With Japan now providing new sources for inspiration and art, Western desire for Japanese pieces, or at the very least aestheticized orientalist pieces was at a peak. The ‘goal’, or more appropriately the result, of the Meiji Restoration or Revolution was a sythenization of Western production and output with Japanese artistic and cultural value. These permeable borders meant there was now an influx of goods, culture, innovation, and industrialization to and from Japan, to and from the West. With the upheaval of government structures and a re-entry into global commerce, much of Japanese and Western life changed. Following American navy Commodore Perry’s arrival in the late Edo period, and subsequent militarial intimidation, Japan opened its borders to the Western world. When Emperor Meiji declared himself to be the unilateral ruler of Japan in 1886 this system came to an end. Broadly speaking, the Restoration (or Revolution) consolidated the Japanese political system that had since the 17th century been under a feudalist system in which nobility ruled their provinces under the leadership of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo (Tokyo).
The Meiji restoration is a multifaceted and complex period of history that could not be adequately summed up with just a few hundred words.
Large cloisonné Vase with Chrysanthemum Crest and Wisteria Blossom Motif, Namikawa cloisonné Museum of Kyoto
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