Early modern Japan, or the period between 1600 and 1868, witnessed the birth of many of Japan’s most enduring cultural and political attributes, as well as the expansion of its basic geographic boundaries. For our purposes, the characterization of this period as ‘early modern’ is important because it bridges the historical chasm that usually separates the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ realms of Japan’s historical development. Once the three unifiers had completed the military and political labours of uniting the realm, Japan developed in a manner that propelled it into the modern age.

Japan’s mid-nineteenth-century entry into the modern period was not exclusively the result of its adoption of Western civilization after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, but also the result of forces pushing from within. These forces caused indigenous changes, such as early forms of capitalism, increasing political centralization, development of science and technology, and the gradual emergence of early nationalism. These developments conspired with the importation of Western institutions and cultures to make Japan a rising Asian power in the late nineteenth century. The implications of identifying an early modern period in Japan are profound. They suggest commonalities in human histories, ones that transcend striking cultural variations. That is, as different from Europeans as Japanese had become over the centuries, with their blackened teeth and chonmage (shaven pate) hairstyles, they also developed in a manner that paralleled societies around the globe.