Japan

Abstract

The Industrial Revolution in the 1800s changed the way people lived their lives in many nations around the world. Japan entered this era of technology in a resolute manner after 1854 when — after nearly 200 years of seclusion and refusal to trade with the Western world — the nation was challenged when American Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Nagasaki. (Perry was a futurist who, after the advent of the steam engine, championed the modernization of the US Navy.) As a result of fairly strong-armed methods of negotiation, America was awarded a treaty (the Convention of Kanagawa 1854); this treaty opened Japan to the new skillsets, machinery, equipment, ideas and products of the United States and other Western nations. Japan began to see firsthand the early technological wonders and soon entered the race to compete in the modern world. Early film technology was being invented by the late 1880s; a fascination with moving pictures was prevalent in all industrialized countries — and Japan was no exception.