Posts Tagged ‘meiji restoration’
From the Archives–Samurai: The Last Warrior
I’m currently embroiled in proofreading the endnotes for The Dragon From Chicago. It’s a headache-inducing job, but it is the one part of the book in which no one can catch the errors except the writer. (Probably the person who made one of them. ) Instead of hoping I pick up speed and can squeeze…
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Daughters of the Samurai
In Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West, Janice P. Nimura tells the story of three young girls, ages eleven, ten and six, whom the Japanese government sent to the United States in 1871 as part of the westernizing reforms of the Meiji Restoration that transformed Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. The…
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“Opening” Japan–The Meiji Restoration
As I’ve mentioned before, in 1853 the United States government forced Japan to open its ports to United States merchants in a literal display of gunboat diplomacy. Commodore Perry’s act of military aggression against Japan is often given credit for dragging Japan into the nineteenth century. In fact, the real credit for Japan’s transformation belongs…
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