How Did Japan Become A Superpower?

Summary

Dan Snow's History Hit Episode: How Did Japan Become A Superpower? Guest: Chris Harding Release Date: May 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Snow explores the extraordinary transformation of Japan from a secluded island nation under the Tokugawa Shogunate to a formidable global superpower within just 50 years. Joined by cultural historian Chris Harding, an expert in Japanese and East-West connections, the discussion delves into the internal and external challenges Japan faced, the stunning pace of its modernization, and how these changes catapulted it onto the world stage as a dominant imperial force.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Tokugawa Shogunate Era (1600–1850s)

• Long Period of Peace and Isolation

  • Japan enjoyed over two centuries of near-total peace, stability, and a flourishing of culture and the arts, largely due to deliberate isolationist policies. (03:02)
  • The Tokugawa government controlled foreign influence stringently, with only the Dutch allowed limited, highly regulated trade at Dejima near Nagasaki. (04:25)
  • Notable moment: "The Dutch were asked now and again to produce these volumes, kind of like a report on international affairs... found by historians in mint condition... they weren't read." — Chris Harding [05:10]

• Stagnation and Complacency

  • Japan lacked military innovation—firearms introduced in the 16th century fell into obsolescence, reflecting both peace and a lack of external pressure. (06:18)
  • The emperor existed only as a ceremonial figure, with real authority in the hands of the shogunate bureaucracy in Edo (Tokyo). (07:14)

Japan Encounters the Modern World

• External Threats and Commodore Perry's Arrival
  • By the mid-19th century, Western imperial interest was growing, and Japan’s isolation became untenable with the expansion of Russia and the US across the Pacific. (07:54)
  • In 1853, Commodore Perry’s "Black Ships" arrived, forcing Japan to confront its technological inferiority and vulnerability. (09:22)
  • "He points out to sea… ‘look at those ships. I got lots more like that in the Pacific… There really is only one answer.’" — Chris Harding [11:38]
  • The Americans used an overt show of force to demand favorable treaties from Japan, ultimately leading to a rapid breakdown of isolation. (12:30)

Internal Crises and the Collapse of the Shogunate

• Socio-political Strains

  • Samurai impoverishment and widespread dissatisfaction, especially among young samurai, undermined the legitimacy of the shogunate. (15:39)
  • "They see them as people who tell big stories about samurai derring do. But they'd be useless in a real battle because they've never fought one." — Chris Harding [15:47]
  • Rival feudatories (especially in western Japan) never fully accepted Tokugawa authority, nurturing long-standing bitterness and ambition. (14:55)

• The Meiji Restoration

  • The arrival of Western powers accelerated calls for change; young samurai co-opted the emperor as a unifying figurehead and toppled the shogunate (10:00–23:00).
  • The restoration was both a rebranding (imperial rule) and a true revolution in governance, diplomacy, and military organization. (18:19)
  • "It's amazing that the legitimacy of the emperor is so strong that you can do that even when he's clearly just your puppet. But it works." — Chris Harding [18:19]

The Modernization of Japan

• Rapid Institutional Changes

  • New leadership sent missions abroad (the Iwakura Mission) to study Western models between 1871–73 and selectively import the best ideas. (27:22)
  • Military: Adopted British-built navy, Prussian-style army; economy: American banking; education reforms; dissolved feudal domains.
  • "They are so pragmatic... they hoover up all these ideas. They employ lots of foreign experts as well." — Chris Harding [28:29]
  • Outlawed samurai privileges and created a universal conscription army; introduced national tax systems and compulsory education. (29:24)

• Controlling Dissent

  • Some internal opposition: demands for a more liberal democracy were suppressed by a growing state police apparatus. (30:35)
  • The ruling clique favored a Prussian-style constitutional monarchy—a mix of top-down authority with a façade of parliamentary consultation. (32:33)
  • "The idea that Japan would become a French style democracy overnight was thought to be completely ridiculous." — Chris Harding [31:19]

The Price of Modernity—Cultural Tensions

• Debating Modernization vs. Westernization
  • Ongoing anxiety about losing Japanese identity and soul; some nostalgia for the values and culture of the Tokugawa era. (34:34)
  • "What's the difference between modernizing and Westernizing? Modernizing, yes. Westernising they want to avoid, but in practice those two things are so… interlocked that Japan really struggles." — Chris Harding [38:26]
  • The Satsuma Rebellion (1877), dramatised in 'The Last Samurai', symbolized the transition and loss of the samurai class. (37:01)

Japan as a Superpower

• Imperial Expansion and Pan-Asianism

  • Within 30 years, Japan became Asia’s preeminent power, defeating China (1894–95) and annexing Korea (1910) under the rhetoric of 'civilizing' Asia and pan-Asian leadership. (41:43)
  • "If we, as Japan, can be the leader of these nations, the place where all the best bits of their culture are gathered together and then combined with Western technology will be unstoppable, and we will raise Asia up." — Chris Harding [42:14]
  • Notable: Japan's rhetoric mirrored contemporary European 'civilizing missions'—but was asserted by an Asian nation. (44:01)

• The Russo-Japanese War (1904–05)

  • First major victory of an Asian power over a European one; shocked the Western world, signaling Japan’s arrival as a military equal. (46:18)
  • "It's a victory of steel and Western looking battleships and repeating rifles... It's a conventional war." — Dan Snow [46:18]
  • This victory led to new anxieties in the West about "the yellow peril," and concern over mixing Western technology with traditional militarism. (46:32)

• Internal Reflections and the Road Ahead

  • Despite national triumphs, dissent existed: some Japanese intellectuals and artists lamented the human and moral cost of aggressive modernity.
  • "His Majesty the Emperor himself does not give his life." — Yosano Akiko, anti-war poet (paraphrased) [47:42]

• Japan’s Global Status by the 1920s

  • Fully modern, cosmopolitan Tokyo; leading Asian power; member of international alliances; expanding (though limited) political franchise.
  • "If you were an ordinary person in Japan at this point... There's a sense that democracy is taking root, that being in a political party starts to actually mean something." — Chris Harding [51:12]
  • The seeds of future ultra-nationalism and expansionism were present, but at its peak, Japan seemed fully integrated into the world system.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The Dutch were asked... to produce these volumes... found by historians a while back... in mint condition... they weren't read." — Chris Harding [05:10]
• "He points out to sea… 'I've got lots more like that in the Pacific... there really is only one answer.'" — Chris Harding, on Commodore Perry's threat [11:38]
• "If you're not innovating, it means you're not having to fight any wars." — Chris Harding [06:18]
• "They pay these [samurai] people off. The samurai paid off. Instead you've got a conscript army. Everyone now paying taxes in cash to Tokyo." — Chris Harding [29:24]
• "The idea that Japan would become a French style democracy overnight was thought to be completely ridiculous." — Chris Harding [31:19]
• "As Japanese people, we have to hold on to something and not entirely lose our minds and kind of become a... facsimile of Great Britain." — Chris Harding [37:59]
• "If we, as Japan, can be the leader of these nations, the place where all the best bits of their culture are gathered together and then combined with Western technology, we'll be unstoppable, and we will raise Asia up." — Chris Harding [42:14]
• "It's a victory of steel and Western-looking battleships and repeating rifles... It's a conventional war." — Dan Snow [46:18]
• "His Majesty the Emperor himself does not give his life." — paraphrasing Yosano Akiko's anti-war poetry [47:42]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Tokugawa Shogunate Background: 02:41–07:14
• First Encounters with Western Powers: 07:41–13:58
• Meiji Restoration & End of Shogunate: 13:58–23:23
• Meiji Modernization Missions & Reforms: 27:22–33:58
• Debates over Westernization, Satsuma Rebellion: 34:34–38:59
• Japan’s Imperial Expansion & Pan-Asianism: 41:12–44:57
• Russo-Japanese War & Western Reactions: 45:06–49:37
• Japan’s World Power Status (1920s): 49:37–51:38

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Conclusion

This episode compellingly illustrates that Japan’s transition to a superpower was not a linear or inevitable process, but a story of rapid adaptation, pragmatic leadership, cultural anxiety, and fierce ambition. Chris Harding’s insights pinpoint both the uniqueness of the Japanese case—especially its success in avoiding colonization—and the contradictions inherent in Japan’s bid to modernize while preserving national identity. The discussion foreshadows global consequences that would follow in the 20th century, setting the stage for further episodes.

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For a deep dive into the dramatic turning points that made Japan a world power, this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

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[Dan Snow]

Hi folks. Welcome to the show. We're going back to 1868 and how Japan embarked on one of the most dramatic transformations in world history. After centuries of isolation under the Tokugawa Shogunate, a group of young samurai, basically sort of reformist nobles, restored imperial rule kind of, and launched the country into a bold new era, the Meiji Restoration. They were determined to avoid the fate of all the other colonized nations around the world. And these new Japanese leaders pursued rapid modernization. They reformed education, the tax system, they built railways, they built battleships and a national Army. In just 50 years, Japan became an industrialized empire and a rising global power. They even defeated a major European empire. Joining us to unpack this really extraordinary story is the cultural historian Chris Harding. He is an expert in all things Japan, India and East west connections. Chris, thank you very much for coming on the show.

[Chris Harding]

Thank you for having me.

[Dan Snow]

Tell me about the Tokugawa Shogunate because it's such a remarkable period in Japanese history that are perhaps the cliche is it sort of Japan is isolated. It's seen as a bit of a golden age day of Japanese identity. There's it's peace, whereas much of the rest of the world was enduring utter chaos and subversion. What was the reality?

[Chris Harding]

I think that's actually quite fair.

[Dan Snow]

Don't worry, we.

[Chris Harding]

Most of the reality, it's this remarkable period, two and a half centuries, so 1600 to middle of the 19th century, of more or less complete peace in Japan under the control, as you say, of a Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo, now Tokyo. And I think people in Japan remember it as a real flourishing of the arts of culture, all sorts of things that a country can do when it's not at war with itself or its neighbors.

[Dan Snow]

That's weird, isn't it? And stability, because that period is a time of transformation on every other continent. I mean, political upheaval, industrial revolution, political revolution, some of the big. Well, the biggest wars in history to that point. And there's Japan just sailing along.

[Chris Harding]

I think Japan is quite lucky, actually, in this bit. In retrospect, if you think about countries that start to be of interest to Europe, India and then later China, Japan is known about, but it's not thought to have very much that you might want as a European, as a trader or a potential colonizer. So it kind of gets left alone. It's got its own policy of seclusion that you mentioned. But also the Europeans aren't yet coming knocking. So Japan has a. Yeah, a fairly relaxed time of it, but there's a

[Dan Snow]

little bit of trade, isn't there? But I get what the Europeans are starting to sniff out. A, there's no great sort of mineral natural wealth, but. But also no weakness that they can slide in and exploit. Right. Is that part of it?

[Chris Harding]

I think that's it, yeah. The only Europeans in Japan in this whole period, so the whole of the 17th century, whole of the 18th and the first half of the 19th, are the Dutch. So their pitch to the Japanese basically is we are businessmen, we're not going to get involved in your politics, we're not going to try to convert you to Christianity. And they basically live on a tiny island called Dejima, artificial island. One street or two streets, that's it. Plus their little warehouses just off the coast of Nagasaki, joined by a tiny bridge guarded all the time by samurai, so they can't cause any trouble. And it's funny, there are these lovely drawings actually, of the Dutch on Dejima that seem to show how incurious they were about Japan. They're there on the verge of being able to know this extraordinary culture and they're playing tennis with each other and they're playing Billiards, you know, they're just not interested. And it kind of goes both ways. If you have a sense of the Japanese also being maybe a little bit incurious, I don't want to generalize, but the Dutch were asked now and again to produce these volumes, kind of like a report on international affairs that they would put together, take to Edo, present to the Shogun. These were found by historians a while back and they were in mint condition. And at first historians were saying, wow, they must have been treated with such reverence. Brilliant. It turns out they weren't read.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, stick them in the archive.

[Chris Harding]

They're just not well thumbed because people weren't interested. So it's a funny old period. It made sense for the Japanese to do this to insulate themselves from particularly European interference. But all the action that you've just talked about, the Japanese had only the tiniest idea of that. French Revolution, American Revolution. They were either ill informed or they got the Dutch version, which was kind of warped to Dutch interests, I think.

[Dan Snow]

Did the Dutch not by the early 9th century sort of bring muskets and rifles and be like, lads, this is what you're missing out on. Was that not a sort of alarm bells ringing in Japan?

[Chris Harding]

Well, this is another funny thing, I think, for Japan. So they had had firearms since the middle of the 16th century, the Portuguese brought them, but then after that there's more or less zero innovation for two and a half centuries. Which from the point of view of ordinary Japanese people is just as you might have wanted it. Because if you're not innovating, it means that you're not having to fight any wars. If you think about the speed at which drone innovation happens now. Right.

[Dan Snow]

It's not a good sign. Yeah. The British and French are innovating fast because they want to kill each other in ever increasing numbers. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Chris Harding]

Whereas Japan, their firearms, they're getting dusty somewhere. They might get taken out and played with. Or the armor, samurai armor. Now, you wouldn't have it in a place in your house where you might in a hurry put it on and rush out to fight. You just have it polished up and on display somewhere. You'd never expect to have to put it on.

[Dan Snow]

And we talk about the Shogunate reminder. So there's an imperial. There's still emperors through this period. Yes, but they're just puppets.

[Chris Harding]

Exactly that. So the emperors are there in Kyoto. Their job basically is to perform rituals for the gods, maybe write a bit of poetry. And that's pretty much it. They're Actually watched quite carefully by the Tokugawa, because if anyone was going to try and launch a rebellion against the Tokugawa, they would probably try and get hold of the emperor as a figurehead, so they keep a close eye on them. But the emperors have no real role. Most Japanese people would know more or less nothing about them. All the action is in Edo.

[Dan Snow]

And why does this period of stability and peace come to an end? Is it internal or is it arrival of people from outside? Is it external or is it a mixture of both?

[Chris Harding]

I think it's one of those classic

[Dan Snow]

mixture of both types of situations.

[Chris Harding]

I think if you imagine there's lots of people in Japan growing up doing Japan at the center of a world map, right in this period, you've got the Russian Empire spreading itself to its east in the direction of Japan. You've got the United States building up, spreading itself towards the Pacific. So California becomes the 31st state in 1850. So there's a sense in which Japan really can't hide anymore. People are interested. And then of course, you've got the British and others in China.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, right. Of course, along the coast, places like Hong Kong, but many more ports along the coast.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah, exactly. So China is having obviously a terrible time of. At the beginning of its century of humiliation, as they now call it. So Japan. Yeah, there's nowhere to hide anymore. People are becoming really interested in Japan, almost not so much for what Japan has, but a sense of, well, as a big colonial power. If we don't claim it, someone else is going to claim it. And so the first, really to have any success with knocking on the door, as it were, of Japan, are the Americans. 1853, by this point. So California is there as part of the US you can now get from California to Japan across the Pacific on a steamship in about 18 days. So for the Americans, it's their doorstep. Right. That's how they think about Japan, I think, at this point.

[Dan Snow]

And that's the world turned up. So, I mean, that's just unimaginable right through Japan's thousands of years of history. The idea that people come from the other side of the Pacific Ocean, vast distances, and yet here they are in 18 days. That's crazy.

[Chris Harding]

And that Japan can be thought about as their backyard. That's what technology has made possible, much to the detriment of Japan, I think. So the Americans actually send some of these extraordinary steamships. In the summer of 1853. They arrive off Japan under the command of this guy called Commodore Matthew C. Perry. And the Japanese are maybe terrified. Is Putting it a bit strongly, but they'd never seen that kind of technology before. These huge great black ships spewing smoke out of their funnels. And Commodore Matthew C. Perry comes ashore and he's an interesting guy. His mission, basically from his president, Millard Fillmore, is to persuade the Japanese to at least say that if American sailors, you know, whaling vessels, whatever it might be, end up shipwrecked in Japan, they'll be taken care of. If they need to take on fuel, they need to take on food, whatever it might be, that they'll be given that. Because Japan's policy at this point is if you see a foreign ship, turn it away, fire on it if you have to. That's how, that's how strong their policy is. So the Americans at least want that. And Commodore Matthew C. Perry does a bit of homework on the Japanese, including in New York City Public Library, and his view of the Japanese that it's all about character at this point, because the Japanese aren't that well known to the Americans. His big generalization, I think, is the Japanese only understand action and force. Words aren't going to have much effect. He sees the Dutch at Dejima as being a bit of a doormat, I think, for the Japanese across these centuries, treated quite badly. And so he turns up two great military bands on the shore in Japan, not far from Edo, playing Hail Columbia. He chooses his biggest, burliest men from his ships, them on side with him, trying to make this big forceful impression. And he basically says, here's what we want. They are demands. It's a sort of a treaty of friendship that he would like, but it's anything but friendly. He even gives them a little piece of white cloth and he says, I'm going to come back in a few months time. Once you had a chance to think about our demands, if you don't give us what we want, there will be a war and you can have this little piece of white cloth to surrender with, and that's that. And he points out to see and he says, you know, look at those ships. I got lots more like that in the Pacific. I've got many more like that back in the United States. So there really is only one answer that you can possibly give us. And there's this lovely image, you know, Japan at this point, woodblock printing is a really big thing. Lovely image by a Japanese artist we think in Nagasaki shows one of these ships with the black hull spewing this evil looking black smoke from the top and both the prow and the stern are given faces, these kind of malevolent, demonic faces. This sense that what Japan is now facing is a turning point unwanted, and that Japan may be potentially in an awful lot of trouble now.

[Dan Snow]

And it's the guns on those ships as well. You've got Edo, Tokyo, this beautiful, incredible, wonderful city, totally exposed to these weapons. I mean, I think this is that classic UFO film where the UFO just lands on top of Washington D.C. and you're like, okay, wow, that's just short circuited. Everything we understand about security, that's what's happening here. Right. These ships could lay waste to the imperial capital, and there is not one thing you can do about it. Terrifying.

[Chris Harding]

Absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

Absolutely.

[Chris Harding]

And funnily enough, some of the samurai who come out, they're sent out in a rush to go and greet Commodore Matthew C. Perry. Firearms they're holding would be in a museum back in the US Or Europe. Probably most of them didn't have bullets in them. A lot of the samurai might not even know really what to do with them. So the fact that you're facing steamship technology, these incredibly powerful guns on these ships with virtually nothing to their credit, the Japanese work out very, very quickly, I think the depth of the trouble that they're in. And their response, which we talk about in a moment, I think is motivated by the shock of that technological gap. They're not naive about it. They see it immediately in other.

[Dan Snow]

In other cultures where there's. In other cultures of that. Where there's been that first contact with these particular maritime technology. These suddenly this gaping. You are dragged into the modern world in seconds. When you see these ships. Yeah. That led to kind of catastrophic internal divisions dividing groups who collaborated with outsiders, who saw advantage, who wants to double down on fighting them, whether it's in Mexico and Cortez, all these other cultures and exchanges. What happens. What happens in Japan? Because Japan goes on a different journey. Japan actually seems to. Well, it evolves quite rapidly. It sort of ingests some of these ideas and ends up becoming a great power that can go toe to toe with these European and North American powers. What happens then over the next 50 years?

[Chris Harding]

So I think at the beginning, things look pretty bad for Japan, you know, with that mix of internal and external. The internal part of this. I suppose there are a couple of things going on in Japan which inform how they respond to the Americans. One is that the Tokugawa Shogunate, born back in 1600, with this epic battle at Sekigahara in October 1600. Great Western Army, Great Eastern Army. Eastern army is the Tokugawa army, they win. The feudal lords who make up the Western army don't just go away and think, never mind, didn't work out for us, let's forget about it and move on. In parts of the west of Japan, for decades and decades and decades, mothers will put their children to sleep with their feet facing Edo as a kind of rebuke. Others have this yearly sort of ritual where they'll all gather. The top leaders of the domain will gather and they'll say, is it yet time to go and crush the Tokugawa? The standard response is, no, not yet.

[Dan Snow]

Maybe not yet, let's not. So the west remembers exactly.

[Chris Harding]

They have very long memories. And I think that's one thing that's there in the background. This becomes crucially important. The other thing is that what looked like quite a good idea in 1600, which is having a very highly stratified society, samurai at the top, then merchants. Sorry, no, samurai at the top, and then artisans and peasants, because they're producers, merchants actually at the bottom, because they're not considered to produce anything. They kind of deal in the produce of others. That made a great deal of sense. And to have that be quite rigid was smart because Japan had been through so much turmoil before. Actually, what has happened by the middle of the 19th century is a lot of samurai officially still at the top, but actually impoverished.

[Dan Snow]

Classic. So, yeah, penniless sort of warrior aristocracy.

[Chris Harding]

Exactly. They're trying to put on a good show. Often the facade of their homes will look good, but if you go inside, the tatami matting, this rice straw matting, is in a terrible state. They might have sold off some armor, even a daughter, to a merchant, to try and make a bit of money. There's one domain in Japan, I think it's Morioka, which actually goes as far as produces a price list for merchants saying, for this amount of money, we'll give you a sword. For this amount of money, you can have a piece of armor. For more money, we'll actually give you samurai status. Oh, my goodness. So it's sad. And I think ordinary Japanese townspeople have quite a low view of them by this point. They see them as people who tell big stories about samurai derring do. But they'd be useless in a real battle because they've never fought one. They just go shopping, they write bad poetry, they visit geisha. They're not really contributing anything, and yet ordinary people are paying their stipends. So I think there's an awful lot of anger there amongst ordinary people and also amongst young samurai. So these young samurai by the time Matthew Perry arrives and in the few months after he goes and the shogunate's trying to work out what to do, they see the shogunate dithering. And if you think the word shogun comes from a longer word which means general, what does it mean? It means barbarian. Crushing Generalissimo.

[Dan Snow]

Right.

[Chris Harding]

So it's a case of you had one job.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. You're not crushing, if you're not being an absolute legend. Crushing barbarians.

[Chris Harding]

Exactly. And so the Americans, they seem to. Not only do they dither, they then seek the opinion of other feudal lords around Japan. And again, if you're trying to promote yourselves as being the sort of wise strategists whose job it is to look after Japan's security, to kind of seek advice, to farm out what you might do next, again, it makes you look.

[Dan Snow]

Smells like weakness. It does.

[Chris Harding]

And so Japan, what happens really is in the course of the next few years, really, from 1853 into the early 1860s, Japan steadily moves into more and more chaos, with especially younger samurai who think that not only are the shogunate getting things wrong, but also that their own senior samurai in their own domains are.

[Dan Snow]

Granddad.

[Chris Harding]

Granddad is too old. He doesn't want to have a fight. He's got nothing left in the tank. Do you see what I mean? So a lot of these samurai will leave their domains, go to Kyoto, and some of them, especially in the west of Japan, what they want to do is take hold of the emperor as a kind of figurehead. The emperor, by the time we get to the mid-1860s, he's only a teenager.

[Dan Snow]

Right.

[Chris Harding]

We'll get him as our man, as our figurehead, and we will launch a war against the Tokugai as the only way of properly responding to the foreigners.

[Dan Snow]

So after 250 years of peace, we're back into that more ancient Japanese tradition, which is grab the emperor and then topple, you know, warlordism. Get rid of that guy and run Japan in his place.

[Chris Harding]

Absolutely, yeah. And it's amazing that the legitimacy of the emperor is so strong that you can do that even when he's clearly just your puppet. But it works.

[Dan Snow]

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[Dr. Kate Lister]

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[Chris Harding]

I think the other thing that happens in that period which makes it even more chaotic for the Japanese is of course, Matthew C. Perry has come back 1854. The Japanese have to pretty much give him what he wants. I think the logic is actually quite sound. They say, you know, either we can, we can be proud about this, we can tell him to go away, but look at what's happening in China. That's what they did. And, and they're not having the best time of it. Instead, what we should do is do this deal, end the policy of national seclusion, which is a big step. But nevertheless, do this deal. Get the weapons that they've got.

[Dan Snow]

Buy some time.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah, buy some time, exactly. Build them.

[Dan Snow]

Buy some technology.

[Chris Harding]

Okay, yeah, buy some technology so that actually we can become powerful enough to maintain our own security. There's a sense of this being a really rough neighborhood in Asia at this

[Dan Snow]

point, but they swallow their pride in A way the Chinese don't. That's interesting. So like, let's just, let's just do this. We've got to do a dirty deal, but let's make sure we get the technology.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah. I think having the example of China actually serves them quite well because the Chinese in Japanese eyes, for centuries, they are kind of political and cultural Big brother. So to see them on their knees is the most stark lesson you can possibly, I think, receive at this point. So that sort of works. The problem then is they give the Americans what they want and then as you can imagine, the British want that deal, the French want that deal, the Russians want it, and, and by the 1860s, so within a few years, a lot of the big players around the world have these deals. They become trade deals, they become highly unequal trade deals. You have lots of foreigners starting to live in Japan. Places like Yokohama, now a big city, go from being nothing to a kind of thriving treaty port, they call them, where foreigners are allowed to be there.

[Dan Snow]

So very like China, Shanghai, and so worrying. Worrying echoes here.

[Chris Harding]

For the Japanese, it's really worrying. I think worrying for a couple of reasons. One is because trade is really unequal. Also, if you commit a crime, if you beat someone up or God forbid, even murder them as an American or as a French person, in someone like, you'll be tried according to your laws by your own people. And that seems like double standards. Two tier justice, a phrase of the moment that makes Japanese people really angry. There's a lovely woodblock print of this period which shows a sumo wrestler throwing this overdressed foreigner, overdressed European, over his knee and onto the ground. This is how people feel. And you get the slogan, revere the Emperor, expel the barbarian. So a current of thought starts to build, particularly with his younger samurai saying, what we want to do is have the Emperor back in power. The Shogunate have clearly failed on their brief. They need to be overthrown, got rid of entirely. And with the Emperor as our figurehead, we will modernize. We will stand up to the Europeans and the Americans and others. This is what they tried to do. And by 1868, 1869, the Western powers, these younger samurai from some of these Western domains have got their forces together. They rebrand them the Imperial army under the Emperor who's really their puppet. And they.

[Dan Snow]

So they're saying we're hyper patriotic here. Yes, this is Imperial. Yeah, we're here to. We're serving the Emperor.

[Chris Harding]

Exactly. And it's got to be a miserable experience being an Emperor in Japan because you've got centuries behind you of doing whatever you're told by the person with the most weapons nearby. And it's that same old story again. Plus he's a teenager. I don't think he's the kind of person yet who has much of a. An established view on things. Although actually no, my son has established views on things, so maybe that's not quite right, but he doesn't have much gravitas yet, shall we say. And if you think about Japan as being a kind of. It's an archipelago, but a crescent shaped archipelago, these imperial forces basically chase the Tokugawa all the way round northwards past Edo, which thankfully is surrendered without a fight. That could have been an awfully bloody battle. A million people, infrastructure that's highly flammable, you know, wood and paper. Luckily it gets surrendered by the Tokugawa and chase the Tokugawa forces all the way to the top of Honshu, the main island, across the water into Ezo. Now it's Hokkaido. And for a brief time you have this funny situation where the Tokugawa holdouts form a republic because the Emperor's now on the other side. Right. The only time in Japan's history yet anyway, up until the present day where it's had a tiny little republic and it survives there for a few months and then it's wiped out. These imperial forces have much better guns, they have much better weaponry generally. In fact, British people like Thomas Glover, famous Scottish merchant, is gun running for these young Western samurai because he thinks they're the future. Right. So they're very well supplied and they take care of the Tokugawa. And there they are, these young samurai, a small group of them who no one's ever heard of, who now control a country.

[Dan Snow]

But part of that, as you say there is they've got this technological edge, they're using these modern European weapons. Okay, yeah, yeah. So not for the first time, these weapons have completely upended the political geography of Japan. Does Japan get lucky there? Because that seems like quite a familiar story in this period of exchange between arriving Europeans and Americans and indigenous societies. They get lucky that sort of Americans or outside powers don't sort of intervene in that. Is it because it's so quick, it's a fait accompli because if it had gone on then that's when typically you'd go, the Americans gonna launch a little force in here to help and you end up with this foreign boots on the ground during a civil war, which is always so many other places in the world was gonna downfall.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah, I think the Japanese are really Lucky because for a while there it looks as though the British and the French want to back different sides in this war. The French are trying to prop up the Shogunate, supplying them with weapons, even paying for the uniforms of their men. I think if that war had gone on and had been less conclusive, then you're going to get either side piling in a little bit more, having a state wanting something in return. And yeah, it could have become quite ugly for the Japanese but it's over quite quickly. And I think the attitude that people like the British and the Americans take is with these new people in charge in Edo, which becomes now Tokyo means eastern capital, they ship the Emperor actually into Tokyo properly as their figurehead. That with those people in charge, the Americans, the British and the rest can have what they want, which is that they can trade with Japan.

[Dan Snow]

They're open for business, I think.

[Chris Harding]

So, so Japanese rice, tea, textiles, these sorts of things the Japanese are able to produce quite quickly. And also the Japanese are a really good, I think, prospect for investment given that they want to do this enormous national overhaul. Think about that technological gap, an institution gap for all sorts of reasons they are playing catch up with the West. That's a huge investment opportunity I think.

[Dan Snow]

Build some railways.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah, which is exactly, exactly what they do. So there's no need and there's no real call for a big territorial grab I think in Japan, which is very lucky for the Japanese.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, they've got a sort of, they've got a counterparty that respects the rule of law, respects trade deals. Okay, interesting. So you don't have to invade and secure. Interesting. What do they do? What do these young, these young new samurai around the Emperor, what do they get up to?

[Chris Harding]

So they're amazing. They are so pragmatic. They go almost all of them. Given that they are in a really precarious position, there's still that risk of rival parties, right, going against them because no one's ever heard of them. And just because they've got the Emperor on their side, that could quite easily change because the other side have only got to take the Emperor and then make the very same claims for themselves. They are in a vulnerable position. But what they do between 1871 and 1873 they go on this massive fact finding tour. They go all the way around the world, they go to the us, Western Europe, they go to Russia, they go to parts of Asia looking to see how things work, how does banking work, how does democracy work, what does a theater look like, how do I run a railroad what do your armed forces look like? And they essentially do a kind of pick and match. Whoever's got what looks like the best example of a particular institutional bit of infrastructure, they decide to take that, basically. So the British, they have a navy built on British lines. They even have portraits of Admiral Lord Nelson in Japanese naval academies as the kind of, you know, the real hero.

[Dan Snow]

Well, they chose well. They chose well.

[Chris Harding]

They chose well for their army. It was going to be the French, but they're watching what's happening in Europe. You have to the Franco Prussian War. So then it makes more sense for a Prussian model.

[Dan Snow]

Looking quite tasty.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah. American banking, all these different things. In the space of two years, they, they hoover up all these ideas. They employ lots of foreign experts as well to try to come into places like Tokyo and school them on what they need to do. Internally, they're quite brutal. If you think that samurai as a class have been in charge of Japan for centuries and that most of these young leaders are samurai themselves, they have no qualms at all about getting rid of the old feudal domains, getting rid of the samurai as a class. They just think these things are outdated. Now what they think you need in the modern world and they're being pragmatic about, I think their army and their technology is conscripts who are biddable and prepare to be cannon fodder. Basically.

[Dan Snow]

You know the cliche of a modern state army.

[Chris Harding]

A modern state army, exactly. I think the cliche about samurai is that they might go into to battle and they'll be more worried about how they personally look on the battlefield and how they do. You can't have that kind of me first war making anymore. So they pay these people off. The samurai paid off. Instead you've got a conscript army. Everyone now paying taxes in cash to Tokyo. So you've got your tax base, you've got your conscript army. I think really importantly, what they also do is very quickly they establish primary education, which means they gather everybody's children by the end of 1890s, everyone's children into schools where they can essentially tell their story of what Japan is going to be. You know, and in that way, maybe the older generation don't entirely, you know, not entirely on board with what Japan's becoming, but the younger generation, they grow up and the vision of this tiny clique of leaders becomes the new normal for them. And it's incredibly successful in a very short space.

[Dan Snow]

So is there no pushback? I mean, it's an astonishing revolution. This is hundreds of years of Trial and error in other cultures just jammed into a very particular culture in the space of just a couple of decades. Is there no pushback?

[Chris Harding]

There is a bit. What's interesting is a while ago, historians dug up these documents all around Japan which suggested that after these leaders took power in the late 1860s, people in Japan began to read, either in European languages or in translation, the constitutions from places like the US and France. And they worked out how politics worked in Britain as well. And they sat down and they said, okay, what kind of democracy do we want in Japan? The decision the Japanese leaders made was we want a kind of mixture of a Prussian style, you know, top down state, of course, with the Emperor at the top. A mixture of that with a kind of Neo Confucian arrangement where everyone knows their place and they show a certain amount of, of respect. The idea that Japan would become a French style democracy overnight was thought to be completely ridiculous. It's actually quite interesting to see how these models look from a Japanese point of view. If you're playing catch up as a brand new country in a rough neighborhood, one of the things you can't do as far as these leaders were concerned is basically spaff all your energy up the wall by arguing with each other. In a democratic system which involves rival parties, everybody has to come together singing from the same hymn sheet if you're going to progress at the speed you need to progress at. So they said democracy is basically for the birds. We will have a national diet, you know, a national column.

[Dan Snow]

Consultative assembly.

[Chris Harding]

Exactly. So a tiny percentage of Japanese men can vote for these people. And even then these people, it's kind of a talking shop. The way the Japanese leaders see it, they retain power as this tiny clique. The way they see it is it's a way of making people feel important and it's a way of getting, I think, a certain amount of buy in. So that if you're a relatively wealthy Japanese man who reads his newspaper and pays his taxes, you want to feel that your voice is heard a bit. Right. And so that's a way of doing that. But the idea that you'd have democracy in a more radical sense is just would be, you know, giving into chaos, I think, as far as they see it.

[Dan Snow]

So no wonder they were quite attracted by the Prussian model there. So powerful emperor, powerful advisors around the emperor, a lot of decision making power there, but. But with it. But with a little smidgen of representation as well.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah. And I suppose, you know, Prussia, Germany, it's another relatively new power trying to Knit itself together as Japan is doing this period. So they, they kind of see, I think, a natural, a natural European reflection there of what they're, what they're trying to do. But it obviously it upsets people. So across the 1870s, early 1880s, when these institutions are kind of being put together, you do get people in Japan who will go around giving lectures saying, no, we want a British model, we want a French model. These leaders, they're doing generally a good job, but we want a say in how things work. I suppose the other thing these leaders do quite cleverly is they got their army, which we've talked about. They've also got quite quickly a very effective police force who don't mind getting a bit of rough, getting a bit rough if they have to, don't mind putting people in prison if they have to. So that some of these meetings where, you know, I might go along giving a lecture saying, you know, I think, rah, rah, rah, we should have a French style democracy. I might get yanked off stage by the police and put in prison. Some of these people who are advocating for democracy end up giving their lectures on houseboats in the middle of lake. So the police can't get to them. So they're doing their best, but they're slowly being clamped down on, I think. So those, those kind of voices more and more get whittled away.

[Dan Snow]

How interesting that the voices are coming from that particular area. There aren't the voices of people going, no, this is all nonsense. Let's just go back. Let's get back to, you know, let's get back to the 18th century. We don't need any of this new stuff. Yeah, I guess the world in 1860, 1870, 1880. If you're just looking at the world, you think we are on the wrong side of history. I mean, it looked like at that point steam and electricity and life experience expectancy gallery. It just shows how powerful that must have been to any observer. It just like. Yeah, I think it looks to me like the Europeans and Americans have kind of cracked it here. That must have, that was, that was such a dominant narrative.

[Chris Harding]

I think it was when they had that world tour and they came back, the leaders, that tour in the early 1870s, that was their dominant thought. I think they also though, in places like London, Glasgow, Liverpool, they saw slums. So when they got back, one of the things they wanted to do with their new civil servants. So, you know, in the Tokugawa period, all the feudal lords would have these lovely mansions, right, gathered around the Tokugawa main Castle in Edo. Those mansions are now turned into ministries for civil servants. So if you're an up and coming young man in this period, what you want to do is go and study law in the new Tokyo University and then get a job as a civil servant. Because given that party politics doesn't really, you know, have much traction in Japan. The real power is civil servants looking at the west saying for the most part, okay, what do we need? What are we going to emulate and innovate? But they're also saying, what do we want to avoid? We need to have cities like Osaka and Tokyo become these industrial centers. But we don't want a big working class who are angry. We don't want an impoverished class living in slums who are also angry. And so these civil servants see themselves, they call themselves shepherds of the people. So they want to look at Europe and then say, okay, here's how you should organize a city. They look at London, here's how we might organize Tokyo. Here's what we're going to avoid. Here's how we can try and forestall, right, some of the social problems that Europeans have. I think alongside that there are. To go back to your question earlier on, there are some in Japan who do say, actually maybe we need the weapons, but can we draw the line at the weapons? They say, actually, do we want to dress up in suits? You know, do we need to get rid of samurai's data? There are people in various parts so boring at this. I think there are people who say, what we had was actually quite good. There's a lovely example of the tutor to the emperor, steeped in Confucian ideas, who says the Westerners only have fact gathering and technique as their values. They go no deeper as a culture, which I think is really interesting if you think about the birth of modern science, the power of all these new technologies, the fact that someone, you know, living in Tokyo who hadn't traveled the world much, nevertheless picked on that as being a Western weakness. Because it's the beginning of this idea that gains traction in Japan. It gains traction later amongst Indian nationalists. It's the idea that everything the west has achieved has been purchased at the cost of the Western soul. Yeah, right. They're alienated from nature.

[Dan Snow]

Where's the poetry?

[Chris Harding]

Exactly. Yeah. It's there in poetry, literature, and the Japanese see that. So you've got a line of thinking which I think goes all the way through into the 20th century, which says, as Japanese people, we have to hold on to something and not entirely lose our minds. And kind of become a facts an Asian facsimile of Great Britain. That's not what we want. And I suppose one moment which really encapsulates this, which a lot of people will have seen in the lovely film, Tom Cruise film the Last Samurai, right, is this great Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. A really brief sort of overview of it to give you a flavour. One of these leaders, Saigo Takamori, who is, you know, one of the young samurai in charge of the new country, falls out with his friends, goes home in a huff to Kyushu, this southern island in Japan. Quite how this happens we don't know. But in effect he ends up raising an army, marches them towards Tokyo where he plans to have a word with the Emperor basically about the direction that Japan has been being taken. But the new army with its conscripts, with its new weaponry, with its ships that can move troops around Japan very efficiently, they just get quite literally mown down, you know, they're lovely images. For all its faults. I do quite like the film the Last Samurai. This image of some of these samurai with rusty old swords running at these. I think they're Gatling guns, you know, these kind of rotating guns that come and just fired by a peasant with 10 minutes training, just take them all out. But there is that sense that by losing the samurai you are losing a little bit of Japan's soul and that you might not be able to get it back. So I think there is that concern with Japan losing its past and it's never really resolved. One way of putting it in a nutshell, I think, is what's the difference between modernizing and Westernizing? Modernizing, yes. Westernising they want to avoid, but in practice those two things are so, I think interlocked that Japan really struggles.

[Dan Snow]

You're listening to Dan Snows history. We're going to be back after this break.

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[Dr. Kate Lister]

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[Dan Snow]

And continues potentially to do so.

[Chris Harding]

You know, I think, I think they do so I'm a big fan of Japanese drama and this period, the Meiji period, is always represented as a, as a really mixed blessing for the Japanese you often see. And it's partly because some of the people who play foreigners in these dramas are just Westerners living in Japan, teaching English, getting a bit of a job on the side. So they are quite clunky and embarrassing people. But it gives this impression of the Westerners just blundering into Japan, having no idea about customs and behaving well and infecting Japan with something that the body politic can never really expel. So I think for the Japanese it really is a mix. For all its successes, it's a mixed period.

[Dan Snow]

And, but, but on, in sort of strategic terms and power terms, Japan doesn't get invaded by Europeans, remains one of the very, very few places outside Europe to retain its, its own into indigenous. Well, I guess to have its, to have some agency in its future. Yeah, nearly every else is conquered and indeed Japan will go on to conquer and even eventually take on and defeat Europeans. So in hard power terms, it's a success.

[Chris Harding]

I think it really is. It's hard to argue decade by decade across quite a long Meiji period. So the Meiji Emperor passes away in 1912 and by the time of his death, Japan is a world power by far and away the greatest power in Asia. I think the way Japan's leaders think about Japan quite early on, actually just in the early part of this period, really in the early 1870s, is they have a sense of Asia as being partly overrun by white Western power. And they see it in quite racialized terms. And they say what Japan's job is the first Asian country to modernize. We will build ourselves up and we will gather together a community of Asian nations. They talk about this as, quote, unquote, pan Asianism, gather them together and we will lead them to steadily push back. Because their vision, I suppose, of Japanese history going back centuries is you've got Indian culture in the form of things like Buddhism, made its way through China and Korea into Japan. Lots of Chinese culture has been at the roots of building up Japan, as has Korea. But now all those countries, India, China, Korea, are having a bad time of it. Right at the hands of Western colonialism. Korea is in a sort of a confused state. If we, as Japan, can be the leader of these nations, the place where all the best bits of their culture are gathered together and then combined with Western technology will be unstoppable, and we will raise Asia up. And I think people genuinely believe that in Japan in the 1870s, early 1880s. The trouble with it is that that becomes a very strong ideological basis for kind of doing whatever you want militarily in Asia. And so Japan has a victory over China, 1894-5, which is a big story.

[Dan Snow]

We need to fight the Chinese in order to liberate them.

[Chris Harding]

Yeah, exactly. So they do that with China. A little bit inconclusive. I think the big thing for Japan, though, I think, is the takeover of Korea, the colonization of Korea completed in 1910, really, on the basis that we will modernize Korea. We will give them railways, we'll give

[Dan Snow]

them banks, we'll give them part of our sharing. All the wonderful things we've learned is now, unfortunately, we have to invade you and occupy you in order to make you see these benefits.

[Chris Harding]

Absolutely. But then I suppose people who are fans of European history in this period will have heard of the civilizing mission.

[Dan Snow]

They will have heard of that, will

[Chris Harding]

have heard the British and the French saying very similar things. And the Japanese do exactly that. They will sort of plant their flag. They'll have a rhetoric of civilization. They even go to the extent where they send medics and even psychiatrists to Korea after they colonize it in the early 1900s. And some of the psychiatrists write back to Japan, and they say more and more people in Korea are suffering anxiety and depression. And the Japanese say, brilliant. Depression and anxiety are the sorts of maladies you suffer. If you have a civilized and quite complex mind, you become a worrier. You become a person with many thoughts. It's proof of our successful civilizing mission that more Koreans are turning up for help with depression. So it's amazing that I think the sense of mission there is really real on the part of the Japanese. The difficulty, of course, is once you get into the 20th century and once you have a foothold in mainland Asia, where are you going to stop?

[Dan Snow]

Right. And it's that conquest of Korea. They fight China over sort of domination Korea, they occupy Korea. Does that bring them into competition with the Russians?

[Chris Harding]

Yes. Yeah, it does. If you think about the geography and if you think about the weakness of China in this period, there is a sense that this part of the world is very much up for grabs. And if the Russians take it, then Korea falls next, most likely to the Russians again. And as one of Japan's strategists puts it, and if you think about the map, this kind of makes sense. Korea, the Korean peninsula is a dagger at the back of Japan for centuries. If you get hold of the Korean peninsula, it's a short hop to Japan. It's unthinkable that anyone else would have the Korean peninsula, so that's why they worry about that. But then it's unthinkable that anyone would have Manchuria other than the Japanese, because then they can get Korea. So there's that kind of, that kind of series effect or a domino effect where in order to be secure you have to expand your interest. And this leads Japan 1904-1905, into this famous war against the Russian Empire. The first time, and it happens in quite short order, the first time that an Asian power has had a victory over a white Western power. And it's hard to underestimate the shock, I think, that goes through Europe.

[Dan Snow]

And it's a victory not of Afghans defeating a British column by using clever guerrilla tactics and the harsh climate. It's a victory of steel and Western looking battleships and repeating rifles and barbells. It's a conventional war.

[Chris Harding]

Yes. Which is, I think, what really worries a lot of people in Europe, because in those early days of the Meiji Restoration, it was nice and it was funny and it was quite amusing to see the Japanese steadily take on these technologies, these institutions, even to things like eating beef and knife and fork, pushing their food around the plate, trying to get used to these things. It was quaint and it was funny. And the Japanese, the fact that they were succeeding as a society kind of based on learning from Europe was great for Europeans because clearly then their model is the most civilized and effective one. But yeah, exactly as you say, to see all that used against them successfully and with a hint. I think by this point some Westerners have a sense of what gets called the yellow peril. Not just that hordes of Chinese and Japanese migrants might be flooding the west, but a sense, I think, for Japan in particular, that they're modernizing on the surface Right. They look like a modern country, recognizably European or Western in their dress, institutions, technologies, but they have a kind of feudal mindset still. And that if you combine this feudal mindset, which might be quite irrational, might be willing to spill blood with the latest weaponry, what you've got is potentially a very scary enemy. And I think that starts to happen with the Russians. The fact that the Japanese destroy the Russian fleet, the fact that the Japanese are prepared on mainland Asia, a place called Port Arthur, to sacrifice so many of their own men in a battle that, yes, they end up on top in that war, but that doesn't really establish very much, but that they will throw their men against these weapons. People start, I think, in Europe and the west to worry about the Japanese and about where they might be heading. And I think, although it worries people in the west, it's also worth coming back to Japan because, you know, we were talking earlier on about people in Japan being unhappy at the direction of travel. One thing I think people in Japan start to feel is that the Russo Japanese War is a war too far. It's a war they didn't really need to fight. Maybe it's nice to be a colonial power. They've got Taiwan from China, they've got the Korean peninsula taking on Russia. You start to get people in Japan who are kind of left of center in their politics, who are quite pacifist. One famous poet, lovely poet called Yosano Akiko, she writes this poet writes this poem addressed to her brother who's fighting in the war, saying, do not give your life. And she says this really controversial thing captures the spirit of a lot of people in Japan, but it's something you absolutely shouldn't say, which is His Majesty the Emperor himself does not give his life or something to that effect, basically saying that he's. He's too scared to do it, he's not going to put himself in harm's way, and yet our sons and brothers are doing it. And so she's absolutely Persona non grata in Japan as a result. But you start to get that sense actually that overreach might be possible, that a period, decades of success in Japan might start to become perverted and that maybe Japan's going down that track.

[Dan Snow]

And then the 1930s happened. But let's finish this episode by bringing Japan to it. Probably. It's when the future look brightest. You win the Russo Japanese War, you're Allied, the British, British Naval, Japanese officers, training of the Royal Navy in Dartmouth, all this kind of stuff. Yeah, Japan's on the winning side, the First World War, it get. It gets more concessions, does it? The end of the First World War, sort of a bit. Few more bits of China.

[Chris Harding]

You get bits and pieces from the old German colonies. Yeah, yeah. I think some in Europe thought Japan behaved rather badly in the First World quite opportunistically, didn't really need to get involved. But, yeah, you're right, it gets a little bit. And so this is probably, I think if you were a European visiting Japan in, say, the mid-1920s, right, go to somewhere like Tokyo, you're going to see somewhere that has wide area, streets, trains, trams, people look wealthy, you can eat food from all around the world. You've got theaters, comedy clubs, you've got imperial power. Yeah. You've got radio, gramophone, all these sorts of things happening. And, yeah, it's a proper imperial power, exporting the best of its civilization all around Asia. It's probably at its peak at that point, I think, because not only has it got all that, but after the First World War, that vision of Wilsonian internationalism, a lot of Japan's diplomats really believed in that. Although at the end of the First World War, they wanted to have a racial equality clause. Right. Put into the. The covenant for the new League of Nations, they didn't get that. And that became a seed that would flower in rather unpleasant ways later. But other than that, they really saw themselves as a great cosmopolitan international power. And if you were an ordinary person in Japan at this point, they're steadily expanding the franchise, not to women, but to other men. And so there's a sense that democracy is taking root, that being in a political party starts to actually mean something in Japan. So I think that would be its. Its peak in all sorts of ways. And then there's that duh, duh, duh element for then. What happens next?

[Dan Snow]

Well, join us another time. We'll be talking about that. In fact, we have talked about that many times. So thank you very much for coming on and taking us through how Japan rose to the unexpected story of Japan becoming a regional, even a world power. Absolutely.

[Chris Harding]

Thank you very much.

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[Chris Harding]

Okay, caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What?

[Dan Snow]

I won floor seats.

[Chris Harding]

You did?

[Dan Snow]

I've been calling for 13 months.

[Chris Harding]

Wait. Chris.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, I.

[Chris Harding]

Are you going to wear Men's Warehouse?

[Dan Snow]

They've got today's looks for any occasion and I need to look like a celebrity.

[Chris Harding]

Don't want to stick out.

[Dan Snow]

Exactly. They've got Chill Flex by Kenneth Cole, Joseph Abboud, and a tailor at every store for the perfect fit.

[Chris Harding]

Congrats. You can stop calling now. Not a chance. Hit any look for every occasion at Men's Warehouse. Love the way you look.

[Dan Snow]

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