Shin Kawashima is a professor at the University of Tokyo. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right. With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.
Your subscription plan doesn't allow commenting. To learn more see our FAQ. It looks like you're using an ad blocker. Thank you for supporting our journalism. Sorry, but your browser needs Javascript to use this site. When the Czar set his sights on a warm-water port in the Pacific Ocean for trade and as a base for its growing navy, he zeroed in on the Korean and Liaodong peninsulas.
Japan, fearing the growth of Russian influence in the region since the First Sino-Japanese War of , was wary. At first, the two nations attempted to negotiate. The conflict was a bloody one, and over , people lost their lives as the fighting waged on between and The war ended with Japanese victory and the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, which was mediated by U. President Theodore Roosevelt who later won the Nobel Prize for his role in the talks.
Meiji Constitution: Britannica. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. As servants of the daimyos, or great lords, the In late , over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people—including both soldiers and civilians—in the Chinese city of Nanking or Nanjing. The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Much of the fighting took place in what is now northeastern China.
The Russo-Japanese War was also a naval conflict, with ships exchanging fire in the Born to a minor warlord in Okazaki, Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu began his military training with the Imagawa family. He later allied himself with the powerful forces of Oda Nobunaga and then Toyotomi Hideyoshi, expanding his land holdings via a successful attack on the Hirohito was emperor of Japan from until his death in He took over at a time of rising democratic sentiment, but his country soon turned toward ultra-nationalism and militarism.
Shrewd at This would help patriotic samurai to regain their importance. But the new leaders quickly returned from Europe and reestablished their control, arguing that Japan should concentrate on its own modernization and not engage in such foreign adventures.
For the next twenty years, in the s and s, the top priority remained domestic reform aimed at changing Japan's social and economic institutions along the lines of the model provided by the powerful Western nations. The final blow to conservative samurai came in the Satsuma rebellion, when the government's newly drafted army, trained in European infantry techniques and armed with modern Western guns, defeated the last resistance of the traditional samurai warriors.
With the exception of these few samurai outbreaks, Japan's domestic transformation proceeded with remarkable speed, energy, and the cooperation of the people. This phenomenon is one of the major characteristics of Japan's modern history.
In an effort to unite the Japanese nation in response to the Western challenge, the Meiji leaders created a civic ideology centered around the emperor. Although the emperor wielded no political power, he had long been viewed as a symbol of Japanese culture and historical continuity.
Westerners of that time knew him primarily as a ceremonial figure. The people seldom saw the emperor, yet they were to carry out his orders without question, in honor to him and to the unity of the Japanese people, which he represented. In fact, the emperor did not rule.
It was his "advisers," the small group of men who exercised political control, that devised and carried out the reform program in the name of the emperor. The abolition of feudalism made possible tremendous social and political changes. Millions of people were suddenly free to choose their occupation and move about without restrictions. By providing a new environment of political and financial security, the government made possible investment in new industries and technologies.
The government led the way in this, building railway and shipping lines, telegraph and telephone systems, three shipyards, ten mines, five munitions works, and fifty-three consumer industries making sugar, glass, textiles, cement, chemicals, and other important products. This was very expensive, however, and strained government finances, so in the government decided to sell most of these industries to private investors, thereafter encouraging such activity through subsidies and other incentives.
Some of the samurai and merchants who built these industries established major corporate conglomerates called zaibatsu, which controlled much of Japan's modern industrial sector. The government also introduced a national educational system and a constitution, creating an elected parliament called the Diet. They did this to provide a good environment for national growth, win the respect of the Westerners, and build support for the modern state.
In the Tokugawa period, popular education had spread rapidly, and in the government established a national system to educate the entire population. By the end of the Meiji period, almost everyone attended the free public schools for at least six years.
The government closely controlled the schools, making sure that in addition to skills like mathematics and reading, all students studied "moral training," which stressed the importance of their duty to the emperor, the country and their families. The constitution was "given" to the people by the emperor, and only he or his advisers could change it. A parliament was elected beginning in , but only the wealthiest one percent of the population could vote in elections.
In this was changed to allow all men but not yet women to vote. To win the recognition of the Western powers and convince them to change the unequal treaties the Japanese had been forced to sign in the s, Japan changed its entire legal system, adopting a new criminal and civil code modeled after those of France and Germany.
The Western nations finally agreed to revise the treaties in , acknowledging Japan as an equal in principle, although not in international power. In Japan fought a war against China over its interest in Korea, which China claimed as a vassal state. The Korean peninsula is the closest part of Asia to Japan, less than miles by sea, and the Japanese were worried that the Russians might gain control of that weak nation.
Japan won the war and gained control over Korea and gained Taiwan as a colony. Japan's sudden, decisive victory over China surprised the world and worried some European powers. At this time the European nations were beginning to claim special rights in China — the French, with their colony in Indochina today's Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia , were involved in South China; the British also claimed special rights in South China, near Hong Kong, and later the whole Yangtze valley; and the Russians, who were building a railway through Siberia and Manchuria, were interested in North China.
After Japan's victory over China, Japan signed a treaty with China which gave Japan special rights on China's Liaotung peninsula, in addition to the control of Taiwan.
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