Speaking of modern Japan, many people think of wars of aggression against China such as the First Sino-Japanese War, but the starting point of these series of events was the Meiji Restoration, and the reason why the Meiji Restoration was able to take place was because of the Shogun Movement!

Before the historical Curtain Fall Movement, there was still a history of reverence for the emperor in Japan.

And now, Japan's own country is in the early stage of respecting the king!

Since 1853, when the United States opened Japan's own door with gunboats, its impact on Japan itself was no less than the impact of the First Opium War and the Second Opium War on China in history.

After 1853, Japan was forced to open its doors and signed trade treaties with the United States, Britain, France and other countries, and after the establishment of the Chinese Empire, although the Chinese Empire was extremely weak in maritime power, it was also a traditional power in Asia.

So in 1859, a similar treaty was signed with the Japanese shogunate!

However, China's international trade in this era was mainly focused on the export of raw silk, tea and other products, and Japan itself did not import these things, so the share of international trade between China and Japan in recent years was quite low.

The only thing worth mentioning is that since 1860, China began to export cotton cloth to Japan, but the quantity is also very small, and it is not the opponent of foreign cloth from Britain and other countries, and the share of Chinese cotton cloth in the Japanese market is quite small, or even negligible.

Therefore, from the perspective of trade interests, the Chinese Empire today has no direct commercial interests in Japan.

But sometimes national interests are not purely commercial interests!

As a person with the soul of a later generation, Lin Zhe knew that once the Meiji Restoration was completed, it would pose a major challenge to China.

Therefore, Lin Zhe would not have watched Japan complete the Meiji Restoration, and then establish a modern civilized state, and then adjust the hegemony of the empire in Asia.

Therefore, a few years ago, Lin Zhe instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to pay close attention to the changes in the situation in Japan.

The Imperial Envoy to Japan also sends back to Japan every once in a while a report on the situation on the other side.

And now. Lin Zhe saw the report on the situation in Japan, but he found that the situation in Japan had begun to be violently turbulent, and the Shogunate faction, with the Chosu Domain as the core, began to no longer be satisfied with the shogunate's concessions to foreign countries, and they demanded that the shogunate take more effective and radical measures to reform and expel foreigners.

And stimulated them to rebel so strongly against the foreigners. Even the confidence to expel foreigners by force was actually related to the rise of the Chinese Empire.

The Sino-British and French War of 1858, the Anglo-French army was completely wiped out in Shanghai, which can be said to have greatly stimulated the confidence of backward countries in Asia, and even the reason why the Vietnamese were able to have the confidence to continue fighting with the French was also a precedent factor for the Chinese to defeat the Anglo-French alliance.

Logically speaking, the affairs of Japan have little to do with the empire for the time being, because there is basically no trade between the empire and Japan, and China has always been a trading country with Japan until 1853. Japan already has stable trade relations with North Korea, China, and the Netherlands, and its policy of closing the country to the outside world does not include China.

However, it is important to note that according to the 1859 Sino-Japanese Treaty of Friendship and Commerce, China enjoyed all the same rights and interests as other countries, including the right to establish port trade, permanent residence, consular jurisdiction, and the right to negotiate tariffs. In fact, it is no different from European and American countries, and they all belong to those that need to be driven away.

When I learned that the situation in Japan was in turmoil. Lin Zhe personally summoned the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Song Guanmae, and asked him to pay close attention to the changes in the situation in Japan, and asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to strengthen ties with the shogunate and provide some diplomatic support if necessary.

The situation in Japan was now turbulent, and it was clear that the shogunate was not capable of forcibly suppressing and maintaining its rule without much external interference. Then the situation in Japan will continue to develop according to history, and the shogunate will be defeated by the Nagasu clan and other emperors, and then the Meiji Restoration will begin.

And this is what Lin Zhe does not allow.

He doesn't care about the life or death of the day himself, he just wants to see a backward day 'Ben!

Under such circumstances, it is natural that the so-called support for the downfall faction representing the progressive forces will not work. If you want to support it, you have to support the shogunate.

If he could, Lin Zhe hoped that the shogunate would continue to rule Nichimoto, and under the rule of the shogunate, Nichimoto would have carried out various innovations and complete the industrial revolution.

At the same time, Lin Zhe did not expect the shogunate's rule to last long, as long as he ruled for another 50 years, and after entering the 20th century, the opportunity to complete the modern industrial revolution would be completely lost.

The mid-to-late nineteenth century was a period of development that could not be missed for the backward countries, and throughout global history, it was during this period that almost all the great powers, except for Britain, completed the industrial revolution.

This is true of France, Prussia, the United States, Japan, and even Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary and other countries, although they have not been able to completely complete the industrial revolution, but they have also made great achievements in the past forty or fifty years.

And once these decades are missed, there is basically no hope when we enter the 20 th century, and if there is no miracle at that time, we basically do not expect to be able to develop in the first half of the 20 th century, and if we want to take off the hat of a backward country, we can basically only wait for the arrival of the era of globalization, so that we can take advantage of the development of the country.

Why Lin Zhe began to promote industry on a large scale in recent years is because the current industrial technology gap is not large, and there is no insurmountable technical obstacles, as long as the investment is large enough, then it is still very promising to catch up with Britain in technology and industrial scale.

And this catch-up is getting harder the further back you go.

Therefore, Lin Zhe's basic strategy for the Japanese side is the same, regardless of how the Japanese are, it is impossible to industrialize, and whoever wants to let the Japanese play reform and carry out the industrial revolution will be the object that the Chinese Empire needs to suppress and even eliminate.

There is no doubt that the typical representative of the reform forces in Japan today is the forces in the southwestern region such as the Chosu Domain.

Analyzed in this way, it is logical that the empire supports the shogunate!

In September 1862, in the Imperial Settlement of China in Edo, or, more simply, in the Chinese Concession, the Imperial Minister to Japan, Li Bochang, looked at the documents sent from China, and did not understand this directive in China.

This directive from the Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it was necessary to alleviate the contradictions and conflicts between the Japanese and the Japanese as much as possible, to gain the favor of the shogunate government, and to give a certain amount of support if necessary.

When did Japan become interested in meddling in Japan's domestic affairs? Don't those bigwigs in China know that now they have set off a wave of xenophobia, and the targets of this exclusion are not only Britain, the United States, France and other countries, but also the merchants of our Great Chinese Empire are also among the excluded ranks.

Moreover, the trade volume between the empire and Japan is very small, and now the empire's import and export trade is naturally the lion's lion's share of Britain, and the trade with the British accounts for almost half of China's import and export share, followed by France, Prussia, the United States, Italy and other ordinary Western countries.

Not to mention the rest, even in Southeast Asian countries and regions such as Siam and Vietnam, their trade volume with the empire is larger than that between Japan and the empire!

Without direct economic interests, why meddle in Japan's domestic affairs? even explicitly stated that he wanted to support the shogunate, which made Li Bocang quite puzzled.

But it doesn't matter if you don't understand, he is the Imperial Minister to Japan, and what he has to do is to implement the Empire's foreign policy towards Japan, as for why he does this, it is not something he needs to consider.

Soon after, he met with a number of powerful officials of the shogunate, made a goodwill voice of the empire, and even took the initiative to ask these officials of the shogunate if they wanted to purchase a batch of guns and cannons or something, so that they could be used to suppress those king-honoring factions!

Unfortunately, although the situation in Japan was tense, it was not yet time for a full-blown civil war, and the shogunate was naturally reluctant to spend a lot of money to import advanced weapons to arm the army.

However, they did not sell them, but Li Bocang directly gave 300 second-hand 1856 Linde rifles, which was called in the name of allowing them to experience the sharpness of the Mini rifle and master some experience in using the Mini rifle.

But that's all!

After all, not everyone is like Lin Zhe, who can know some of the general developments of the original time and space day, and know that a civil war will break out sooner or later.

Now, even if it is Japan, I don't know if there will be a war, and if it does, when it will break out!

However, after the delivery of 300 1856 Linde rifles, some high-ranking officials of the shogunate had a better sense of the Chinese Empire, and Li Bochang began to enter and leave the residences of important Japanese magnates.

When the civil war will break out on the Japanese side, Lin Zhe himself actually doesn't know, he only knows that the Japanese war and the Meiji Restoration are generally in the sixties of the nineteenth century, but in that specific year, he has to go to the history books or Baidu one or two.

Anyway, Lin Zhe thought that it would be a matter of the past few years, and it was always safer to prepare earlier.

Putting aside the affairs of the day's side, Lin Zhe's life in China is still spent dealing with various affairs.

As an emperor with real power, and an emperor who is unwilling to put too much power down, Lin Zhe is destined to be idle, although he does not have to fight at night every day, but basically there are corresponding affairs waiting for him to deal with every day.

Autumn went to winter, and 1863 came as promised.

At the beginning of February 1863, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suddenly received a report from the diplomatic personnel stationed in Japan, saying that the Japanese "themselves set fire to the British Embassy, and at the same time, some Japanese Ronin people stormed the Chinese Concession and burned down many Chinese merchant buildings, and even approached the Chinese Embassy for a time, causing injuries to several marines protecting the Embassy."

After Song Guanqian received the news that he had attacked the Chinese concession and injured several marines, he did not dare to delay, and immediately went to the Xinhua Hall of the Zhonghua Palace to personally report the matter to Lin Zhe. (To be continued.) )