This period included wars and other calamities, but also some very fortunate events. It opened, strange to say, with the “anti-foreign reaction” at its height. This reaction was the natural result of the rapid Occidentalizing that had been going on, and was strengthened by the refusal of Western nations to revise the treaties which kept Japan in thraldom. But the period closed with “treaty revision” accomplished, and Japan admitted, on terms of equality, to alliance with Western nations.88 And in quelling the “Boxer” disturbances in China and particularly in raising the Siege of Peking, Japan played a most important part. This period was chiefly occupied with the experimental stage in constitutional government, when the relations between the two Houses of the Diet, between the Diet and the Cabinet, between the Cabinet and political parties, were being defined. This was also the period during which new civil, commercial, and criminal codes were put into operation; the gold standard was adopted; the restrictions on the freedom of the press and of public meeting were almost entirely removed; the tariff was revised in the interests of Japan; and the electoral franchise in elections for members of the House of Representatives was largely extended.

It has already been suggested that the very order of these periods indicates in general the progress of Japan during those hundred years. The century dawns, nay, even the second half of the century opens, with Japan in seclusion. But Commodore Perry breaks down that isolation; and Japan enters, first merely into amity, but afterwards into commercial intercourse, with foreign nations. The break up of the old foreign policy accelerates the break up of the old national policy of government, and civil commotions culminate in the restoration of the Emperor to his lawful authority. Japan is then reconstructed on new lines; and a tremendous internal development prepares the Japanese to be admitted by their generous Emperor into a share of his inherited prerogatives. And the century sets with Japan among the great nations of Christendom, and with the Japanese enjoying a constitutional government, representative institutions, local self-government, freedom of the press and of public meeting, and religious liberty. If this is the record of Nineteenth Century Japan, what of Twentieth Century Japan?

It certainly has a good start, in formal alliance with Great Britain to maintain peace and justice in the Far East.