Dr Chris Harding

So there's no need and there's no real call for a big territorial grab, I think, in Japan, which is very lucky for the Japanese.

So they're amazing.

They are so pragmatic.

They go at almost all of them, given that they are in a really precarious position.

There's still that risk of rival parties going against them because no one's ever heard of them.

And just because they've got the emperor on their side, that could quite easily change because the other side have only got to take the emperor and then

make the very same claims for themselves they are in a vulnerable position but what they do between 1871 and 1873 they go on this massive fact-finding tour they go all the way around the world they go to the us western europe they go to russia they go to parts of asia looking to see

how things work.

How does banking work?

How does democracy work?

What does a theatre look like?

How do I run a railroad?

What do your armed forces look like?

And they essentially do a kind of pick and mix.

Whoever's got what looks like the best example of a particular institutional bit of infrastructure, they decide to take that, basically.

So the British, they have a navy built on British lines.

They even have portraits of Admiral Lord Nelson in Japanese naval academies.

as the kind of, you know, the real hero.

They chose well.

For their army, it was going to be the French, but they're watching what's happening in Europe.