Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Emperor Meiji or Mutsuhito as he is known according to Western traditions was merely a boy in 1868 when he was moved from Kyoto to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo and continues to serve as Japan´s capital.
After centuries of feudal rule by samurai, Japan was lagging behind world powers who threatened to colonize Japan as they did with so many other countries. It became clear that Japan had to change or perish, and time was short. A new government set out to thoroughly reinvent Japan, all of that in the name of the Emperor to whom all Japanese had to swear an oath of loyalty.
Challenges were thorough: How to bring an economy from Early Modern standards to the industrial age? How to deal with a frightening, but fascinating outside world about which very little had been known until recently? How to educate a population that had known no room for social mobility and mental freedom? And how about introducing democracy to a country that had been the absolute opposite of it?
The lecture will introduce these challenges and examine the answers found. After 44 years Meiji Japan was completely different from Japan under the Tokugawa shōgun. It had prospered and gained access to the world, but was already carrying the seeds that would produce utter disaster in the following decades until 1945.
Emperor Meiji or Mutsuhito as he is known according to Western traditions was merely a boy in 1868 when he was moved from Kyoto to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo and continues to serve as Japan´s capital.
After centuries of feudal rule by samurai, Japan was lagging behind world powers who threatened to colonize Japan as they did with so many other countries. It became clear that Japan had to change or perish, and time was short. A new government set out to thoroughly reinvent Japan, all of that in the name of the Emperor to whom all Japanese had to swear an oath of loyalty.
Challenges were thorough: How to bring an economy from Early Modern standards to the industrial age? How to deal with a frightening, but fascinating outside world about which very little had been known until recently? How to educate a population that had known no room for social mobility and mental freedom? And how about introducing democracy to a country that had been the absolute opposite of it?
The lecture will introduce these challenges and examine the answers found. After 44 years Meiji Japan was completely different from Japan under the Tokugawa shōgun. It had prospered and gained access to the world, but was already carrying the seeds that would produce utter disaster in the following decades until 1945.
