Kenshin's blog · What’s past is prologue.

From the Meiji Restoration to the War of Aggression Against China

In 1853, just as Hong Xiuquan’s Taiping Army breached the gates of Nanjing, four U.S. warships were sailing toward Edo Bay in Japan. U.S. Navy Commodore Perry demanded that the Japanese shogunate—just as the Qing government had done a decade earlier—open its borders, open its ports, and engage in “free trade.” Faced with this group of Anglo-Saxons who had traveled such a long distance and the menacing black cannons on their ships, the shogunate’s leaders were momentarily at a loss. After much de

The Beginning of Another Story

A while back, while reminiscing with an old friend, I realized that I’ve been using the internet for 20 years now. Over the past 20 years, I’ve started and shut down blogs time and again. Each time I started a blog, it was usually because I was in a mental state where I felt a strong urge to express myself, while the reasons for shutting them down varied. I still remember the first time I shut down a blog—it was because a blogging platform with tens of millions of users announced it was ceasing