A country with no navy to resist gunboats modernized into a naval power in one generation

When American warships forced Japan to open to foreign trade in 1853, the isolated, feudal nation had no way to resist. The 1868 Meiji Restoration overthrew the shogunate and launched a deliberate, top-down sprint to industrialize: a national army, railways, Western-style schools and factories were built within decades, and by 1905 Japan defeated a European great power, Russia, in open war.

— James L. McClain, Japan: A Modern History — 2002
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