A Japanese woodblock triptych of women in Western dress playing European music, 1889
Concert of European Music (Ōshū kangengaku gassō no zu), 1889
Marked Edo (Tokyo)

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Meiji Japan

After American warships forced Japan to open its ports, rebels restored power to the emperor in 1868. In forty years Japan built railways, factories, schools and a modern army, and defeated China and Russia in war.

Place
Edo (Tokyo) · Kagoshima · Tomioka · Port ArthurAsia
Laid out as
A revolutionHow things were before, the moment it turned, and how things were after.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

BeforeA closed country ruled by the shogun and samurai.

  1. IThe black ships
  2. IIThe restoration of 1868
  3. IIIThe end of the samurai
  4. IVLearning from the West
  5. VSilk mills and Tomioka
  6. VIWar with Russia

AfterAn industrial power with an emperor, a parliament and an empire.

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Emperor Meiji
  • Saigō Takamori
  • Itō Hirobumi
  • Tsuda Umeko

Objects

  • The Charter Oath
  • Woodblock prints of the new Japan

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1868 to 1912. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?