The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan

Challenging the popular view of the Meiji Restoration as a from above, this book argues that its main cause was neither the growing threat of the West nor traditional loyalty to Emperor and nation, but rather lay in class conflict and long-term institutional change. The author sees the Restoration as a revolution against feudal privilege carried out from below by a service intelligentsia of minor administrators, priests, scholars, and village officials. The book focuses on the politically most effective body of activists, those in the domain of Choshu, and on their most important leaders of the 1850s and 1860s: Yoshida Shoin, Kusaka Genzui, and Takasugi Shinsaku. It examines their social and educational background, explores their motives for acting, and follows them through their intellectual and political struggles. The final chapter explains various heretofore puzzling aspects of the Meiji period (1868-1912) in terms of its revolutionary origins, and concludes by showing that the Restoration, far from being uniquely Japanese, had many of the characteristics we associate with the great revolutions of England, France, and Russia

Ancient history · Political science · History · Japanese History and Culture

• Portents and Politics

  Laura Nenzi•Journal of Japanese Studies•2012

  Añadir item

• The foreign threat and the opening of the ports

  Open Access•W G Beasley•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• The Meiji Restoration

  Open Access•Marius B Jansen•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• Meiji political institutions

  Open Access•W G Beasley•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• Japan in the early nineteenth century

  Open Access•Marius B Jansen•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• Economic change in the nineteenth century

  Open Access•Ε S Crawcour, E Sydney Crawcour•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• Japan's turn to the west

  Open Access•Hirakawa Sukehiro, Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• The Tempō crisis

  Open Access•Harold Bolitho•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• Opposition movements in early Meiji, 1868–1885

  Open Access•Stephen Vlastos•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• Late Tokugawa culture and thought

  Open Access•Harry Harootunian, H D Harootunian•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• The Cambridge History of Japan

  Open Access•Denis Twitchett, John Whitney Hall et al.•The Cambridge History of Japan,…•1989

  Añadir item

• Samurai Status, Class, and Bureaucracy

  Open Access•Douglas Howland, Douglas R Howland•The Journal of Asian Studies•2001

  Añadir item

• Sociability, Emotions, and Encounters with the Uncommon Other

  Open Access•Felix Rösch•International Political Sociology•2025

  Añadir item

• Westernizations' from Peter I to Meiji

  Open Access•Igor Fedyukin•Theory and Society•2018

  Añadir item

• The political process of the revolutionary samurai

  Open Access•Mark Cohen•Theory and Society•2014

  Añadir item

• Cultural Orthodoxy, Risk, and Innovation

  Jack A Goldstone, Jack Α Goldstone•Sociological Theory•1987

  Añadir item

• The Continuity of Violence in the Stages of the Shi-Shi Movement of Nineteenth-Century Japan

  Open Access•Yuichi Tamura•Social Thought and Research•1997

  Añadir item

• The Meiji Restoration Seen from English-speaking Countries

  Anne Walthall•Japanese Studies•2018

  Añadir item