 At the time of Emperor Meiji's birth in 1852, Japan was a feudal, pre-industrial country dominated by the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate and the "daimyōs" subject to it, who ruled over the country's more than 250 decentralized domains.By the time of his death in 1912, Japan had undergone an extensive political, economic, and social revolution and emerged as one of the great powers on the world stage.