By the late 19th century, this carefully calibrated system was coming apart. Under the Tokugawas, Japan developed a thriving domestic economy. But over time, merchants gained the upper hand, and many samurai, who received their pay in rice, found themselves impoverished by the shift to a cash-based economy. The frustrated younger samurai sought to break the shackles that bound them, while the newly rich merchants chafed at the constraints which kept them from wielding any real political power or marrying into the warrior caste.

Into this fervid environment sailed the American Commodore Matthew Perry, who was dispatched to Japan in 1853 to compel it to allow U.S. ships to land at Japanese ports. He was but the first in a long line of Western military leaders and diplomats to force Japan to accept trade treaties that undermined the authority of the Tokugawas. Gradually, powerful domains hostile to Tokugawa rule merged with dissatisfied samurai to form an active opposition. Soon, their slogan of “expel the barbarian, revere the emperor” morphed into a call to overthrow the Tokugawa. After an upheaval marked by terrorism, shifting political alliances, and limited battle, the palace coup of January 3, 1868, marked a largely bloodless end to a decade of instability.

The coalition of samurai and imperial bureaucrats that replaced the Tokugawa in 1868 began a decades-long process of political reform. On the face of it, they took power in the name of an imperial clan that leading samurai lords had kept out of politics for centuries. But in reality they were forced immediately to deal with the question of what kind of government they would erect. Virtually no one in the opposition imagined that within a decade, the new government in Tokyo would fight a civil war against traditionalist samurai holdouts, that the samurai caste as a whole would be dissolved, or that their ancient domains would be turned into administrative prefectures of a centralized national government. Surviving in a world dominated by the West demanded “enriching the country, strengthening the army,” one of the key slogans of the Meiji era. Restoration would not be enough; Meiji Japan would have to reinvent itself. But once unleashed, the forces of modernization would be hard to control.

In these early post-feudal years, Japanese thinkers struggled to locate their country in a world that had suddenly and dramatically expanded. They advocated a policy of datsu-A nyu-O, or “out of Asia, into Europe” to describe what they regarded as their natural position among the great powers. China had for centuries been Japan’s model for philosophy, politics, art, and the like, but it was unceremoniously dislodged in these decades, and the Qing Dynasty’s inability to grasp the new world occasioned growing contempt on the part of Japanese modernizers.