With the establishment of the Emperor on the throne, began the modern era in Japanese history, known in Japan as “Meiji”—­“Enlightened Rule.”

But not even yet was the purpose of the nation attained, namely, the expulsion of the polluters of the sacred soil of Japan.  As soon as the new government was established and had turned its attention to foreign affairs, it found itself in as great a dilemma as had its predecessors, the Tokugawa rulers.  For the foreign governments insisted that the treaties negotiated with the old government should be accepted in full by the new.  It was soon as evident to the new rulers as it had been to the old that direct and forcible resistance to the foreigners was futile.  Not by might were they to be overcome.  Westerners had, however, supplied the ideals whereby national, political unity was to be secured.  Mill’s famous work on “Representative Government” was early translated, and read by all the thinking men of the day.  These ideas were also keenly studied in their actual workings in the West.  The consequence was that feudalism was utterly rejected and the new ideas, more or less modified, were speedily adopted, even down to the production of a constitution and the establishment of local representative assemblies and a national diet.  In other words, the theories and practices of the West in regard to the political organization of the state supplied Japan with those new intellectual variations which were essential to the higher development of her own national unity.

A further point of importance is the fact that at the very time that the West applied this pressure and supplied Japan with these political ideals she also put within her reach the material instruments which would enable her to carry them into practice.  I refer to steam locomotion by land and sea, the postal and telegraphic systems of communication, the steam printing press, the system of popular education, and the modern organization of the army and the navy.  These instruments Japan made haste to acquire.  But for these, the rapid transformation of Old Japan into New Japan would have been an exceedingly long and difficult process.  The adoption of these tools of civilization by the central authority at once gave it an immense superiority over any local force.  For it could communicate speedily with every part of the Empire, and enforce its decisions with a celerity and a decisiveness before unknown.  It became once more the actual head of the nation.

We have thus reached the explanation of one of the most astonishing changes in national attitude that history has to record, and the new attitude seems such a contradiction of the old as to be inexplicable, and almost incredible.  But a better knowledge of the facts and a deeper understanding of their significance will serve to remove this first impression.

What, then, did the new government do?  It simply said, “For us to drive out these foreigners is impossible; but neither is it desirable.  We need to know the secrets of their power.  We must study their language, their science, their machinery, their steamboats, their battle-ships.  We must learn all their secrets, and then we shall be able to turn them out without difficulty.  Let us therefore restrict them carefully to the treaty ports, but let us make all the use of them we can.”