• The European-Asian land telegraph line was opened to Vladivostok on January 1, 1872, and was connected to the Vladivostok-Nagasaki and Nagasaki-Shanghai cables described below, as well as to the previously laid Shanghai-Hong Kong cable.

  • In 1871, Eduard Suenson, who later served as president for a long time, was put in charge of laying submarine cables between Nagasaki and Shanghai, and then between Nagasaki and Vladivostok, thus starting Japan’s international telegraph business. Furthermore, communication between Japan and Europe began via the Europe-Asia land telegraph line that opened the following year.

  • The Seinan Senso (西南戦争) or Seinan no Yaku (西南の役) was an armed rebellion by the samurai clans in present-day Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Oita, and Kagoshima prefectures in 1877, with Takamori Saigo as their leader.

So, it was six years before Satsuma Rebellion (1877) that Japan connected to the rest of the world by submarine cable.


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