The fairly sudden modernisation affected almost all areas of Japanese society-language, etiquette, clothing, laws and law enforcement, etc. Culturally, Japan's earlier flirtations with Chinese culture had done something to prepare its people for this kind of change-but the radical restructuring of society that came with modernisation was something that no tradition of cultural assimilation could prepare them for, and left many people wondering what exactly it meant to be Japanese-thus, the fierce debates over 'Nipponjinron'-'ideas of Japanese-ness'. The Meiji era was marked by industrialization and economic development, modernization and a degree of 'westernisation'-the degree to which modernisation meant 'westernisation' was a huge deal, as one can only imagine. For the first time Japan was a nation-state in anything more than in name only. So they seized it and made it and the entire country-together with their own Domains-a single administrative unit under the Emperor. Crowned as the Emperor 'Meiji', the first years of his reign saw further conflict in the Boshin War of 1868-1869-Satsuma-Choshu realized that the Tokugawa stepping down was not enough to ensure their control given that a third of the country's best land was the Tokugawa's private property.
The last Shogun of the House of Tokugawa was pressured to resign by the Domains of Satsuma and Chōshū, which first routed his armies and then declared their allegiance to the fifteen-year-old Emperor in preference to him.
The Greater Japanese Empire arose after the end of the Tokugawa Era, when Japan was wracked with two civil wars note while the period defined by the Bakumatsu and Boshin War tends to be remembered as relatively bloodless, in reality it marked one of the more violent chapters in Japanese history since the Sengoku period and casually battered by British ships after the murder of a businessman who failed to bow to a Samurai.
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