Dan Snow

Does Japan get lucky there?

Because that seems like quite a familiar story in this period of exchange between arriving Europeans and Americans and indigenous societies.

Do they get lucky that Americans or outside powers don't intervene in that?

Is it because it's so quick, it's a fait accompli?

Because if it had gone on, then that's when typically you'd go, oh, the Americans are going to launch a little force in here to help, and you end up with this foreign...

They're open for business.

Yes, they've got a counterparty that respects the rule of law, respects trade deals.

Okay, interesting.

So you don't have to invade and secure.

Interesting.

What do they do?

What do these young new samurai around the emperor, what do they get up to?

Well, they chose well there.

So is there no pushback?

I mean, it's an astonishing revolution.

This is hundreds of years of trial and error in other cultures just jammed into a very particular culture in the space of just a couple of decades.

Is there no pushback?

Consultative assemblies.

So no wonder they were quite attracted by the Prussian model there.

So a powerful emperor, powerful advisors around the emperor, a lot of decision-making power there, but with a little smidgen of representation as well.