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Meiji Restoration, in Japanese history, the political revolution in 1868 that brought about the final demise of the Tokugawa shogunate (military government)—thus ending the Edo (Tokugawa) period (1603–1867)—and, at least nominally, returned control of the country to direct imperial rule under Mutsuhito (the emperor Meiji). The Meiji Restoration initiated a process of political centralization, social restructuring, and economic transformation that modernized Japan. It enabled the country to emerge as an industrialized power capable not only...