What is the historical background of Japanese Foreign Policy?

apan, for 200 years under the Tokugawa Shogunate, isolated itself from the Western world as a means to preserve internal stability, until the arrival of US Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 and caused the reopening of Japan to the West. Like China, to a certain extent, Japan was also forced into opening its ports to Western commerce. Under the Meiji emperors, Japan inaugurated the Meiji reform and modernization era in 1867. The Meiji era committed Japan to more assertive foreign policies. The first major objective was removing the blemish of unequal treaties and attaining complete independence from and equality w/ Western powers; Japan began its modernization by emulating German, French, British and American models of industrial development – one of Japan’s greatest strengths was its willingness to borrow from others, then modifying the import to conform to Japanese culture. By 1900, Japan had become the first Asian country to attain nearly complete parity with the West in legal terms; in this long struggle to be recognized as equal, latent elements of nationalism came to surface in various forms.

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