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The Meiji Era and the Modernization of Japan...Part 1

© Maria Christensen

For nearly 250 years, the islands comprising the nation of Japan kept a silent vigil in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean. By the early 1600s, foreigners had been expelled and Christianity outlawed. Occasional attempts at contact by western nations, who alternated between intrigue and frustration, met with stony faced orders to leave. All this changed in 1853, when the United States sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry to Japan with a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the emperor, and orders (actually written by Perry himself) to obtain a treaty. Two connected factors necessitated these actions. The first involved the lucrative China trade, driven by profit and the alluring scents of tea and peppers, the luxury of exotic silks and the delicacy of fine porcelains. The second was the need for a refueling station for the coal-powered, smoke-billowing steam ships which had so astounded the Japanese upon Perry's arrival. These ironclad monsters needed huge amounts of coal, leaving little room for cargo on the trips to and from China and San Francisco. Japan happened to have plenty of coal deposits and found itself encompassed within the American idea of manifest destiny as the stepping stone to China. Perry completed his mission in 1854 and within the next few years, technologically inferior Japan was intimidated into a number of unequal treaties with America, Britain, France and Russia. The Dutch also pressed their advantage in having been the only outside western contact with Japan during the isolation years through a small, tightly controlled trading post on the island of Deshima outside of Nagasaki. It appeared as if Japan might be headed for the same fate as China, to eventually lose central control to competing spheres of foreign influence.

China and Japan, however, took separate paths in their reaction to the Western powers. Many Japanese were alarmed at these events and anti-foreign sentiment grew among samurai (the warrior class) and the daimyo (feudal lords) who had already resented Tokugawa rule. The Tokugawa clan, headed by the shogun, (the military leader) had ruled Japan since 1603, and was now blamed for the shame which the unequal treaties had inflicted upon Japan. In the end, the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown and a new group of leaders emerged at the same time a new emperor ascended the throne. Every emperor of Japan is known by a title named "for the era during which he would rule"(1). Thus was born the Meiji Era, which means "enlightened rule." The emperor served mainly as a figurehead and a small group of men, who would become known as the Meiji oligarchs, ruled the country. What followed, from 1867 to 1912, remains unparalleled in history.

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