Japan's blissful isolation changed with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. In awe of the American weapons and ships, the Tokugawa shogunate quickly realized that they needed to evolve and modernize their military to survive, and a time of rapid change descended on Japan. Within a mere 30 years, the Tokugawa period's great samurai caste was extinct. Military service was no longer the exclusive domain of the privileged warrior class who had combined the military with an intricate network of social status and vassalship to their feudal lords. For the new Meiji government of Japan, military conscription was an obligation for all able-bodied men. The social castes that had existed for centuries, including the samurai, commoners, and outcasts, were replaced by a new system of national subjecthood that would propel Japan into the modern era.

The Meiji Restoration heralded the dawn of a new era for both Japan and Asia as the island nation found itself thrust into the modern world, a world of industry and conquest. Flexing its new muscles, the burgeoning power soon came to blows with the regional power that for centuries dominated the area politically and culturally: China. Also seeking to modernize in the wake of Western exploitation, China struggled to adapt to the changing times, doing everything it could to maintain a balance between modernity and tradition. Japan found that balance, and, with its new industry desperate for raw materials, looked to the peninsula of Korea for new markets and resources. China, in contrast, refused to strike such a balance, adopting a veneer of modernity while maintaining the status quo, both domestically and with regards to Korea. In its first modern war, the modernized Imperial Japanese Empire went to war against the dominant power in the region, and though interested Western powers favored China, Japan won, claiming Korea as their conquest and permanently upsetting the balance of power in the region.