Toward the Meiji Revolution

Toward the Meiji Revolution PDF Author: Tadashi Karube
Publisher:
ISBN: 9784866580593
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
"In 2018 Japan marked the 150th anniversary of the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the establishment of a new government under Emperor Meiji. This was not simply a transfer of political authority but instead signaled revolutionary transformation in Japan, including the abolition of the domains and the formation of a modern nation-state in the years that followed. A period of radical social change was ushered in, with the abolition of the class system, the introduction of Western thought and technology, the development of mass media, and the establishment of constitutional government. The impact on Japan of diplomatic, economic, and cultural pressure from the United States and other Western powers from 1853 onward was previously thought to be the immediate catalyst of this 'Meiji Revolution.' But Japan's modern transformation was rooted in a much deeper process of social and intellectual development that gradually unfolded throughout the latter half of the Tokugawa period. Surveying a diverse group of thinkers spanning the Tokugawa and early Meiji years -- Ogyū Sorai, Yamagata Bantō, Motoori Norinaga, Rai San'yō, Fukuzawa Yukichi, Takekoshi Yosaburō, and others -- this ambitious book liberates modern Japanese history from the stereotypical narrative of 'Japanese spirit and Western technique,' offering a detailed examination of the elements in Tokugawa thought and culture that spurred Japan to articulate its own unique conception of civilization during the course of the nineteenth century." --

Toward the Meiji Revolution

Toward the Meiji Revolution PDF Author: Tadashi Karube
Publisher:
ISBN: 9784866580593
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In 2018 Japan marked the 150th anniversary of the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the establishment of a new government under Emperor Meiji. This was not simply a transfer of political authority but instead signaled revolutionary transformation in Japan, including the abolition of the domains and the formation of a modern nation-state in the years that followed. A period of radical social change was ushered in, with the abolition of the class system, the introduction of Western thought and technology, the development of mass media, and the establishment of constitutional government. The impact on Japan of diplomatic, economic, and cultural pressure from the United States and other Western powers from 1853 onward was previously thought to be the immediate catalyst of this 'Meiji Revolution.' But Japan's modern transformation was rooted in a much deeper process of social and intellectual development that gradually unfolded throughout the latter half of the Tokugawa period. Surveying a diverse group of thinkers spanning the Tokugawa and early Meiji years -- Ogyū Sorai, Yamagata Bantō, Motoori Norinaga, Rai San'yō, Fukuzawa Yukichi, Takekoshi Yosaburō, and others -- this ambitious book liberates modern Japanese history from the stereotypical narrative of 'Japanese spirit and Western technique,' offering a detailed examination of the elements in Tokugawa thought and culture that spurred Japan to articulate its own unique conception of civilization during the course of the nineteenth century." --

The Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration PDF Author: W. Beasley
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804779906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
First, there are questions concerning the role and relative importance of internal and external factors in the pattern of events. Did the activities of the Western powers prompt changes in Japan that would not otherwise have taken place? Or did they merely hasten a process that had already begun? Similarly, did Western civilization give a new direction to Japanese development, or do no more than provide the outward forms through which indigenous change could manifest itself? Was it a matrix, or only a shopping list? Second, how far was the evolution of modern Japan in some sense "inevitable"? Were the main features of Meiji society already implicit in the Tempo reforms, only awaiting an appropriate trigger to bring them into being? More narrowly, was the character of Meiji institutions determined by the social composition of the anti-Tokugawa movement, or did it derive from a situation that took shape only after the Bakufu was overthrown? This is to pose the problem of the relationship between day-to-day politics and long-term socioeconomic change. One can argue, paraphrasing Toyama, that the political controversy about foreign affairs provided the means by which basic socioeconomic factors became effective; or one can say, with Sakata, that the relevance of socioeconomic change is that it helped to decide the manner in which the fundamentally political ramifications of the foreign question were worked out. The difference of emphasis is significant. Finally, have recent historians, in their preoccupation with other issues, lost sight of something important in their relative neglect of ideas qua ideas? Ought we perhaps to stop treating loyalty to the Emperor as simply a manifestation of something else? After all, the men whose actions are the object of our study took that loyalty seriously enough, certainly as an instrument of politics, if not as an article of faith.

To Stand with the Nations of the World

To Stand with the Nations of the World PDF Author: Mark Ravina
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190656107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The samurai radicals who overthrew the last shogun in 1868 promised to restore ancient and pure Japanese ways. Foreign observers were terrified that Japan would lapse into violent xenophobia. But the new Meiji government took an opposite course. It copied best practices from around the world, building a powerful and modern Japanese nation with the help of European and American advisors. While revering the Japanese past, the Meiji government boldly embraced the foreign and the new. What explains this paradox? How could Japan's 1868 revolution be both modern and traditional, both xenophobic and cosmopolitan? To Stand with the Nations of the World explains the paradox of the Restoration through the forces of globalization. The Meiji Restoration was part of the global "long nineteenth century" during which ambitious nation states like Japan, Britain, Germany, and the United States challenged the world's great multi-ethnic empires--Ottoman, Qing, Romanov, and Hapsburg. Japan's leaders wanted to celebrate Japanese uniqueness, but they also sought international recognition. Rather than simply mimic world powers like Britain, they sought to make Japan distinctly Japanese in the same way that Britain was distinctly British. Rather than sing "God Save the King," they created a Japanese national anthem with lyrics from ancient poetry, but Western-style music. The Restoration also resonated with Japan's ancient past. In the 600s and 700s, Japan was threatened by the Tang dynasty, a dynasty as powerful as the Roman empire. In order to resist the Tang, Japanese leaders borrowed Tang methods, building a centralized Japanese state on Tang models, and learning continental science and technology. As in the 1800s, Japan co-opted international norms while insisting on Japanese distinctiveness. When confronting globalization in 1800s, Japan looked back to that "ancient globalization" of the 600s and 700s. The ancient past was therefore not remote or distant, but immediate and vital.

The Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration PDF Author: Robert Hellyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108478050
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
This volume examines the Meiji Restoration through a global history lens to re-interpret the formation of a globally-cast, Japanese nation-state.

Japan in Transition

Japan in Transition PDF Author: Marius B. Jansen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140085430X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
In this book social scientists scrutinize the middle decades of the nineteenth century in Japan. That scrutiny is important and overdue, for the period from the 1850s to the 1880s has usually been treated in terms of politics and foreign relations. Yet those decades were also of pivotal importance in Japan's institutional modernization. As the Japanese entered the world order, they experienced a massive introduction of Western-style organizations. Sweeping reforms, without the class violence or the Utopian appeal of revolution, created the foundation for a modern society. The Meiji Restoration introduced a political transformation, but these chapters address the more gradual social transition. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Why Has Japan 'Succeeded'?

Why Has Japan 'Succeeded'? PDF Author: Michio Morishima
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521269032
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
This book, by a distinguished Japanese economist now resident in the West, offers a new interpretation of the current success of the Japanese economy. By placing the rise of Japan in the context of its historical development, Michio Morishima shows how a strongly-held national ethos has interacted with religious, social and technological ideas imported from elsewhere to produce highly distinctive cultural traits. While Professor Morishima traces the roots of modern Japan back as far as the introduction of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism from China in the sixth century, he concentrates his observations on the last 120 years during which Japan has had extensive contacts with the West. He describes the swift rise of Japan to the status of a first-rate power following the Meiji Revolution after 1867, in which Japan broke with a long history of isolationism, and which paved the way for the adoption of Western technology and the creation of a modern Western-style nation state; and a similarly meteoric rise from the devastation of the Second World War to Japan's present position. A range of factors in Japan's economic success are analysed: her characteristic dualistic social structure - corresponding to the divide between large and medium/small enterprises - the relations of government and big business, the poor reception of liberalism and individualism, and the strength of the Japanese nationalism. Throughout, Professor Morishima emphasises the importance of the role played in the creation of Japanese capitalism by ethical doctrines as transformed under Japanese conditions, especially the Japanese Confucian tradition of complete loyalty to the firm and to the state. This account, which makes clear the extent to which the economic rise of Japan is due to factors unique to its historical traditions, will be of interest to a wide general readership as well as to students of Japan and its history.

Meiji 1868

Meiji 1868 PDF Author: Paul Akamatsu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136928278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Among the revolutionary movements which shook the nineteenth-century world, the change of government in Japan in 1868 occupies a special place. A new, dynamic ruling class provoked the overthrow of the old rule of the shogun and in a few years the visible structure of feudal society disappeared. The nature of this transformation has been regarded by western historians as "revolution" and "restoration" – two quite contradictory ideas. But in this book Paul Akamatsu clarifies the picture of the forces at work in this conversion of a backward feudal state into a modern power in a few decades.

Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan

Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan PDF Author: Irwin Scheiner
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Nowhere has there been a discussion of the confusion necessarily generated by the rapidity of the change or of the agony created in the lives of many whose attitudes, expectations, and even success depended on the continuance of now abolished institutions. Historians have ignored the settled conditions of most samurai and instead concentrated on the study of the minority of activist samurai leaders who, with the backing of only a few Han (feudal domains) sought to overthrow the old order and whose success in doing so has made the study of the modernization of Japan the prime concern of historians. The history of the Meiji period may have been an overall political and industrial success story, but for a fuller understanding of the conditions of that success it is also necessary to understand "what it was really like" for the members of the old elite to be estranged from the proponents of revolution and what many members did to assure their own social and psychological position in a world they had not expected. In this book the author attempts to show that the impact of the Meiji Restoration destroyed the meaningfulness of the Confucian doctrine for these declasse samurai. Through Christianity, the samurai attempted to revive their status in society by finding a doctrine that offered a meaningful path to power. But in doing so, they had to accept a new theory of social relations. Ultimately, as the convert's understanding of society became totally informed by the Christian doctrine, they accepted a transcendent authority that brought them into conflict with society about them. Therefore, to understand the development of a Christian opposition in Meiji society we must begin with the conversion experience itself. [intro]

A Concise History of Japan

A Concise History of Japan PDF Author: Brett L. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316239691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
To this day, Japan's modern ascendancy challenges many assumptions about world history, particularly theories regarding the rise of the west and why the modern world looks the way it does. In this engaging new history, Brett L. Walker tackles key themes regarding Japan's relationships with its minorities, state and economic development, and the uses of science and medicine. The book begins by tracing the country's early history through archaeological remains, before proceeding to explore life in the imperial court, the rise of the samurai, civil conflict, encounters with Europe, and the advent of modernity and empire. Integrating the pageantry of a unique nation's history with today's environmental concerns, Walker's vibrant and accessible new narrative then follows Japan's ascension from the ashes of World War II into the thriving nation of today. It is a history for our times, posing important questions regarding how we should situate a nation's history in an age of environmental and climatological uncertainties.

The Japanese Empire

The Japanese Empire PDF Author: S. C. M. Paine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107011957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
An accessible, analytical survey of the rise and fall of Imperial Japan in the context of its grand strategy to transform itself into a great power.