Among the revolutionary movements which shook the nineteenth-century world, the change of government in Japan in 1868 occupies a special place. A new, dynamic ruling class provoked the overthrow of the old rule of the shogun and in a few years the visible structure of feudal society disappeared. The nature of this transformation has been regarded by western historians as "revolution" and "restoration" – two quite contradictory ideas. But in this book Paul Akamatsu clarifies the picture of the forces at work in this conversion of a backward feudal state into a modern power in a few decades.