The Meiji period"s short span of forty-five years marked an astonishing metamorphosis from primitive feudal state to modern industrial and military power in Japan. The nation"s policy of isolationism, sakoku (closed country), initiated in 1639, was abruptly challenged in 1853 when Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with four awe-inspiring iron vessels known as "black ships." Faced with superior military technology, the Japanese were compelled to sign trade treaties with the United States and other Western countries. Soon, after some bloodshed, the final shogunate dictatorship, the Tokugawa, gave way to the sovereignty of the emperor and a restoration movement that worked hard to shape the new Japan by amalgamating Eastern and Western ideas. Emperor Meiji would ultimately become the symbol of a modernized Japan, and his reign-known as Meiji, "enlightened rule"-would represent one of the most remarkable periods in modern world history. The woodblock printing of the Meiji...