Meiji era 明治時代
The reign of Emperor Meiji, 1868–1912, when Japan ended shogunate rule, modernized its state and law, abolished judicial torture and saw the birth of the painter Itō Seiu.
The Meiji era covers the reign of Emperor Meiji, from 1868 until his death on July 30, 1912; the name was chosen to mean “enlightened rule.” English Wikipedia and the Japanese encyclopedias on Kotobank describe a period of rapid change: the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, the move of the capital to Tokyo, prefectures in place of feudal domains, a constitution in 1890 and the end of the samurai as a class.
Two Meiji facts recur in rope history. Japanese Wikipedia records that torture as a legal means of obtaining confessions, a fixture of Edo justice, was formally abolished by a government proclamation in 1879. And Itō Seiu, later central to seme-e, was born in Asakusa, Tokyo, in 1882. More in Meiji and Taishō: Itō Seiu and the art of seme-e.