Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 12, Civilization and Enlightenment.

This week we're going to talk about the early Meiji period from 1868 until 1895.

During this period of 27 short years into a modern nation state and one of the major powers in Asia,

it transitioned from an entirely feudal and pre-industrial economy

into a modern nation state and one of the major powers in Asia.

In future episodes, we'll discuss some theories about how and why Japan was able to do this,

but for now I'm just going to tackle the what of it.

I'm going to give you the timeline, and maybe in a future episode we'll discuss some theories

as to why things turned out the way they did.

The victorious coalition of Satuma, Choshu, and the minor domains of Saga and Tosa

had three orders of business once they finished defeating

the Bacufu and had seized control of Edo.

The first was to defeat the remaining forces of the Bacifu.

Some domains, particularly in the north, refused to surrender even after the Tokugawa themselves

had given up the fight.

They formed a coalition that continued to fight for the restoration of Bakfu rule,

and it wasn't until 1869 that the last holdouts, which came from a remnant of the

Bakufu's navy, were defeated in the town of Hakodate in Hokkaido, which incidentally is the

town I've lived the longest in in Japan. My bus stop was

actually about three blocks from where the head of the Shinsengumi was killed fighting.

Priority number two was to act out the restoration of power to the emperor, to proclaim the

official restoration of the imperial throne to political power. In practice, this was a fairly minor reform,

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