Dirk de Graeff and the Opening of Japan

This book covers the period in Japanese history referred to as Bakumatsu, the end of the period of the Tokugawa shogunate (1850-1868) and the first year of Meiji (1868) and is marked by the first step of the Japanese nation toward modernization. It were the years in which the old military government of Japan headed by the Shogun, the shogunate, was abolished and in 1868 a beginning was made with the change from a military dictatorship toward a parliamentary democracy. The road to the completion of the modernization of Japan was long and difficult, not in the least because of the interference of western nations with the Japanese state. Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek. finally Resident Minister of the Netherlands in Japan, was one of the few foreign representatives who were long enough in Japan to witness the events from its beginnings till the restoration of the Emperor’s governmental powers in 1868 and the first steps of Japan toward modernization, the Meiji restoration.