905, Russia was forced to make many territorial concessions to Japan. In 1909, the assassination of Ito Hirobumi, the newly appointed "resident general" of Korea, gave Japan the excuse it was seeking to fully annex the country the following year. With the military in control, and a plot against the emperor's life uncovered in 1911, any domestic left-wing dissent was quashed. Meanwhile, the Western powers' admiration of plucky Japan, which less than half a century before had been a medieval country, tempered any qualms they might have had about its increasingly aggressive territorial behaviour
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~~Brian Campbell" EXOTICMEME says "TRY TO MEET AND BE INLOVE " REALLY COOL!Maddie says "say spitley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
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