Outposts of CivilizationCivilization and progress, Gilded Age Americans believed, were inseparable from Anglo Saxon heritage and Christianity. In rising to become the first Asian and non Christian world power, Meiji Japan (1868 1912) challenged this deeply held conviction, and in so doing threatened racial and cultural hierarchies central to American ideology and foreign policy. To reconcile Japan's stature with American notions of Western supremacy, both nations embarked on