IN January 1868 some young samurai and their merchant sympathisers overthrew Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate and with it seven centuries of feudal rule. The so-called Meiji restoration was the cue for such rapid industrialisation and modernisation that not even China’s more recent reforms have matched it.

IN January 1868 some young samurai and their merchant sympathisers overthrew Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate and with it seven centuries of feudal rule. The so-called Meiji restoration was the cue for such rapid industrialisation and modernisation that not even China’s more recent reforms have matched it.