Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/353

Outline of Topics: Japan in 1801 and 1901; eras; Emperor and Court; Shōgun.—Sealed and wide-open Japan.—Travel and barriers.—Social changes.—Samurai.—Ideals of 1801 and 1901.—Costume.—Architecture.—Diet.—Education.—Newspapers.—Manufactures.—Status of woman.—Christianity.—Permanent transformations.—Prophecy.

In order to understand as clearly as possible the progress made by New Japan during the past fifty years, it will be profitable to institute some comparisons between conditions then and now. As a matter of fact the greater part of this wonderful advancement was achieved during the last third of the nineteenth century; but it suits our purpose better to compare 1801 and 1901, the first years of the two centuries. Thus can we appreciate fully with how much difference in conditions and prospects Japan has entered upon the twentieth century than she entered upon the nineteenth century.

By the Japanese calendar, the year 1801 was the first of the Kyōwa Era, a short and uneventful period; but the year 1901 was the thirty-fourth of the Meiji Era, or Period of Enlightened Rule,—a most appropriate name for the first era of the New Empire.