| |
| 1870 |
| |
| For the first time, commoners were allowed to adopt family names; they were also released from the rigid social and occupational constraints of earlier times. | 1 |
| The first mechanical silk-reeling factory was founded, and others followed through the 1870s. By 1880, roughly 30 percent of Japanese silk exports were machine made. Silk quickly assumed a large percentage of all Japanese exports. Most workers in silk-reeling factories were women, many of them forcibly recruited from the countryside, and they were paid less than men. | 2 |
| |
| 1871, Aug. 29 |
| |
By imperial decree, the fiefs were abolished, and prefectures (ken, at first numbering 71, later 44, with three prefectural cities, or fu) assumed their place. The first regular governmental postal service was established (Tokyo to  saka). The Ministry of Education was founded to promote universal education. The first daily newspaper commenced publication. | 3 |
| |
| Sept. 3 |
| |
| The Treaty of Tianjin was signed with China as between two equal parties. Japan, thus, did not gain extraterritorial and commercial rights equal to those of the West, nor a most-favored-nation clause. | 4 |
| |
| Oct |
| |
The Iwakura Mission—including kubo Toshimichi, It Hirobumi, and Kido Kin—led by nobleman Iwakura Tomomi (1825–83), departed to seek treaty revisions from the West and to study Western institutions in preparation for reforms necessary to that end. It failed to gain those treaty revisions and returned to Japan in Sept. 1873. | 5 |
| |
| |
