Meiji Restoration
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The Meiji restoration of 1868 returned power to the emperor in name and ended two and a half centuries of Tokugawa rule, and it launched Japan's rapid modernisation. The shogunate had been weakened by the arrival of Commodore Perry's black ships in 1853 and by unequal treaties signed under duress; samurai reformers from Satsuma and Choshu used the slogan of revering the emperor and expelling the barbarians to overthrow the shogun in the Boshin war of 1868 to 1869. The young emperor Mutsuhito took the era name Meiji and moved the capital to Edo, renamed Tokyo. The government abolished the han domains, the samurai class and the feudal stipends in 1871, sold land to the peasants, and sent missions abroad, including the Iwakura mission of 1871 to 1873, to study Western law, industry and schools. Conscription in 1873 created a national army, the constitution of 1889 followed the Prussian model, and the first diet met in 1890. Industry was built by state initiative and then sold to the zaibatsu, silk and cotton exports paid for imports, and victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 announced a new great power. The costs fell on farmers and workers, and disaffected samurai were crushed in the Satsuma rebellion of 1877.