Japanese and Their Rise to Power

The Japanese had been shelled up on the little island for years. After seeing what happened to their next door neighbors the Chinese be destroyed by the British for shunning western influences, they knew that they had to embrace it. The Japanese had always been agaisnt trading with the westerners like the Americans because of their Shin-To philosophies but after the Opium War in which the Chinese were left in rubble, they knew it was time for a change. This lead to the Meiji Restoration, which resulted in the Shogun steeping down from his position of authority in 1867. With this brought great fortune to the Japanese because of the fact that Americans and other Western nations were willing to give them technology and other tools the Japanese could use because of their new found western philosophy. The Japanese were able to become a force across the world and established themselves as the true Asian Power by successfully defeating the Chinese in the 1900s. Even though they brought in these beliefs to their culture, they keep their Japanese roots and still resented the westerners despite their generosity in terms of technology as we saw in World War 2, in which they used some of the same weapons the Americans supplied them with to fight the Americans. Even though they embraced western philosophy, the Japanese mostly used it for their own benefits to break out of their shell.

http://alumni.ox.compsoc.net/~gemini/simons/historyweb/meiji-resto.html