![]() For two and a half centuries there had been peace under the auspices of a shogun based in Edo, a city comparable in size and splendour with Paris. These off-key overtures drove Japan’s already febrile politics into outright crisis. Trade was demanded, at the point of a gun: ‘friendship’, or else. ![]() Beginning with the arrival on Japan’s shores of US Commodore Matthew C Perry in 1853, the world’s most advanced technological and military powers sent steamships puffing into Japanese ports. In the mid-19th century, that all changed.
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