The last fifteen years of the Edo Era is known as the Bakumatsu.  All the pressures on Japan came together ending the Era and the Tokugawa Shogunate.Japan was warned the foreign nations were coming.  To her credit she began to modernize and westernize long before the Shogunate was toppled in the 1860s.  The Boshin War (Japanese Civil War) ended the Shogunate and allowed the young 'Meiji' leaders to take over the rule of Japan.  Meiji is the name of the year the new government began in Japan.  Along with continuing the modernization of the nation, the young leaders did away with the Shogun and the Samurais, and elevated the status of the Emperor. They also tossed the ancient feudal system and the class structure hierarchy.Japan would build a new government and nation and learned to confront the foreign nations on equal terms.