In the Westerners' mind Japan remains a country which sometimes presents an extreme modernism (with the painful consequences which one knows nowadays). On the other hand, Japan tries to preserve the old traditions which make imaginations wander and return us to the novels of Pierre Loti. This modernization has a relatively recent history. In 1868 began the Meiji era, or "Enlightened Rule", which was that of the large building sites and upheavals, as much on the internal level: currency, calendar, land reforms and political ones, than external: annexations and expansion. The Meiji restoration of 1868 initiated many reforms. The feudal system and the samurais were officially abolished and many Western institutions were adopted. New legal systems and of government as well as important economic, social and military reforms transformed Japan into a regional power. These changes gave rise to a strong ambition which was transformed into war against China and Russia (1905), in which Japan gained Korea, Taiwan and other territories. At the end of the Meiji era, in 1912, Japan was a large modern country.
[...] The battle of Liaoyang, which took on August 25th, was completed on September 4th by a new Japanese victory and forced the Russians to withdraw back on Mukden (currently Shenyang). A very hard seat engaged then, all the more as the Russians regularly received the reinforcement of additional troops, conveyed by the Trans-Siberian one, while the Japanese reserves started to become exhausted. Conscious of its numerical superiority, Kouropatkine launched two offensives in Manchuria, which both failed. Finally the two armies, facing a hard winter, withdrew back. [...]
[...] ¶China, there, recognized the independence of Korea, yield to Japan the island of Formosa (currently Taiwan), the archipelago of Pescadores (currently Penghu), and the peninsula of Liadong, in the current province of Liaoning, in South Manchuria. China also committed itself to pay to Japan important war reparations, and conceding considerable commercial privileges to it. Russia, disregarding the diplomatic victories of Japan at the end of this war, allied with France and Germany to force Japan to restore the peninsula of Liadong in China. [...]
[...] The Meiji era, also called "Meiji Restoration", symbolizes the end of the policy of voluntary isolation (known as Sakoku) and the opening of Japan under the threat of the American and European guns expedition ordered by Matthew Calbraith Perry commodore from the US navy). It is also synonymous with the upheavals which followed: the rise of the international trade and the industrialization of Japan, like its passage of feudality (abolition) to Western “modernity” (which means a race to new technologies and expansion of the colonial empire, in the aim of a division of the world by the westerners). [...]
[...] Western sciences and technology were more and more largely adopted, but with an aim of making of Japan a power equal to those of Europe, so that the motto was “Japanese spirit and European methods”. The State reform The first work to be achieved was the replacement of the seigniorial royalties by the tax of State. The old fiefs (more than 200) were gathered in three metropolises - Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka forty departments and Hokkaido which accepted a particular statute: all these districts were going to be managed by government officials. [...]
[...] At the end of Meiji, in 1912, Japan was being modernized in its socio-economic structure. III. 1868-1912: the expansion of the Japanese imperialism and its entrance in the “Chorus of the Nations” This time is also characterized by the expansion of the Japanese territory, copied on the Western model. The war against China The Korean issue To accelerate the development, it was attracting to follow a policy of expansion outside. In 1894, benefiting from the disorders in Korea, the reformists of the army pushed the government to launch on the continent a military operation. [...]
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