Meiji Period  Emperor Meiji (Mutsuhito) 明治天皇  Emperor Meiji
(Mutsuhito) 明治天皇  The Meiji Era (明治時代 1868-1912) designates the
reign of the Meiji Emperor. During this time, Japan started its
modernization and rose to world power status.  In 1867, 15-year
old Mutsuhito succeeded his father, the Emperor Komei (孝明天皇,
Kōmei-tennō), taking the title Meiji, meaning “enlightened
rule”. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended the 265-year-old
feudalistic Tokugawa shogunate.  Considering that the economic
structure and production of the country was roughly equivalent
to Elizabethan era England, becoming a world power in such a
short time was remarkable progress. There were at least two
reasons for the speed of Japan’s modernization: the employment
of over 3,000 foreign experts (oyatoi gaikokujin [kyūjitai
御雇ひ外國人, shinjitai 御雇い外国人, "hired foreigners"]), with thousands
more in the private sector, in a variety of specialist fields
such as teaching foreign languages, science, engineering, the
military, etc; and the dispatch of m