Across the Seas: Japan and a Changing World
Follow scriptures, ceramics and trading ships, then an overseas mission and the reforms that reached into ordinary households.
Loading the menu…
Loading progress…
- Japan Across the Seas
Japan’s overseas connections long predated the opening of treaty ports in the nineteenth century. Rice cultivation, Buddhist texts, porcelain and medical books crossed the sea in different ways; people then had to teach, adapt and use what arrived. Begin with those longer exchanges to understand what foreign warships later demanded should change.
- Japan Becomes Modern
Pressure to open the ports entered domestic politics, and change eventually reached village offices, classrooms and workshops. This reading connects the end of the shogunate, the reorganisation of local government and Meiji society. Watch the state grow stronger while households faced taxes, schooling, military service and work away from home.
- The Iwakura Mission Negotiates and Investigates Abroad
The new government sent the Iwakura Mission to Europe and the United States to seek treaty revision and study institutions. Negotiations did not achieve the intended revision, but the travellers brought back extensive observations. Their journey shows how learning abroad involved negotiation, judgement and difficult choices about what to adopt.
- Recap
These encounters changed institutions and daily life in different ways. The connections below can help you read the next port city or political turning point.