Opening Doors and Closing Minds: Empires Collide

Historically and culturally, China and Japan coexisted as hubs of the Sinospehere whose metropolitan center resided in China’s Imperial Court. Literary and artistic expressions and devotional praxis reflected Japan’s recipient status. Western mercantile pressure forced Qing China to accommodate Euro-American interests; post-Opium War ‘unequal’ treaties reduced China to subservience with limited domestic agency. China-based US coercion forced American mercantile interests and influences upon Tokugawa Japan, weakening the Shogunate, enabling the Meiji RestorationMeiji Restoration, and catalyzing Japan’s Western-aided modernization. Regard for China turned into Japanese disdain. Western-Japanese parallel-coercion, with Japan progressively supplanting China’s suzerainty over Korea, enervated China. Qing loss of confidence and ‘face’ hastened erosion of authority, as encroachments and rebellions rocked the empire. Japan refined Western templates to exploit China’s fragility.