Process Paper By Drew Leonard, Senior Division Having been interested in Japans modernization for several years prior

to this project, I was very excited when I learned the theme fit very well with my topic of choice. The novel Shogun by James Clavell initially interested me in Japan. I later began reading about different eras of the country. When I arrived at the Meiji era, I was very interested. The novels by James Clavell put an idea of this time period and time eras prior in my head that has been maintained to this day. It was the culture of Japan that interested me. I first started conducting my research by reading about basic ideas of the topic online. I moved onto gather books from the library and later compiling lists of questions for possible interviews. As I learned more about the topic and the various causes and reactions, I was able to start making decisions regarding the course of my project. I would read secondary resources and later supplement those ideas with primary resources I learned of. I knew I was decent with technology and the web, so I decided on a website. I learned to use Weebly quickly, and soon learned to use Adobe InDesign quickly too. I used InDesign to create the flash utilized on my website. Designing the project was very easy, because it was a simple process of trial and error. Editing with Weebly was extraordinarily easy and efficient. The Meiji Restoration, my topic, related to the idea of Turning Points in History in every sense of the phrase. Japan went from being a feudal nation to being a constitutional and expansionist state within a matter of two decades. Japan was well on the way to political subordination to various Western nations when a group of innovative thinkers took control of the central government and implemented drastic yet efficient reforms to quite literally save Japan. These reformers (an entire government) did not just save Japan from being politically subordinate to foreign nations, but they seated Japan among the world powers of the time and won two wars within a decade of each other. All the reforms undertaken were prominent throughout the rest of the world at the time, but it cannot be forgotten that before 1868 Japan was a very feudal and isolated nation with very little willing interaction with the foreign nations. The well known traditional Japan with tea ceremonies and samurai turned into the industrial Japan known today directly during this period. This period was the transition from ways of life traceable to almost mythical times to ways of life still seen today (industrial and modern).