Katsura Imperial Villa able to create new rooms within the architecture. For instance by moving one fusuma wall, one could transform two rooms into one large room and a small storage closet. In the Katsura Imperial Villa, the fusuma allows the rooms to change and open up to the natural world with exterior decks becoming extensions of the interior and framing views of the landscape. An example of this type of transformation is the moon viewing platform connected to the Old Shoin. Besides these characteristics, there are many traditional Japanese ideas that are used in the Katsura Imperial Villa, like the decorative alcove
Imperial Twilight system of bureaucracy that dominated the Qing dynasty during the lead-up to the Opium Wars. Platt concluded in "Imperial Twilight" that the Chinese, though knowledgeable and well-organized, were incapable of understanding the threat that Westernized British Empire's economic system and military posed to Imperial China; he also dedicated later chapters of the book to examining how the defeat of the Qing dynasty's forces in the First Opium War set the empire on the path to dissolution at the start of the 20th century. Several reviews of "Imperial Twilight" noted that the book's release in early 2018 was relevant given the