Creating openings to the West was one main target of the Meiji period from 1868 on. So, it didn’t take long before the first industrial paper manufactures started producing mass paper. Japan Oji Paper Company (in Tokyo), constructed in 1873 by Eiichi Shusawa, competed with the western factories in Yokohama.
Suddenly, the washi, the traditional Japanese paper, didn’t have any reason to persist in a so-called modern society.