ABSTRACT
The meiji restoration is usually described as having followed two models, that of the contemporary West and that of Japan's imperial past, while the third model, that of imperial China, which for more than a thousand years had inspired the Japanese, is often believed to have been discarded. Yet a closer look at the concepts and symbols of the Meiji era suggests that although many Chinese ideas had indeed been abandoned, in other cases not only did the Chinese patterns hold their ground, but a further sinification occurred in them after the Meiji Restoration. This happened when the Meiji leaders, wishing to make Japan into the leading force of East Asia, adopted Chinese imperial trappings which had not previously existed in Japan.
