Japan's Emergence as a Modern State - 60th anniv. ed.

Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period

By Herbert E. Norman
Edited by Lawrence T. Woods
Categories: Regional & Cultural Studies, Asian Studies, Political Science, International Political Science
Publisher: UBC Press
Paperback : 9780774808231, 336 pages, September 2000
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780774841870, 336 pages, November 2011
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774852135, 336 pages, October 2007

Table of contents

Forewords / R. Gordon Robertson,  Len Edwards, and William
L. Holland

Editor's Preface

Introduction: The Contemporary Relevance of Herbert Norman's
Emergence / Lawrence T. Woods

Japan's Emergence as a Modern State

Foreword

Author's preface

I. Introduction

II. The background of the Meiji restoration

The decay of feudalism

The forcing of the closed door

III. The restoration

Historical background of the feudal-merchant coalition

The clan monopoly system and its effects on feudal-merchant
relations

Introduction of capitalism into the clans

The feudal-merchant alliance and the Meiji restoration

Origin of the modern bureaucrat in the movement for clan reform

The agrarian movement in the early Meiji period (1868-77)

The lower samurai as leaders of the Meiji restoration

The split over a Korean expedition Continued opposition to the
government ends in civil war

Anti-feudal policy of the Meiji government: Its attitudes toward the
feudal daimyo and landlord class

Conclusion: Factors which conditioned the establishment of a modern
state in Japan

IV. Early industrialization

Production and circulation of commodities

Division of labour

Accumulation of capital

European and Japanese mercantilism compared

Predominance of banking capital in Japan

Role of foreign capital in early Japanese industrialization

The history and influence of strategic industries

Starting point of Japanese industrialization conditioned by military
necessity

Change in industrial policy and the law for the transfer of
government factories

The key industries and the bureaucracy

V. The agrarian settlement and its social
consequences

The trend toward private ownership in land

Land tax revision of 1873

Dispossession of the peasantry

Comparison of peasant dispossession and its effects in Japan and
England

Minute-scale farming in Japan: Its cause and effects

Social character of the Japanese tenant farmer

The question of a stagnant surplus population and the creation of
the labor market

Creation of a home market and its limitations

VI. Parties and politics Agrarian movement of the second
period, 1877-83, and rise of the Liberal Party (Jiyuto)

Outline of early political societies and parties

The government policy toward political parties

New shift of agrarian revolt following dissolution of jiyuto in
1884

Strengthening of the state: The constitution of 1889

Political parties and the Diet Foreign policy and international
relations

How the struggle for national independence inevitably led to
expansion

The position of a Liberal opposition and the question of
"military versus civil" in the Japanese government

Conclusion

Selected bibliography on Meiji Japan

Glossary

1. The Importance of Rereading E.H. Norman / Herbert P.
Bix

2. On Norman's Emergence / Roger Bowen

3. The Historian in His Times: E.H. Norman and Japan / John W.
Dower

4. E.H. Norman's Emergence and the IPR / Paul F.
Hooper

5. Emergence in Context / John F. Howes

6. The State of Japanese Political Studies: Lessons from E.H. Norman
/ Patricia Maclachlan

7. Emergence and After / Nagao Ryuichi

8. Emergence as History / George M. Oshiro

9. E.H. Norman and Japan's Emergence as a Neo-Modern State /
M. William Steele

10. An Economic Aspect of the Meiji Restoration / Tsuru
Shigeto

Contributors

Index

Description

Originally published in 1940 by the Institute of Pacific Relations
(IPR), this classic work by a leading 20th-century Japanologist has an
enduring value. Japan's Emergence as a Modern State
examines the problems and accomplishments of the Meiji period
(1868-1912). This edition includes forewords by: R. Gordon Robertson, a
former member of the Canadian Department of External Affairs; Len
Edwards, the present Canadian ambassador to Japan; and William L.
Holland, former secretary-general of the IPR; as well as a preface and
introduction by Lawrence Woods. Also included are 10 short essays by
leading Canadian, Japanese, and American scholars of Japanese politics,
history, and economics,