The Meiji Restoration

Internal discontent coincided with demands for trade and diplomatic relations. In , the USA sent Commodore Matthew Perry ( - ) to Japan to demand that the government sign a treaty that would permit trade and open diplomatic relations, which it did the following year. Japan lay on the route to China which the USA saw as a major market; also, their whaling ships in the Pacific needed a place to refuel. At that time, there was only one Western country that traded with Japan, Holland.

Perry’s arrival had an important effect on Japanese politics. The emperor, who till then had had little political power, now re-emerged as an important figure. In , a movement forcibly removed the shogun from power, and brought the Emperor to Edo. This was made the capital and renamed Tokyo, which means ‘eastern capital’.

Nishijin is a quarter in Kyoto. In the sixteenth century, it had a weavers’ guild of households and by the end of the seventeenth century the community numbered over , people. Sericulture spread and was encouraged by an order in that only domestic yarn was to be used. Nishijin specialised only in the most expensive products.

Silk production helped the growth of a class of regional entrepreneurs who challenged the Tokugawa order, and when foreign trade started in Japan’s silk exports became a major source of profit for the economy struggling to compete with Western goods.