When did the Meiji Restoration happen?

For more than 250 years Japan had been ruled by military shoguns of the Tokugawa family, with the emperor as a largely ceremonial figure. The arrival of US Commodore Matthew Perry's warships in 1853 forced Japan to open to foreign trade and exposed the shogunate's weakness. In January 1868 reformers proclaimed the restoration of imperial rule under the young Emperor Meiji. Over the following decades Japan abolished the samurai class, built railways and factories, and created a modern army and navy. Within about 40 years, Japan had become a major world power.