riod, from about 1990 to the present, is the period of turnabout, marked by Japanese stagnation and uncertainty, and by renewed American self-confidence.
All three of these periods should in turn be viewed in the broader context of Japanese modernization and development, and the Japanese-American relationship, that began with US Admiral Perry's "opening" of Japan in the 1850s and the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Japan in the mid-19th century was a feudal society, one that had deliberately and emphatically turned its back on the outside world and on modernization in any form.
Admiral Perry's "Black Ships" forcibly ended Japanese isolation. Within a few years, some members of the samurai class observed the West's growing economic and political subjection of Japan's Asian neighbors, and drew the conclusion that the Western economic, technological, and above all military challenge could be met only on its own terms. The old order was abolished, and in another generation -- a full century before the phrases
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