Japan an Overview of the Period

The 14th century was a period of anarchy in Japan, with warring between different clans widespread. Finally, in the middle of the 16th century, Japan was unified by a series of solid leaders, starting with Oda Nobunaga.
The first contact with the West occurred about 1542, when a Portuguese ship, blown off its course to China, landed in Japan. Traders from Portugal, the Netherlands, England, and Spain arrived during the next century, as Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan missionaries did. During the early part of the 17th century, growing suspicions that the traders and missionaries were forerunners of a military conquest by European powers caused the shogunate to place foreigners under progressively tighter restrictions. This culminated in the expulsion of all foreigners and severing all relations with the outside world, except severely restricted commercial contacts with Dutch and Chinese merchants at Nagasaki. This isolation lasted for 200 years until Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy forced the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Renewed contact with the West profoundly altered Japanese society. In 1868, the shogun was forced to resign, and an emperor was restored to power. The feudal system subsequently was abolished, and many Western institutions were adopted, including a Western legal system and constitutional government along quasi-parliamentary lines. The Meiji Constitution initiated many reforms. Eventually, in 1898, the last of the galling "unequal treaties" with Western powers was removed, signaling Japan's new status among the nations of the world. In a few decades, by creating modern social, educational, economic, military, and industrial systems, Emperor Meiji's "controlled revolution" had transformed a feudal and isolated state into a world power. Japanese leaders of the late 19th century regarded the Korean Peninsula as a "dagger pointed at the heart of Japan." It was over Korea that Japan became involved in a war with the Chinese Empire in 1894-95 and with Russia in 1904-05. The war with China established Japan's dominant interest in Korea while giving it the Pescadores Islands and Formosa.