What Japan Looked Like in the 1870s: Rare Photographs From a Nation Reinventing Itself

In the early 1870s, Japan was in the middle of one of the most rapid national transformations in modern history. The Meiji government had taken full control, and it wasted no time dismantling the old order. In 1871, over 260 feudal domains were abolished. The local lords who had ruled these territories for generations were ordered to move to Tokyo and surrender their land. In their place, the government installed prefectures under direct central control—a move that allowed Tokyo to collect taxes from every corner of the country for the first time.

Also in December 1871, a delegation of roughly 100 Japanese officials and students boarded ships and set off on what became known as the Iwakura Mission. Led by senior statesman Iwakura Tomomi, the group spent 18 months traveling through the United States and Europe. They studied factories, legal systems, schools, and military structures. They also attempted—unsuccessfully at the time—to renegotiate the unequal treaties that foreign powers had imposed on Japan. When they returned, they brought back detailed blueprints for building a modern state.

Education was one of the first systems to be overhauled. In 1872, the government passed the Gakusei—a national education law that called for the construction of 54,000 elementary schools across the country. For the first time in Japanese history, schooling was made mandatory for both boys and girls, regardless of their social class. Many farm families resisted because they depended on their children’s labor, but the number of operating schools grew year by year.

Industry moved just as fast. In 1872, Japan opened its first railway line, connecting Tokyo to Yokohama. A journey that previously took a full day now took less than an hour. That same year, the Tomioka Silk Mill opened in Gunma Prefecture, powered by machinery imported from France. The government used it as a model factory. Hundreds of young women traveled from across Japan to Tomioka, learned to operate the machines, and carried those skills back to their home regions.

The government restructured how it collected money in 1873 with the Land Tax Reform. Farmers had previously paid their taxes in rice, but the new system required cash payments set at a fixed 3% of the land’s assessed value. This gave the central government a stable and predictable budget. For farmers, however, the shift was punishing in years when crop prices fell, since the tax rate stayed the same regardless of what their harvest was worth. The resulting financial strain triggered multiple violent peasant uprisings across rural Japan.

The military changed permanently in 1873 when the Conscription Law took effect. Every Japanese male who turned 21 was required to serve three years in the regular army. For centuries, only the samurai class had the legal right to carry weapons and fight in wars. This law ended that monopoly entirely. Commoners were now trained to use rifles and artillery. Many samurai viewed this as a deep insult, refusing to accept that peasant soldiers could ever be worthy fighters.

Cities were changing in appearance and in habit. Tokyo’s Ginza district saw Western-style brick buildings replace traditional wooden storefronts. The Gregorian calendar replaced Japan’s lunar calendar in 1873, aligning the country’s dates with international standards. Men cut off their traditional topknots and adopted Western hairstyles. Beef, which had been largely off the table for centuries due to Buddhist dietary customs, became fashionable. Sukiyaki restaurants appeared and attracted steady crowds.

Outside the cities, daily life in towns and villages carried on through a mix of old trades and slow-moving change. Street vendors, rope makers, fortune tellers, and porters were fixtures of everyday commerce. Temples and shrines remained central to community life even as the government pushed new secular institutions. These photographs capture a Japan that was simultaneously ancient and in the process of becoming something entirely different.

The samurai’s final legal protections were stripped away in 1876. The Sword Abolition Edict banned samurai from carrying their two swords in public—the most visible symbol of their class. On top of that, the government ended the hereditary stipends that samurai families had relied on for generations. With no income and no status, many samurai found themselves unable to adapt to ordinary civilian life as farmers or tradespeople.

The frustration boiled over in 1877 with the Satsuma Rebellion. Former Meiji hero Saigo Takamori led an army of 30,000 samurai from the south of Japan against the imperial government he had once helped bring to power. The fighting was intense. The most significant engagement—the Battle of Tabaruzaka—lasted 17 days. The government’s army, made up largely of conscripted commoners, used telegraphs to coordinate troop movements and steamships to deliver supplies. They had Gatling guns and heavy artillery. The samurai had swords and rifles but were badly outmatched in both numbers and firepower.

The rebellion ended at the Battle of Shiroyama in September 1877. Saigo Takamori died in the fighting. His defeat closed the door permanently on the samurai as a military class. The government that survived the rebellion was stronger than ever, its new conscript army proven in battle against the most formidable warriors Japan had ever produced.

Japan also pushed its borders outward during this decade. In 1875, a treaty with Russia gave Japan control of the Kuril Islands. In 1879, the government formally annexed the Ryukyu Islands and renamed them Okinawa Prefecture. The king of Ryukyu was removed from power and relocated to Tokyo. These moves extended Meiji authority well beyond the main islands, rounding out the territorial claims of a government that had, within a single decade, dismantled feudalism, built railways and factories, conscripted a national army, crushed an armed rebellion, and redrawn its own map.