The Forgotten Victims of Modernization: How the Meiji Miracle Was Built on Corpses
We love the story of the Meiji Restoration: A feudal island becomes an industrial superpower overnight. It sounds like a fairy tale. But history is written by the victors. The real story of 1870s Japan is one of mass unemployment, political purges, and the systematic destruction of the Samurai class. The Meiji Miracle wasn't a shared triumph; it was a modernization built on the backs of the defeated.