Makers of Japan

Modern Japan dates from the advent on the coast of Idzu province of the American squadron under Commodore Perry in 1853. Prior to that time, however, more than one attempt, pred...

At the head of the list of Makers of Modern Japan stands by right the name of the illustrious ruler, not merely in virtue of his imperial position, but of the supreme efforts wh...

Jimmu Tenno began to reign as Emperor of Japan in 667 B.C., being then, it is supposed, about thirty-five years of age. Ancient Japanese tradition no doubt assigned to him a sup...

To return to the Emperor’s early life, he is ever ready to avow himself indebted to the ability and wisdom of his tutors, foremost among whom were the Princes Sanjo and Iwakura,...

But there were worse troubles to follow, for when, in the month of March, Sir Harry Parkes went to Kioto on the invitation of the Emperor, to attend, in company with the Ministe...

The Emperor remained for some time at his Kioto palace before returning to Tokio, and it was known at the time that this outbreak of hostilities in a part of his dominions occas...

Prior to the Meiji era, which began in 1867, the Shogun (known in foreign countries as the Tycoon), who was the Emperor’s deputy at Yedo, now Tokio, personified the military sup...

When Iyeyasu the Law-giver died in 1616 his first resting-place was at the temple of Kunozan, in the province of Suruga, which adjoins his own native province of Mikawa. The mou...

The Regent was forty-five years old at the time of his death, having been born in 1815, the fourteenth son of the baron Naonaka. The Ii family is a very old one, an ancestor hav...

Acting under the authority of the sovereign, the perpetrators of the _coup d’état_ proceeded to set up a provisional government, and the Shogun was directed to surrender his fie...

For fifteen years prior to its extinction the foreign policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate had been that which was found acceptable to the Emperor Mutsuhito on his accession, thus t...

The following year, being the first of An-Sei era,—at this time it was the custom in Japan to change the name of the era to commemorate some auspicious or notable event, irrespe...

After an incarceration lasting five months in his native province he was transferred to the Temmacho Prison in Yedo, and its doors closed over him in July 1859. On the 27th of O...

In California the mission was very cordially welcomed, and in an eloquent speech delivered at the Lick House, San Francisco, in January 1872, shortly after landing, Ito set fort...

It was in 1885 that Count Ito, as he had now become, by the favour of the sovereign, under the provisions of the law creating a Peerage, formed his first Cabinet, in accordance...

In this necessarily imperfect sketch of the strenuous life of Marquis Ito I have touched mainly on his public career, leaving to the last any reference to the simplicity and use...

The ill feeling in the country engendered by this conflict of opinion led to a determined attempt on Prince Iwakura’s life by men belonging to the Tosa clan, who were caught and...

As to Choshiu, the sequel to the attack made by the clansmen on the Shogun’s troops was that the Emperor Komei issued an edict deposing the lord Mori and directing the Shogun, a...

A rough-hewn granite slab, bearing an inscription on its one smoothed side, stands amid a clump of azalea bushes to mark the spot where the patriot fell. The band of fanatics wh...

When the new Government was set up at Kioto in 1868 Goto became a Ko-Mon, or adviser to the So-sai, like his friends Kido and Komatsu, and in this position was able to exert con...

In the year 1862 he had purchased the steamer _Fiery Cross_ for his nephew, and went for a trial trip in her, outside Yokohama, and he had otherwise evinced his perfect readines...

The Emperor gave one more proof of his extreme magnanimity of mind when he pardoned Saigo’s transgression and ordered a statue to be erected to his memory in Uyeno Park in Tokio...

At the time of the outbreak of war in the island of Kiushiu in 1877 General Yamagata was at headquarters in Tokio, and it may well be comprehended that there was some anxiety in...

To judge of Japan’s strength, then, by her standing army would be a huge mistake, or even to wholly estimate it from the figures given as that of her army on a war footing, as w...

In March 1904 there was a gathering in Tokio to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the treaty made between Japan and the United States of America, consequent on the visits of...

In Japan the law is that all citizens are under the obligation of military service for a certain term of years, and therefore the necessity of complying with its provisions is a...

Dying, as he did, prior to the adoption of the Western system of orders of nobility, Kido Koin—better known as Kido Takakoto, or still earlier in his career as Kido Jiunichiro,—...

The monetary system in vogue in the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate was based on an obsolete plan established as far back as 1600 A.D. and various causes had combined to bri...

It is not a little instructive to learn to what degree the foreboding as to the national treasury being swamped by the number of yen silver coins that would come back for exchan...

When the prospect of war with Russia in 1903 necessitated much preparation at Tokio, Togo was summoned by Admiral Yamamoto, his old friend and schoolfellow, to the Capital, and...

But there was another thing that made the notion additionally attractive, and this was the position of the country’s finances in respect of the inconvertible paper currency term...