User blog comment:KingdomOfBavaria/My letter of introduction to the wiki community./@comment-1279322-20121023214655/@comment-3028058-20121023223547

Actually Parax, you're wrong: Japan was essentially a feudalistic medieval realm until the Meiji Restoration when Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last Shogun, was defeated in the Boshin War, and the Emperor replaced the Shogun was de facto leader. It was at this point that Japan consolidated into a single state. This was in 1867.