In 1853, in China, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was so powerful that it captured Nanjing and renamed it Tianjing, and set its capital here. While Japan was still under the rule of the shogunate in 1853, the Tokugawa family was considered by the West to be the de facto ruler of Japan, while the Japanese emperor was regarded as a pope-like figure. The West of 1853 had completed the Industrial Revolution and was setting off a wave of world division.
The last shogun, Tokugawa Keiki
It can be said that at this time, China and Japan are still on the same starting line, and even due to the geographical location of Japan's narrow island country, China is still the largest power in East Asia in the eyes of the West at this time. However, why is it that more than forty years later, the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894 ended in a crushing defeat for China, the Foreign Affairs Movement was declared a failure, the Beiyang Marine Division ceased to exist, Japan stepped on China's blood and tears to become a great power, and China was completely reduced to fat meat to be slaughtered in the eyes of the great powers.
Once the first in Asia, the Beiyang Fleet
The rise of modern Japan began with the Meiji Restoration, which was triggered by the "Black Ship Incident". In 1853, U.S. Admiral Perry led the U.S. fleet to Edo Bay (today's Tokyo Bay, modern Tokyo is developed on the basis of Edo Castle), asked Japan to trade, because the ships of the U.S. fleet were black, so history called the "Black Ship Incident", under the cannons of the United States, Japan was forced to open up like China, Japan was frightened by the cannons of the U.S. Army for the first time, of course, such a thing happened more than once in later history, and today's U.S. troops stationed in Japan are still teaching Japan." The Truth of Being Human". At this point in the script, there is nothing unusual about the "Black Ship Incident" experienced by Japan in 1853, that is, a country that still practices a feudal system is encountering a modern country that has completed the industrial revolution should show a sense of powerlessness, this kind of encounter that is not on the same plane, the result is conceivable, Japan finally signed the "Kanagawa Treaty" with the United States, and agreed to all the requirements of the United States. But the Japanese national character revealed by what happened during the Black Ship Incident laid the foundation for the Meiji Restoration and laid the groundwork for the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894.
You can believe that the Japanese also erected a statue of Perry in his honor
When Yoshida Shoin, the spiritual leader of the Meiji Restoration and the founder of the theory and the originator of Japanese militarist ideas, once again came to Edo Bay on the Black Ship in the United States, he disregarded the shogunate's prohibition and rowed a simple boat to the American ship with his own students. Yoshida Shoin represented not only the ideas of the japanese elite at that time, but also the vast lower and middle-class samurai class, after seeing the advanced of the West, the sense of national crisis brought about by the island environment was once again stimulated. When we are still thinking about "mastering yi and mastering the art to control yi", Japan is thinking of total Westernization, and Mu Qiang's nature makes them abandon their stubborn traditions in an instant, just like the Tang and Song dynasties completely studied China, opening a comprehensive top-down study of the West.
The national character of a country determines the fate of the country to some extent, so the outcome of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War was already decided at the time of the Meiji Restoration, China's strong sense of cultural superiority has caused us to miss many opportunities in modern times, and the sense of national crisis in Japan's bones has allowed them to lay the foundation for industrialization in less than two decades. However, Japan's national character also made them the current Japan, a country that lost its sovereignty over the U.S. military under the clan system; After China's rejuvenation again, with its cultural heritage over the past thousand years, it has embarked on a path of peaceful rejuvenation that is different from that of the invasion of the great powers.