It is very often in history that the West comes across a civilization and wants to trade and imposes values because that civilization is isolated because they think they are te best (cough cough Chinese).True, the Qing Dynasty and Meiji Restoration demonstrate that there is only one route to become a “modern” nation: westernization. As the west sought new trading partnets and wider areas of influence, Japan had a forced hand. The west was much more powerful and began to infringe upon Japanese soverinty, but all the methods of westerninzation went against the tradition. Japan needed to moderninze to the liking of the west or face destruction. After the arrival of Comodore Matthew Perry, Japan was forced to open up. As Japan began to open to foreign influence, they became heavily divided on what to do with foreign influcene: embrace or repel. Fortuantely of the Japanese state, those whe favored embracing westernization became more powerful because only a minority was of a high class in ht e old Japanese social structure, and only the old upperclass wanted to preserve tradition. The ending of the Last Samurai showed greusomely how traditonal Japanese ways were no match for the poer of the west …show more content…
After preliminary westernization they were able to assert dominance over much of China on multiple fronts and able to run the puppet state of Manchuko. After westernizing, Japan becomes a major world power able to control China. We know the immense power of Japan after westernizaton in two ways: control over China and Manchuko, and WW2