The Meiji Restoration and The Long Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-25
Author(s):  
Mark Ravina
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Meiji Restoration

Feudal Revenue in Japan at the Time of the Meiji Restoration

1960 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. G. Beasley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Japanese Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
Precise Information ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Other Hand

Despite the existence of an enormous literature dealing with the Meiji Restoration and its origins, it is still surprisingly difficult to acquire precise information about some aspects of Japanese society in the middle of the nineteenth century. One such difficulty is that of obtaining general quantitative data about the great feudal domains (han) which constituted the major political and economic units of the country. This is not to say that details concerning the domains are impossible to find. Many records are readily available, even in print, and some have been used by scholars to support or illustrate general statements. It is commonly accepted, for example, that agrarian productivity increased greatly in Japan between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and that land dues were extremely high, especially at the end of the period. It is possible to cite domains as examples for each of these generalisations. On the other hand, it is never very clear whether the examples themselves are typical or merely random, how far they approximate to or differ from the norm. Nor has there been much attempt to discover whether the wide differences which existed between one domain and another in these matters followed any identifiable pattern. It is with these problems that the present article will deal.

A Global Epidemic

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-40
Author(s):  
Edoardo Campanella ◽  
Marta Dassù
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Psychological Disorders ◽  
Tipping Point ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Global Epidemic ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
The World ◽  
Japanese Prime Minister ◽  
Vladimir Putin

The world is becoming populated by jingoistic leaders who appeal to past national glory and inhabit a rose-tinted past. Brexit is merely the tipping point of a global phenomenon. Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese people”, whereas Donald Trump promises to “Make America Great Again”. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan harbors neo-Ottoman ambitions, while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s political lodestar is the nineteenth-century Meiji Restoration. In other cases, nostalgic leaders reject their countries’ historical reversals of fortune like Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia. Despite its romantic flavor, nostalgia is actually a malaise – a mix of paranoia and melancholy. Like most psychological disorders, nostalgia is usually accompanied by amnesia. It depicts the past in such an idealized way that some crucial details are lost. Human beings tend to view historical evidence in a myopic manner, ignoring what does not fit their preconceptions. Populist leaders simply leverage these mental processes to recount their own version of history and mobilize their followers. The chapter analyzes how demographic, economic and technological forces are spreading the disease of longing in a structural way.

Rykūkyu's tribute-tax to Satsuma during the Tokugawa period

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitsugu Sakihara
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Tokugawa Period ◽  
Native Resources

In 1609, Satsuma, at the southern tip of Kyūshū, conquered Okinawa (then called the Ryūkyū Kingdom). Throughout the subsequent Tokugawa period, Satsuma was said to have kept the Ryūkyūans in a state of virtual slavery by plundering the profits of the lucrative Sino-Ryūkyūan trade and imposing an excessively heavy tribute-tax on the native products. This exploitation of Ryūkyū's trade and native resources was reported to have been one of the important financial resources for Satsuma; and one that made possible Satsuma's vigorous political and military activities in the middle nineteenth century leading to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In spite of such claims, no study of this topic has been made except those that have been strongly colored by the sympathies of the writer.

Comte, Mill, and the Thought of Nishi Amane in Meiji Japan

1968 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. H. Havens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Abstract Reasoning ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
Modes Of Thought

One aspect of the intellectual upheaval which accompanied the Meiji Restoration of 1868 was the phenomenon of bummei kaika, “civilization and enlightenment.” Although it may be useful to think of the early Meiji years as a Japanese siècle de lumières, it is significant that the country's most progressive scholars derived their main inspiration from such contemporaneous Western social philosophies as positivism and utilitarianism, not the European enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It is natural that the proponents of bummei kaika turned for guidance to John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte rather than Diderot or Rousseau, because their goal was to expose Japan to those urbane modes of thought from abroad which would bring her to the “civilized” stage of development envisaged by European social philosophy. The means to be employed consisted of empiricism, not abstract reasoning: “what we should call the truly enlightened world,” wrote Tsuda Mamichi in 1874, “is when practical studies become popular in our country and each person attains an understanding of truth.” Similarly, Fukuzawa Yukichi took nineteenth century England, not eighteenth century France, as the model for Japan's efforts to achieve “enlightenment.”

scholarly journals Making reform and stability compatible with each other: elite redeployment in Meiji Japan

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Makio Yamada
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Institutional Improvement ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
New Institutions

Abstract Nineteenth-century Japan remains a void in the literature on institutions and growth. Developmental institutions evolved in Japan after the Meiji Restoration despite the absence of political participation. Authoritarian change agents usually face a trade-off between reform and stability: they have coercive power to remove underproductive institutions, but at the risk of inviting instability, as politically influential deprivileged elites may engage in counteraction to recover what they perceive as their entitlement. Many authoritarian regimes, thus, coopt elites by allowing them access to rent, but such buying-off inevitably compromises institutional improvement. How did Meiji Japan overcome this dilemma and liberate major fiscal and administrative spaces for productive players who generate wealth and increase the size of the economic pie for society? This article presents a model that it calls ‘elite redeployment’ to answer this puzzle. In lieu of elite bargains in participatory polities in Europe, the revolutionary authoritarian regime in Japan coercively deprivileged traditional elites and redeployed those with financial or human capital among them in productive institutions. By doing so, the Japanese authoritarian change agents dismantled the incumbent institutions in an irreversible manner and swiftly built new institutions such as modern administrative, educational, financial, and commercial sectors, while maintaining stability.

From Country to Nation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gideon Fujiwara
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Capital ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Far North ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imperial Japan

This book tracks the emergence of the modern Japanese nation in the nineteenth century through the history of some of its local aspirants. It explores how kokugaku (Japan studies) scholars envisioned their place within Japan and the globe, while living in a castle town and domain far north of the political capital. The book follows the story of Hirao Rosen and fellow scholars in the northeastern domain of Tsugaru. On discovering a newly “opened” Japan facing the dominant Western powers and a defeated Qing China, Rosen and other Tsugaru intellectuals embraced kokugaku to secure a place for their local “country” within the broader nation and to reorient their native Tsugaru within the spiritual landscape of an Imperial Japan protected by the gods. Although Rosen and his fellows celebrated the rise of Imperial Japan, their resistance to the Western influence and modernity embraced by the Meiji state ultimately resulted in their own disorientation and estrangement. By analyzing their writings alongside their artwork, the book reveals how this socially diverse group of scholars experienced the Meiji Restoration from the peripheries. Using compelling firsthand accounts, the book tells the story of the rise of modern Japan, from the perspective of local intellectuals who envisioned their local “country” within a nation that emerged as an empire of the modern world.

A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Morton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Family History ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
The Right

Mitford (later to become the first Lord Redesdale) was an urbane aristocrat, had charm, looks and excellent manners. He was always in the right place at the right time, almost drowned, could have burned to death, was shot at, and was nearly cut down by samurai swords. But 'Bertie', as he was known, was never fazed by events. He stood face-to-face with the new, teenage Emperor when almost everybody else, including the Shogun, could only talk to him behind a screen. He became friendly with the last Shogun and witnessed a hara-kiri, his atmospheric account of which is now a classic. An accomplished linguist and writer, Mitford was the outstanding chronicler of the Meiji Restoration, complementing the writings of his contemporary Ernest Satow. This book will be of particular interest to students and readers of Japanese history, as well as readers of nineteenth-century biography in general. It will also have special appeal to those who are familiar with the Mitford family history.

Scholars and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Case of Nishi Amane

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. H. Havens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Restoration Movement ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
European Civilization

One of the interesting questions concerning the Meiji Restoration of 1868 is the degree to which the Western-oriented intellectuals of Japan compromised their scholarly curiosity about European civilization by serving the pre-Restoration Tokugawa government and its successor, the Meiji oligarchy. In what ways might their duties as civil servants colour their objectivity in studying the newly found academic disciplines of the West? What tensions did late Tokugawa and early Meiji scholar-bureaucrats perceive between their investigations of European knowledge and their service in a partisan regime? An examination of the career of Nishi Amane (1829–1897), who was an important scholar of Western philosophy as well as a bureaucrat in both the Tokugawa and Meiji governments, casts some light on the problem of the intellectual as public servant in early modern Japan. This study will concentrate on three important events in Nishi's life: his decision to flee his feudal clan in order to study the West in 1854; his refusal to join the Restoration movement in 1868; and his defence of the idea that scholars could serve the new state without compromising their objectivity in 1874.

Jiyushugi: Japanese Liberalism

1966 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-492
Author(s):  
Fang-quei Quo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Selfish Behavior ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
The Enlightenment

The beginnings of Japanese liberalism date from the middle of the nineteenth century and appear as a product of the enlightenment movement during the Meiji Restoration. But the term Jiyushugi, today understood as equivalent to liberalism in English, has quite a different meaning in traditional Japanese usage. Jiyu consists of two Chinese characters Ji and yu meaning “to follow oneself” or “to use self as the only source of judgment for one's behavior”; shugi is translated as “principle” or “doctrine”. Thus, the word has traditionally been used, with very rare exceptions, to mean egoistic and selfish behavior that deviates from social norms and is specifically heedless of others.

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