China, Japan and Ryukyu

Three years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 - which inaugurated a period of modernization and political change in Japan - a commercial treaty was signed between China and Japan, and it was ratified in 1873. Understandably it was reciprocal, because both signatories had a similar unequal status vis-�-vis the Western nations. The establishment of the new Sino-Japanese relations