The year 2018 celebrated the 150 th anniversary of the Meiji era, when Japan opened up to the world and to modernity. However, it was not light hearted. Because, for 200 years, this mysterious, almost secret country had closed its borders to foreigners. But in 1854 the American cannons forcibly tore it from its isolation.
The response was extraordinary. The young Emperor Meiji, whose name means "enlightened government", then imposed a gentle revolution on his people. It was an accelerated westernization, which revealed the incredible adaptability of the Japanese people. The country thus passed from feudalism to a parliamentary system, upsetting its social and political structure in a few years. The privileges of the samurai are abolished. Students go to study in European countries. Western advisers are hired. A capitalist-type economy is imposed, which leads to industrialization and urbanization. In 1905, the military victory won against Russia revealed to the amazement of the world the successful metamorphosis of an Asian country which had known how to rise to the rank of European powers.
This reasoned openness to the West is in fact an intelligent resistance. The Land of the Rising Sun has managed to preserve its independence. It has also reinvented itself, reviving its traditions. According to the writer Hearn, "it is not a transformation that has been carried out, but the access of old aptitudes to new structures". It still amazes and fascinates today.