Emperor Meiji, also called Meiji the Great or Meiji the Good, was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. Reigning from 3 February 1867 until his death on 30 July 1912, and the first monarch of the Empire of Japan, he presided over the Meiji era, and instigated the Meiji Restoration, a series of rapid changes that witnessed Japan's transformation from an isolationist, feudal state to an industrialized world power.
At the time of Emperor Meiji's birth in 1852, Japan was a feudal, pre-industrial country dominated by the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate and the daimyō subject to it, who ruled over the country's 270 decentralized domains. By the time of his death in 1912, Japan had undergone an extensive political, economic and social revolution, and emerged as one of the great powers on the world stage. The New York Times summarized this transformation at the emperor's funeral in 1912 with the words: "the contrast between that which preceded the funeral car and that which followed it was striking indeed. Before it went old Japan; after it came new Japan."
Since the modern era, when an emperor of Japan dies he is given a posthumous name.