How did Japan go from samurai to industrial power in just a few decades?

Japan did it in a rush: first by removing the old order, then by copying and buying what the new order needed. The Meiji Restoration was a political event that restored imperial rule in 1868 under Emperor Meiji and led to the Westernisation of Japan. Its origins lay in the shogunate's own troubles, made worse when foreign powers, above all the Perry Expedition, challenged the policy of sakoku. The treaties of 1858, which became known as the unequal treaties, allowed foreign ambassadors, extraterritoriality and free trade at five ports.

The shogunate fell quickly. On 8 November 1867, the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, gave back the administrative functions of his office to the Imperial Court, and on 3 January 1868, domain troops seized the Imperial Palace. Strangely, the revolutionaries were samurai: many leaders of the new government were former samurai from Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa and Saga. Yet they dismantled their own class. The government reorganised the 302 domains into 72 prefectures, introduced conscription in 1873, and made the conversion of stipends into bonds compulsory in 1876.

Meanwhile came the building. The Restoration accelerated industrialisation, leading to Japan's rise as a military power by 1895 under the slogan "Enrich the country, strengthen the military". Raw silk exports paid for imported machines and raw materials. But the bill landed on the farmers, who paid land tax of about 30 percent of their harvests.

Many samurai found work in the bureaucracy, and the peasants paid for the factories.