Meiji Restoration

January 3, 1868

Samurai from the western domains of Satsuma and Chōshū overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and restored imperial rule under the fifteen-year-old Emperor Meiji. Within a generation, Japan would abolish feudalism, build railways, adopt a constitution, and defeat a European power in war. No nation in history had reinvented itself so fast or so completely.