January 3. The Meiji Restoration in Japan was completed on January 3, 1868. The Meiji Restoration is the name typically given to the period in which the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had effectively ruled Japan since 1603, was overthrown and the Emperor restored to supreme power in Japan.
The restoration of Imperial power and the oligarchy that replaced the former individual-specific Shoguns paved the path to the end of the Samurai class and a feudal structure, the adoption of a capitalist economy, and the industrialization and modernization of Japan and its rise to status of world power.
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