Emperor Meiji
1852 – 1912 · 60 years · Tokyo · Asia
Reign: 1868 – 1912 (Japan: shoguns & emperors)
His reign (1867–1912) saw the Meiji Restoration and Japan's rapid modernization.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Uchida Kuichi · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 33 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 15 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 22 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 1 year younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 27 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 34 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 24 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 18 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 18 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 12 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 26 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 31 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 29 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 10 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 9 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 46 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 8 years older
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 22 years older
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 8 years older
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 39 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 40 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 12 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 1 year older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 24 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 17 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 41 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 15 years older
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 9 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 14 years younger
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 27 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 5 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 4 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 37 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 43 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 5 years older
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 17 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 19 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 46 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 14 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 5 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 9 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 37 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 1, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 7, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 9, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 9, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 11, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 12, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 15, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 16, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 17, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 17, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 18, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 19, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 19, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 22, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 24, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 24, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 24, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 26, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 27, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 27, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 31, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 32, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 33, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 33, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 33, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 34, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 34, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 36, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 37, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 37, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 39, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 41, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 41, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 53, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 56, Middle East