How did the meiji restoration change japan?

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). In a wider context, however, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 came to be identified with the subsequent era of major political, economic, and social change-the Meiji period (1868-1912) - that brought about the modernization and Westernization of the country.

The restoration event itself consisted of a coup d’état in the ancient imperial capital of Kyōto on January 3, 1868. The perpetrators announced the ouster of Tokugawa Yoshinobu (the last shogun) - who by late 1867 was no longer effectively in power-and proclaimed the young emperor to be the ruler of the Japan. Yoshinobu mounted a brief civil war that ended with his surrender to imperial forces in June 1869.