The dual sovereignty of the Mikado and the Shogun, like that existing in the Holy Roman Empire, made a great deal of history in Japan.  The things representing the real power in a state were in the hands of the Shogun.  The Mikado was venerated, but this first servant in the land was feared, the one dwelling in a seclusion so sacred that to look upon him was almost a sacrilege, the other with armies and castles and wealth and the pomp and circumstance which attend the real sovereign.  History again repeats itself as we see this Maire du Palais obscuring more and more the titular sovereign, the Mikado, until like Pepin he openly claimed absolute sovereignty, assuming the title of Tycoon.

The people rose against this usurpation.  It was while in the throes of this revolution that the United States Government dispatched a few ships under Commodore Perry, in protection of some American citizens in Japan.  After this events moved swiftly.  In 1854 a treaty with the United States—­their first with foreign nations—­was signed at Yokohama.  Treaties with other nations speedily followed.  In 1860 a Japanese embassy arrived at Washington, and similar ones were established in European capitals.

In 1869 the revolution was over.  The party of the usurping Tycoon was defeated and the Shogunate abolished.  The anti-foreign spirit which was allied with it shared this defeat, and the party desiring to adopt the methods of foreign lands was triumphant.  There was a reorganization of the government, with the Mikado as its single and supreme head.  The entire feudal structure, with its Daimios and Samurai, was swept away.  A representative body was created holding a relation to the Mikado similar to that of the Houses of Parliament to the King of England.  The rights of the people were safeguarded.  In other words, at a bound, an Oriental feudal and military despotism had become a modern democratic free state.  From this moment dates an ascent from obscurity to an advanced type of civilization, accomplished with a swiftness without a parallel in the history of nations.

Japanese youths, silent, intent, studious, were in European and American universities, colleges, technical schools, learning the arts of war and of peace.  When war was declared between China and Japan (1894), the world discovered that they had not studied in vain.

In order to understand the Chino-Japanese war, one must know something of Korea, that, little peninsula jutting out between these two countries, washed by the Yellow Sea on the west and by the Sea of Japan on the east.