Meiji Japan

Origins and formation

The National Diet Library dates the opening to Perry, not to a single reform edict. On July 8, 1853, the U.S. East India Fleet under Matthew Perry anchored off Uraga and asked Japan to accept a letter from President Millard Fillmore. Abe Masahiro had the letter translated and shown to a number of daimyo. In 1854 Perry returned, and talks with Hayashi Fukusai produced a twelve-article Treaty of Peace and Amity: peace, the opening of Shimoda and Hakodate, supplies, and consulates. The treaty came into force on February 21, 1855, and the library calls that the formal end of seclusion. The guide says the chaos after the forced opening of Edo Japan produced a new synthesis called the Meiji. The opening and the synthesis are not the same date.^{[1] [8]}

The political break has its own days. A memorandum from Nishi Amane, discussed in the library’s file, proposed a council after the Taisei Hokan of November 9, 1867, the return of political power by the shogun. An annex still imagined administration in Tokugawa hands. On January 3, 1868, an edict restored imperial rule and set up a government centered on the court. The proposal for a Tokugawa-centered system was moot. Wikipedia describes the Meiji Restoration as the 1868 return of practical power to the emperor under Emperor Meiji, and it records Goisshin as a contemporary name for that restoration. The guide’s ability is Goisshin. The ability name is that restoration word. The science it grants for constructing buildings is a game effect, not the edict.^{[2] [4] [8]}

Wikipedia’s account of the origins adds the political pressure around Perry without replacing the library’s dates. Unequal treaties followed the expedition. Samurai divided over obligations to the shogun and to the emperor. Domains led by Satsuma and Choshu overthrew the shogunal system. The guide’s phrase “fused Western government and technology onto the bones of Edo” is a summary of that kind of change. It is not a transcript of the January edict. No earlier Japanese civilization essay is published, so this one does not borrow Heian or Sengoku as if they were already in the catalog.^{[4] [8]}

Defining periods

A constitution was announced as policy before it was a finished text. The library’s file on the imperial rescript of April 14, 1875, says the Osaka conference of January and February 1875 restored Kido Takayoshi and Itagaki Taisuke as councilors, and that the rescript set a national policy of constitutional government. It also prescribed a Chamber of Elders, a supreme court, and a prefectural governors’ council. The library says the rescript, together with the five-article Charter Oath, was later cited by the movement that demanded a national parliament. This essay does not quote the five articles. It uses the library’s statement that they existed and that a parliament was still being demanded in the 1870s. The restoration edict of 1868 and a rescript of 1875 are seven years apart.^[3]

The ship Mikasa is later than both. She was a pre-dreadnought built in the late 1890s, named for Mount Mikasa, and served as Togo Heihachiro’s flagship in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, including the battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima. After the war her magazine exploded and she sank. She was salvaged. After 1922 she was decommissioned under the Washington Naval Treaty and kept at Yokosuka. She was neglected during the postwar occupation and refurbished in the late 1950s. The guide’s naval unit is this ship’s name. A museum ship at Yokosuka is not the edict of January 3, 1868, and her explosion is not a rule that a unit respawns.^{[5] [8]}

The aircraft is later again. The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was a carrier fighter operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The type’s short name comes from the imperial year 2600, which is 1940, when it entered service. The guide’s air unit uses that name, and one tradition shifts production from naval units to aircraft. The shift is a game track. The pages read here put a battleship of the late 1890s and a fighter of 1940 on the far side of the 1868 government. They do not make the fighter a Meiji reform.^{[6] [8]}

Legacy and interpretation

The legacy is a modernization that the guide calls both glorious and terrible, and that the documents show as a sequence. Seclusion ends in 1855 by a treaty that opens two ports. A shogunal proposal in 1867 is overtaken within weeks by a court-centered government. In 1875 a rescript promises a constitution and is used by people who still want a parliament. A navy that can fight Russia in 1904 is not that rescript. An aircraft in service in 1940 is not that navy’s flagship. “Meiji Japan” on a loading screen collects the sequence. The dates put it back in order.^{[1] [2] [3] [5] [6]}

The industrial words need the same care. The guide’s quarter is a zaibatsu, with a bank and a heavy-industry building, and a tradition is named Fukoku Kyohei. These essays do not add a corporate history that the pages above do not contain. The names show the design’s interest in industry and a rich country with a strong army. They are not a substitute for the treaty of 1854 or the edict of 1868. A gold adjacency is not Abe Masahiro’s circulation of Fillmore’s letter.^{[1] [8]}

Dogo Onsen is the wonder, and the page used for it is thin on purpose. It identifies a hot spring in Matsuyama, in Ehime on Shikoku. It does not date a hall to 1868, and it does not connect the baths to Perry or to Togo. The guide places the wonder beside Meiji Japan and ties celebrations to population. A hot spring in Matsuyama can be famous without being the restoration. This essay leaves the building’s age unstated because the page does not state it.^{[7] [8]}

A closer look

Goisshin is a good example of a borrowed word. Wikipedia records it as a name used at the time for the restoration of practical imperial power. The guide uses that romanization as an ability that pays science when a building is constructed or overbuilt. The edict of January 3, 1868, establishes a government. It does not mention production costs. Keeping the word and refusing the payout is how a historical name survives a rules text.^{[2] [4] [8]}

The foreign-adviser tradition has a similar gap. The guide calls it O-yatoi Gaikokujin and attaches it to specialists. The library pages read here describe Perry, Nishi Amane’s memorandum, and the 1875 rescript. They do not list hired foreign experts or their contracts. A tradition can commemorate a well-known practice. This essay will not invent the contracts. The dated events stay the ones the archives and the restoration account actually give.^{[1] [2] [3] [8]}

In Civilization VII

The English guide names the ability Goisshin. Traditions include Fukoku Kyohei, Kimi, Kokutai, O-yatoi Gaikokujin, and Shusei Kokubo. The quarter is the Zaibatsu, with the Ginko and the Jukogyo. There is no unique civilian. The military units are the Mikasa and the Zero. The associated wonder is Dogo Onsen. The simplified Chinese guide names the same slots in its own words. This essay keeps the English names and does not rewrite them into the Chinese ones. The page states percentages of production. Those figures are not repeated here.^{[8] [9]}

The accessed guide does not identify an edition. The codex publishes the essay with that gap visible and places the civilization in the modern group. No earlier Japan essay is published, so none is offered as further reading. The first step back from the ability is to separate February 21, 1855, January 3, 1868, April 14, 1875, the late-1890s battleship, and an aircraft in service from 1940 to 1945.^{[1] [2] [3] [5] [6] [8]}