This is the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II. What happened 70 years before that? This is a game I sometimes play when a notable year comes around.
Go back 70 years from 1945 and you get to 1875. That was the eighth year of the newly constituted regime of Meiji, and Japan was still unstable.
The tax system had been “reformed” two years earlier, from rice to land, but the burden did not change. Peasant rebellions continued to erupt in many parts of the nation. The samurai class, deprived of their stipends and status, revolted here and there, with the biggest one of its kind, the Satsuma Rebellion, to take place in another two years.