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[trevor-9god]

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[seniorsquibbles-blog]

History Highlights #1

Hope you all enjoy my first post of my hopefully long running history blog. The first highlight to christen my new blog will be about Japans transformation into a completely different functioning nation in a mere fifty years during the 19th and 20th century.

It all started in the 1960’s with a humiliating barrage of treaties that the Japanese Shogunate, Tokugawa had to sign by the British, Americans, Russians, and Dutch forcing the Japanese to open up their ports to these new outsiders along with exempting them from Japanese laws and putting limits on Japanese tariffs. This is due to the shogunate keeping the outsiders under strict limits beforehand even though there was internal unrest wanting otherwise. It wasn't until the American naval officer, Commodore Matthew Perry entered the Edo Bay in 1953 with an entire fleet of steam powered ships creating a rush of other countries to come in forcing the Shogunate into a corner and the other nations having their way or else. Though with these treaties came a change that had been wanted for some time, mainly with the youth of Japan and among the military's elite. They wanted the Shogunate to be accepting of these outsiders and their practices instead of rejecting them, but just like the outsiders they were going to get their way one way or another and in 1868 a group of reformers toppled the Tokugawa Shogunate. Putting Mutsuhito into place as the Emperor of the new Japan, he was also known as the Meiji Emperor (“Enlightened Rule”) and his rule becoming known as the Meiji Restoration. The Meiji government wanted to create a single unified fighting force out of the nation, they started this by creating a propaganda campaign and revamping the military. This helped promote for linguistically and ethnically homogeneity out of the nation allowing for past divisions within the country to be put down as to focus on the potential threat of the far more powerful Europeans. The unification of the nation then allowed the government to look outward from their country with the thoughts of expansion in mind with promises of expanded trade, obtaining staples, and flashing off national superiority amongst those they conquered.  

With this in mind they looked south westward to the Kingdom of the Ryukyus amongst the Ryukyu Islands. In 1879 the Meiji government sent a mere 160 soldiers to establish a new Okinawa Prefecture, with the show of force being a rousing success the Meiji government added the islands to their nation. The Japanese didn't want the Ryukyu people of the islands to join their nation as they looked down on the Ryukyu and regarded them as inferior, not even allowing them to become citizens of Japan. With that came appointed Japanese officials as many intellectuals of Japan's thought the Ryukyus had a backward way to them and were unfit for local self rule and representation. The Japanese didn't just stop at the Ryukyu Islands and set their sights on the nation of Korea, setting them on a collision course with China as they also had set their sights on reclaiming their lost possession. With this the Sino-Japanese war soon broke out in 1894 and concluded in 1985 with Japan as the victor. After the humiliating defeat China ceded the province of Taiwan to the Japanese who then annexed Korea in 1910, Taiwan and Korea then became the twin jewels of Japan's empire. Just as they had done with the Ryukyus people, the Japanese saw the Taiwanese and Korean people as inferior and unworthy of being citizens of their glorious nation. 

Expansionism had not been the only thing on the Emperor’s mind, he also wanted to rejuvenate Japans economy. He was able to accomplish this by first banning the feudal system in 1871 allowing for peasants to become small landowners, farmers improving their agrarian techniques, with this the standard of living rose. The unification of the currency around the yen came next along with tax reforms, along with an advanced civil service system. They also added a constitution in 1889, taking largely from Germany's constitution. The following year the Imperial Diet, Japan's first parliament was created with 1% (450,000) of the population electing who should sit in the parliament.

To be a strong supporter of the government was a great thing along with being a family member of that supporter during that time as Japan’s version of capitalism was always taken more as personal matter than compared to their western counterparts. The government would sell valuable enterprises to those that strongly supported the government, becoming trustful family companies as the sons, fathers, and uncles would control different parts of the expanding company. Though it wasn't just men that were given such a high amount of power and responsibility as women played a crucial role in cultivating family alliances especially if they were potential marital partners.

All of this done within fifty years, the citizens and government of Japan molding it into the nation they had always wanted. Taking action instead of letting others get in their way like the past Shogunate or the Chinese, any type of hurdle that came their way they flawlessly jumped over it and kept marching on.

[allclassico]

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