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00:00July the 8th, 1853.
00:09A fleet of ships is bearing down on the peaceful harbour of Edo Bay.
00:17For the people of Japan, change is coming.
00:21For over 200 years, the country has closed itself off from the west.
00:26But now, it faces a violent confrontation.
00:33With American aggressors, Japan's future is on a knife edge.
00:43Some believe they must fight to preserve their unique way of life.
00:49Others will sacrifice everything to avoid war.
00:56This is like the most steampunk clash of cultures you've ever seen.
01:01Suddenly, the threat of the west has become real.
01:06This is a true emergency of the sort that for generations people haven't known in Japan.
01:12The Japanese are aware of western aggression, but they probably have never thought it would come to their doorstep.
01:18Three men hold the future of Japan in their hands.
01:23A rigidly controlling ruler.
01:27An ambitious American naval commander.
01:30And a proud samurai, caught between Japan's glittering past and uncertain future.
01:39The worst mistake that any civilisation can make is to suppose that by walling itself in, that it can survive.
01:48Ancient Egypt.
02:03The Roman Empire.
02:08The Aztecs of Mexico.
02:13And the samurai of Japan.
02:16Four great civilisations.
02:21Each a pinnacle of human ingenuity and achievement.
02:26Each lasted for centuries.
02:31Their people thought they would endure forever.
02:36Until suddenly...
02:38Everything changed.
02:41These civilisations faced challenges that are all too familiar today.
02:55Climate catastrophe.
03:00Pandemic.
03:05War.
03:06Challenges for which ancient societies had few solutions.
03:20But what if there was a place that had the answers to what went wrong?
03:24A place full of secrets and stories.
03:30A repository of memory stretching back through time.
03:34The British Museum, home to more than 8 million artefacts, is a record of how and why the greatest civilisations rose to power and then spectacularly fell.
03:53It's treasures are the human traces that survived disaster.
04:01But might they also hold lessons for our own future?
04:08Every civilisation throughout history has had an expiry date.
04:11With great societies, the seeds of their destruction are sown within the society.
04:18They're already there.
04:24No civilisation ever thinks it's going to fall.
04:28But the question is, what can we learn from the past?
04:31In the Pacific Ocean, off the eastern shores of Asia,
04:57Japan, in the middle of the 19th century, is entirely unique.
05:18It's different from anywhere else in the world.
05:20It's several islands, there's a huge population, a very educated and literate population.
05:32The city of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, is home to over a million people, and one of the largest cities in the world.
05:45Japan is a place of elaborate temples.
05:47Japan's distinctive culture is a product of a deliberate policy.
06:17It's a place of isolation.
06:25120 miles from the coast of mainland Asia,
06:30Japan has closed its borders to much of the outside world for over 200 years.
06:37Japanese are forbidden to travel abroad on pain of death, so it's developed this phenomenal culture, which is of its own.
06:48At peace for the last two centuries, the Japanese have developed a highly stylised set of rituals for everyday life, from the way to drink tea, to how to wear a kimono.
07:02Any society that has peace instead of warfare, instead of putting all the money into making weapons, you can put your money into things like culture and arts.
07:13The intricate craftsmanship that has emerged reveals the lengths the Japanese will go to in pursuit of perfection.
07:25But it's the same as such.
07:27In the future, the Japanese will go to the German ship.
07:27The Japanese will go to the Japanese and the Japanese will go to the Japanese.
07:29Yeah, it's the Japanese.
07:30No, it's
07:31I'm just it.
07:32Oh, I'm just it.
07:32I'm not it.
07:33The Japanese will go to the Japanese and the Japanese.
07:35What you have in Japan is this culture of creating these small and beautiful sculptures,
07:54which are barely there.
07:57It's an extraordinary thing because they're very, very small.
08:05What's special about Nescape is that they are basically miniature sculptures for the hand.
08:27They're made for you to feel during the day, to run your hands over and discover.
08:37Here's a Netscape of a rat.
08:41It's eating a beanstalk, two very beady eyes made out of buffalo horn.
08:51Turn it round, and there is its tail curled all the way round under one of its paws.
08:58You can just see there beautifully.
09:05Intricately carved from ivory or hardwood, these are miniature snapshots of Japanese life.
09:13What you have within Netscape is a whole raft of subject matter, which comes out of Japanese mythology, folkloric traditions, food, storytelling, eroticism, fashion.
09:33All these things become amplified.
09:40They're fascinating for the level of craftsmanship and the miniaturization of whole worlds and the degree to which they incorporate symbolism and fine materials and are beautiful but also, in a very clear way, functional.
10:00So you have to imagine wearing a wonderful kimono and you've got no pockets.
10:07So how are you going to carry around all the things you might need for your daily life?
10:12So you have an external pocket.
10:15It's called a sagimono, a hanging pocket.
10:22This one is made from boxwood.
10:24And up here is the Netscape.
10:26And this is the way that you hold your hanging pocket from the belt of your obi.
10:32There is no way that Netscape can happen elsewhere.
10:44It's one of these extraordinary sort of efflorescences in a culture.
10:51They're not looking outwards, they're looking inwards.
10:55But beyond Japan's shores, the world is changing fast.
11:07Isolationism is usually madness for any except the most powerful societies.
11:13You're not only isolating yourself from foreign cultural forces, but you're in danger of isolating yourself from all the developments of science, of technology, and then you become vulnerable to external enemies.
11:26By the 1850s, Europe is being powered by an industrial revolution.
11:38New technology is transforming everything.
11:41From steam-powered transport to the mass production of ever more powerful weapons.
11:47And it's fueling an appetite for conquest.
12:02Industrialisation has driven this need for colonisation.
12:06The raw materials of iron, coal, cotton, tea, all of this is driving Europeans to try and carve out empires.
12:16They are trying to get as many colonies as possible to give them not only wealth, but stability across the globe.
12:26It's impossible to overstate the importance of technology as a driving force.
12:32European powers found themselves able, because of their superior weapons technology, to march into other people's country and to achieve devastating victories at relatively low cost.
12:43And now there's a dynamic new player on the world stage.
12:58The United States is a growing power.
13:03They have ships that are trading around the Pacific.
13:06What they want is for their ships to be able to take on food and other supplies.
13:10So they begin to consider Japan as a place that no one else has yet, quote unquote, opened to the West.
13:23Japan becomes the target.
13:27The man in charge of this mission is U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry.
13:42Perry is from a naval family.
13:45He is pretty proud of his own rightness.
13:49He fought in the war with Mexico.
13:51He's also chased pirates in the Caribbean.
13:54He's a big Navy guy.
13:56Harry is a technological visionary.
14:00This is a man who is dreaming of not only the U.S. as a Pacific power, but the U.S. as a naval power driven by steamships.
14:11Steam ships are amazing, but they require regular refueling.
14:19And that means the U.S. has to be absolutely certain that its ships can regularly refuel all across the Pacific.
14:27The Americans want very much to be able to coal up their ships at Japanese ports.
14:38Perry is a man who likes to do his homework.
14:41So he's read up in the New York Public Library a little bit about the Japanese.
14:45And I think he's come to the view that the Japanese will really only respond to a show of power.
14:57On November the 24th, 1852, Perry sets sail for Japan.
15:15His squadron of four warships, two of them steam powered, is designed to intimidate the Japanese into submission.
15:23Perry carries a letter spelling out American demands.
15:28But he has no idea who he will be dealing with.
15:32Perry doesn't understand very much about the political situation in Japan.
15:40Not very many people do.
15:42He mistakenly addresses his letter demanding the opening of ports and trade to the emperor.
15:50The emperor not realizing that the emperor is not in control.
15:57Japan has had an emperor for more than a thousand years.
16:02But he is little more than a symbolic figurehead.
16:05The real power lies elsewhere.
16:09The real power lies elsewhere.
16:36These are the shoguns.
16:38And shogun is a supreme warlord over all the other 200 plus warlords in the country.
16:49Shogun is a word that Westerners are quite familiar with.
16:50What it actually means is like foreigner crushing generalissimo.
17:02We see in the center the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate and around him are arrayed his 14 successors.
17:15For 250 years, the Tokugawa family has ruled Japan.
17:30There are no significant rivals to their power.
17:43So it's a reign of exceptional duration and exceptional success in many ways.
17:49It's a bit like a mafia power family.
17:55What you get is a warlord who doesn't rule with just an iron fist.
18:00It's sort of an iron fist in a silk glove.
18:02The shogun's job is to placate, is to manipulate and is to convince everybody to keep the peace.
18:15It is the Tokugawa clan who have tried to eliminate contact with the West.
18:30In the 17th century, they implemented a policy of seclusion called Sakoku.
18:39Closing the country off from what they see as dangerous outside influence.
18:45The foreigners were referred to as Nambanji, meaning Southern barbarian.
19:02Back in the late 1500s, the Portuguese and also the Spanish made their way into Japan,
19:08traders and missionaries, and they started to meddle in Japanese politics.
19:13They made quite a few converts to Christianity,
19:16and some of these converts were regarded as a bit suspect
19:18because it's not really clear where their loyalties lie.
19:22And so when this policy of more or less complete isolation was put in place,
19:27it made a great deal of sense. It was border control.
19:30The Tokugawa shoguns allow trade with their immediate neighbours, China and Korea,
19:46but limit European imports to the Dutch alone.
19:49and restrict them to the harbour of Nagasaki.
19:58Here, twenty or so Dutch merchants are confined to a tiny artificial island,
20:04just 600 feet long, called Dejima.
20:07They are the only Westerners allowed to do business with the Shogun.
20:12They were trading with the Dutch, but only because the Dutch said,
20:15we're not going to do anything other than trade with you.
20:17We're not going to introduce European ideas, or particularly Christianity.
20:21If you don't allow trading partners, if you don't allow the importation of new ideas,
20:26new competing philosophies and technologies,
20:28it is simply an easier landscape to control.
20:31It's often an illusion of control because you can't control what exactly happens beyond your borders.
21:01The Tokugawa family's power base is the thriving city of Edo.
21:18The latest Shogun to inherit the title knows his control of the country
21:23also depends on enforcing a rigid social hierarchy.
21:27Everybody knows their place and it's this sense of cultural unity
21:35which really binds Japan together and creates this unique tradition,
21:41this unique society.
21:49At the top of the ladder are around 300 warlords, the Daimyo.
21:54beneath them are Japan's enforcers, an elite class of warriors and bureaucrats known as the Samurai.
22:04What defines you as a Samurai is carrying out whatever duty you've been given by your Lord,
22:09doing it exactly as you've been asked and sacrificing whatever you need to sacrifice to get it done.
22:14Of 30 million Japanese, around 2 million are Samurai.
22:24They're absolutely at the top.
22:26They're almost a different species, I think, from other Japanese.
22:29That's certainly how they regard themselves anyway.
22:31Among the many Samurai, one is destined to lead the fight against Western influence.
22:52His name is Saigo Takamori.
22:59Saigo Takamori is sort of the ultimate Samurai.
23:06He has a very stern Samurai education.
23:10He learns all the martial arts and he is very interested in the moral systems that are behind the Samurai world.
23:19Saigo is a man with a really deep ethical code.
23:28He has a lovely slogan he often uses,
23:31Revere heaven and love one another.
23:36He takes the status and the duties of a Samurai very seriously.
23:40Saigo is a traditionalist.
23:46And by that I mean he thinks the old ways should be preserved.
24:03In Japan, nothing embodies the status of a Samurai more than his sword.
24:09In all its extraordinary detail.
24:16If you're Samurai, these swords that you carry is basically, it's your soul.
24:26It's part of yourself.
24:28It's not just an object.
24:30It's not just a weapon.
24:32It's a symbol of loyalty, duty, honour and pride.
24:38Called a katana, this is one of the most lethal and effective swords ever created.
25:01It can slice through skin and bone.
25:08The result of generations of craftsmen perfecting their skills.
25:14It is made in a way that no other sword is made.
25:24There's two pieces of metal are melded together.
25:31It is also the sharpest sword in the world.
25:35On the thinner cutting edge of the blade is this beautiful crystalline structure that's called the Hamon.
25:42And there's a whole vocabulary to describe the shape and the qualities of the Hamon.
25:49It can be likened to the night sky or to mist or dew.
25:58Handles are covered in stingray skin for extra grip and wrapped in silken cords.
26:07All decorated with intricate symbols from Japanese folklore.
26:12Every single katana or sword are different and it has different story.
26:18It becomes part of you.
26:20It's become who you are.
26:22Traditionally, sword skills are important for every samurai.
26:28The sword is also a reminder of the samurai's status as authority figures in Japan.
26:37Only the samurai at this point are allowed weapons of any kind.
26:40So to walk around town carrying those swords is to tell everybody else who you are and what your standing is in Japan.
26:49Commoners in the street are going to back away from you.
26:52They might bow as you go past.
26:55So you've got a really strong sense that the country is really built around you and your values.
27:03It's the samurai and their sense of honour that holds the rest of Japan together.
27:19As the sun dips low over the coastal city of Edo, the harbour of Kurihama south of Edo Bay is settling down for the evening.
27:37When out of the haze, four hulking ships appear, bristling with cannon.
27:44American naval commander Matthew Perry has arrived.
27:51Perry's idea, it's shock and awe. That's what he wants to achieve.
27:56There's a great deal of menace to the way Perry approaches Japan.
28:03He has the cannon fire from offshore.
28:06He really wants to awe the Japanese with a sense of his power, with a sense of the technology that he's bringing.
28:12A group of senior samurai invites Perry to a meeting inside a hastily built pavilion on the shore.
28:23The Japanese officers realised that this small squadron of ships can completely outgun all the naval fortifications that Japan has set up around Edo Harbour.
28:35For Perry, these samurai looked a bit unimpressive.
28:42He saw that the weapons they were holding in the United States would be back in a museum.
28:47They'd be in someone's attic. These things are not credible modern weapons at all.
28:52Perry gives them an ultimatum. He says, either you sign this trade deal with us. You've got a year to do it.
29:02We're being reasonable here. You have a whole year to sign this treaty.
29:06Or your other alternative is, we come back in a year and we attack.
29:10He gives the Japanese a little white piece of cloth.
29:20He says, if I don't get what I've asked for, there's going to be a war.
29:23And when you've had enough, you can wave this little piece of white cloth and surrender.
29:28Gunboat diplomacy meant making your will stick, whether you were right or wrong, whether what you were doing was just or unjust,
29:40because you had the firepower to make your will stick.
29:45As Perry steams away from Edo Bay, Japan faces a momentous choice.
29:56To agree to American terms or go to war.
30:02Across the country, some samurai, like Saigo Takamori, fear for the survival of the traditional order they love and uphold.
30:20Saigo, like many of his contemporaries in 1853, thinks these westerners are largely monstrous.
30:28They're coming from halfway around the world to bother a country that has done nothing to them.
30:35Saigo fears a collapse of Japan as he knows it.
30:40And he believes that they need to be driven away decisively and quickly.
30:46All eyes now turn to the great Tokugawa leader, the shogun, as the nation waits for his decision.
31:03The shogun is trying to square his job, which is to crush the barbarians, keep the foreigners out of Japan on the one hand,
31:13with the brute fact of overwhelming American power on the other.
31:18But it's a very difficult one, and he spends months agonising really over what to do.
31:29But can the shogun really count on his samurai to defend Japan?
31:34The answer is found in a stunning artefact, handed down through generations of a samurai family.
31:57Armor is embedded in a samurai family's history, its lineage.
32:10It's valuable not only in a material sense, but in a heritage sense, as part of what being a samurai was.
32:18Armour in Japan is formed from plates that are sewn together.
32:42The main part of the armour covers the chest, so there's two plates of iron in this suit.
32:47And then attached to that are lacquered plates that compose the shoulder guards.
32:57And there are sleeves that often have chain mail within them.
33:02And shin guards.
33:07Its mask is built to scare you.
33:10It's meant to be intimidating as well as functional.
33:14Helmets might incorporate an interesting motif, and in this particular case, it's a dragon.
33:27This is part of the fearsome aspect that you want to present on the battlefield.
33:38Samurai armour may once have proved effective against sword and arrow.
33:43But it is now purely ceremonial.
33:48No match for the latest guns and cannon fire.
33:56After the shocking revelation of American technology, being a samurai is no longer a defence.
34:02His armour, the thing that for generations has protected him, has protected his family, has protected his country, is now the thing which makes him weak.
34:16The whole thrust of history shows that the old, old cliché, the best guide to peace is to prepare for war.
34:29It's all still true. It always has been.
34:33In the end, there will always be enemies, there will always be aggressors out there who see things through a different prism.
34:38Eight months after the Americans' first landing in Japan, Commodore Perry returns to Edo Bay with a larger fleet.
34:52To demand an immediate answer from the shogun.
34:56It's time for the shogun to make his decision.
35:01He's got a choice, in a way, but in another way he's got no choice.
35:07It's time for the shogun to make his decision.
35:13He's got a choice, in a way, but in another way he's got no choice.
35:21Because if he doesn't sign that treaty, he is basically saying, you know, America can invade and colonise.
35:28By signing the treaty, he has a sliver of control left. Maybe.
35:41The best way for the shogun to deal with this is to give them a little bit of what they want and hope that they don't ask for anything else.
35:48That's the least worst thing that the shogun can do at this point.
35:55The shogun agrees a deal with Perry.
35:58What the treaty does is it basically opens up trade in the seaports along Japan's coast.
36:10The agreement is the first of what become known as the Unequal Treaties.
36:16The treaties are extremely disadvantageous to Japan.
36:25Economically, they put tariffs, import-export duties, not under Japanese control, but under international control.
36:33They are unable to protect their own markets.
36:37These are deemed to be infringements on Japan's national sovereignty.
36:42The shogun has been forced to make a humiliating climb down.
36:58Now he needs to cast his actions in a positive light.
37:02One remarkable work of art captures how his supporters tried to record this defeat as a victory.
37:15The Perry scroll is this long scroll which you unfurl and you read from right to left.
37:21You get scene after scene, little moments picked up from this return of Perry in 1854.
37:2816 images across 50 feet show the encounter between Perry's American delegation and the shogun's officials,
37:52and the efforts made by each side to impress the other.
37:55From the Japanese side, you have a display of sumo wrestling.
38:01From the American side, one of the things they offer is a demonstration of STEAM technology.
38:08So they have a little miniature railway track and a little locomotive on it.
38:14But the artist also tries to spin the occasion as evidence of Japanese superiority.
38:20What you see here are these sumo wrestlers who are physically larger than the American soldiers.
38:30And you see the Americans admiring the physiques of the sumo wrestlers, stroking their arms in a way that suggests a kind of admiration, adoration.
38:44A banquet scene shows the Japanese as dignified while one American sneaks food into his hat.
38:56And others examine the maker's marks on the porcelain bowls.
39:01A dedication claims that this scroll is evidence of the shogun's prowess in defending Japan against the Americans.
39:12Some may have believed this version of events, but not the samurai, Saigo Takamori.
39:26Approaching Edo, just two days after the treaty is signed, he sees with his own eyes, Perry's fleet of monstrous gunboats.
39:43And understands that Japan's unique way of life and traditions are now under threat.
39:49This is the first time Saigo has seen tangible evidence with his own eyes of Westerners.
39:58And they for him are this strange, outrageous imposition.
40:06For Saigo, what's so damaging about the treaties is that the shogunate has reneged on its own promises to keep foreigners out of Japan and backed out of it without a fight.
40:19For now, Saigo and his fellow samurai must submit to American humiliation, and to a shogun many feel has betrayed them.
40:34Thirteen years later, and Saigo's worst fears are coming true.
41:01As well as signing deals with the Americans, the shogun has opened up Japanese markets to Britain, Russia and France.
41:14Western goods start to flood in.
41:27And many Japanese start to embrace Western ways.
41:35Even the shogun himself.
41:37If you look at the depiction of the shogun in the lower left corner, it's immediately apparent that he is different.
41:49He is dressed in a Western military uniform, he is seated in a chair, and unlike his predecessors, without a sword, which had typically been the symbol of the samurai class.
42:02He is still a samurai, but he is a different kind of military man now.
42:09Along with foreign goods come foreign people.
42:24It's fair to say that a lot of foreigners are drinking heavily, behaving badly, getting into fights, generally disrespecting Japanese culture.
42:34You've got a sense, I think, that the world isn't really as it should be anymore.
42:46Imagine you're a samurai. You're at the top of your society.
42:50And suddenly all the things that you've been told about foreigners, it's suddenly not a story anymore.
42:54It is real, it's in front of your eyes. And you realise how precarious your position really is.
43:07The process of opening a society, creating new trade relationships, has, of course, both winners and losers.
43:13We see this in the modern world. There have been both winners and losers of globalisation.
43:19People, whether it be individuals or groups, who feel like they've lost status, are far more likely to turn to rebellion or to violence.
43:28It's a great deal.
43:34Saigo Takamori is one of a number of samurai who are reluctantly reaching the conclusion that the shogun's time is up.
43:43He's clearly failed to deal with foreigners effectively and something radical needs to change in Japan.
43:49Saigo forms an alliance with other disaffected samurai.
44:02Together, they are prepared to take action that was once unthinkable.
44:06The shogun, by letting foreigners come in, has betrayed the essence of Japan and is therefore actually illegitimate, even though on paper, the shogun is the supreme military commander.
44:25He can't be. That's impossible.
44:26Saigo and his fellow rebels head north through the winter snow to the city of Kyoto.
44:37Their hope is to win the backing of the one person whose support could change everything.
44:45Japan's spiritual figurehead, the emperor.
44:49The emperor.
44:54This is a monarchy that can trace itself back to the 600s.
44:59It's a very old institution, but it actually has not ruled rather than reigned for centuries.
45:10In theory, the emperor, who's in Kyoto, is right at the top of the country's politics.
45:15But in reality, he's hidden away in an imperial palace, performing rituals, writing poetry, has no real day-to-day say at all in the control of Japan.
45:26But nevertheless, he has an extraordinary mystique around him.
45:31And so I think people like Saigo Takamori really want the shogun to be toppled and instead for the emperor to come back to the front line of politics.
45:39This movement calls itself Son no Joi, which means literally revere the emperor, expel the barbarians.
45:52And they are absolutely willing to kill and be killed in pursuit of that idea.
45:57Saigo and his fellow samurai persuade the emperor to declare the shogun's rule over and put himself in charge.
46:10Saigo is absolutely at the center of this epoch-making moment in Japanese history.
46:15must just be an extraordinary sense of the moment having finally turned in his favor.
46:23The shogun faces a growing rebel army of samurai, backed by the emperor.
46:45Finally, the shogun agrees to leave Edo for good.
46:49After more than 250 years, the Tokugawa family's rule is at an end.
47:02The victorious samurai form a new government under the emperor.
47:06They base themselves in Edo, now renamed Tokyo.
47:10Saigo believes he's secured his country's future.
47:17But his fight for the soul of Japan is not yet at an end.
47:23Eight years after the shogun was deposed, the new government has promised to preserve ancient traditions.
47:36While embarking on a crash course of dizzying modernization.
47:52Once the shogun is got rid of, the new government takes power.
47:55But almost immediately they realize the situation they are in.
47:59This wasn't just a weak shogun.
48:01They realize there is no standing up to these foreign powers.
48:04The only way Japan is going to survive is if they modernize.
48:07And they modernize radically fast.
48:09The imperial government believes that only an industrialized nation can defend itself against western powers.
48:25But modernizing forces, once unleashed, are hard to control.
48:34The pace of change is breathtaking.
48:37And is captured in a high-tech new art form, imported from the west.
48:43Photography.
48:44Within a few years, you have railways coming in, you have new buildings going up.
48:54For centuries, people have walked or they've gone in palanquins or they've gone by water.
48:59All of a sudden, there are rickshaws all over the place.
49:05People start wearing western clothes, bustles and bonnets.
49:10Even the emperor is photographed wearing a western uniform.
49:21At first, Saigo believes that some modernization might strengthen Japan.
49:27But over time, he worries that the changes are sweeping away his country's traditional values.
49:32Saigo's having to ask himself, is this what I signed up for?
49:38Is this what I was fighting for just a few years ago?
49:45In 1876, the government issues an edict that enrages many samurai.
49:54Banning them from carrying their swords in public.
49:57The new government decides that in order to survive, it needs a modern army.
50:07And that means conscription.
50:09That means that any peasants can fight.
50:12Any merchant can pick up a gun and go and fight.
50:16Not only that, they're all going to wear a military uniform.
50:20So what's the point of a samurai?
50:22Where do they fit in this new system?
50:24And of course they don't.
50:26Saigo has risked everything to put the emperor in charge.
50:31But now, even his government seems to have reneged on its promise to defend Japanese tradition.
50:38The whole point of rising up was to re-establish samurai values, put the country on a strong footing against this influx of foreign ideas and foreign pressures.
50:55It just feels like an extraordinary betrayal.
50:56Saigo joins a growing movement as samurai, prepared to fight for the survival of their identity.
51:26For six months, Saigo has been leading a rebel army against the emperor.
51:32But it's a war they're not winning.
51:37They started off as 20,000 men and they're getting picked off, one by one, each battle at a time.
51:44And they know that this is their last, final stand.
51:51Now, Saigo must prepare for the decisive battle.
51:55To protect all that he holds dear in Japan.
51:58Saigo knows perfectly well that the end is coming.
52:03And so they party and they exchange poems and they drink and they dance and they sing and they wait.
52:11And meanwhile the government's troops assemble.
52:13These samurai are the last 500 samurai left.
52:23They're the ones who refuse to convert to the new system.
52:27The ones who refuse to put down their swords.
52:29The ones who kept the tradition alive.
52:32They're on the hillside, they've been shelled and now they've no choice.
52:37They have to fight.
52:43They walk out into a hail of gunfire.
52:58Saigo is felled by a gunshot wound to the hip.
53:07There's no point in surrendering because they are nothing without their identity as samurai.
53:14And so they decide to die.
53:27According to one story, Saigo turns to his very good friend and second, whose name is Beku Shinsuke.
53:34And says, Shin, my good friend, here is as good a place as any, let's do it.
53:43Beku cuts off his head.
53:44The world of the samurai, its culture, tradition and values, dies with him.
53:46The world of the samurai, its culture, tradition and values, dies with him.
53:47The world of the samurai, its culture, tradition and values, dies with him.
53:48The world of the samurai, its culture, tradition and values, dies with him.
53:52Beppu cuts off his head.
54:06The world of the samurai, its culture, tradition and values, dies with him.
54:18The fall of the samurai comes as the world is being transformed by the forces of globalisation
54:25and western expansion, turning Japan's policy of strong border control, effective for generations,
54:39into a weakness.
54:43Throughout human history, if you're buffered away from other ideas and other cultures,
54:50you're more likely to become vulnerable.
54:58This is a culture that is allowed to sort of fold in on itself to intensify its own traditions.
55:10It's fantastically dangerous for any civilisation that values its own society to fall behind
55:18technologically.
55:19We have to work and live with others.
55:22And if we try to shut ourselves away, as the Japanese did for a long period, as other societies
55:27have done, then I think we are doomed.
55:51Climate catastrophe, war, disease, social breakdown, each one destructive on its own.
56:09But when the great forces of history come together, they can create a perfect storm.
56:16One that will come for every civilization in the end.
56:25What remains is this.
56:29The human traces of lost worlds.
56:33And the soul of history's great civilizations.
56:42Precious treasures passed down the generations, brimming with ingenuity, creativity, and beauty.
56:53Within them lie clues to the fate and folly of the greatest empires of the past.
57:09And warnings about the perils of our own time.
57:14The story that is being told to us through those artifacts gives us a much more rounded history.
57:33And there is a lot that history teaches us about what we are doing in the present.
57:40But as our own world order feels increasingly precarious, will we heed the lessons?
57:51History is in many ways a story of societal evolution.
57:59And change is necessary for any society to survive.
58:03The question is, how do you do so in such a way that keeps a society stable?
58:09What can these ancient civilizations tell us about our own societies and our own vulnerabilities?
58:35And what can we do to prevent a similar collapse?
59:05It's that while we are living in this world that we are doing in this world.
59:13In relation to clear pain leads to life.
59:14This is an asking측 group Зんな family crisis.
59:16The way we're doing so in such a way that can be re- Columbus,
59:20and this is a story of what하다 tell you about
59:23and far the ultimate weapon is because of a somehow it seems like you have chidged in pride
59:26and never been around the middle of the land.
59:27The problem that needs cities and women if there have been,
59:29ance-free now,ourITE state of ast olduğunu now is to reflect it-
59:32Specifically we unreliven houses with you in various affairs and other realms,
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