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How Did The Meiji Restoration Affect Japan A Closing Country

Decent Essays

This year is the 150 years' anniversary for the Meiji Restoration and this was a big turning point for Japan in terms of industrialization and modernizing to be one of the great powers. I aim to explore how it led to the Meiji Restoration from closing country for over 200 years and how it effected in terms of process of economic development and militarization during 1868 to 1904 due to political change investing western cultures. The Meiji Restoration occurred soon after when commodore Matthew Perry opened up Japan to its ports to trade with United States. Japan knew the expansion of imperialism by Europeans and United States while still trading with Dutch. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry first visited Japan to open up the port and showed …show more content…

Japan did not know much of what is going on outside of the world so Iwakura Mission were send out to abroad mainly in the United States and Europe. Initially, Iwakura Misson's was to fix unequal treaty while they were abroad however they did not succeed. Instead, those statesman and scholars who went to overseas learned learn about militarization, economy, local government, society, laws, science and technology, political system, education, civilization and enlightenment, while they were on the mission and helped develop Japan in Meiji Period. This movement was big step for Japan because during Edo period, they were almost no interactions between other countries. Which means that they did have opportunity to develop new system or technologies to catch up with other countries which ended up left out from the rest of the world. During Meiji period, political system changed due to restoring emperor's power. When political system changes cultures and society changes. Government and people started to accepting new cultures from the west and that changed old Japanese society to modern Japanese society. Japan was also believing that installing new cultures and technologies will stop imperial invasion from the Europe and the United

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