The Japanese are a diligent people, constantly working to ensure institutional success. The Japanese have an innate ability to copy foreigners. In their effort to build a strong country, the Japanese sought knowledge from abroad; and perfected these learnings in order to effect rapid national development. In their quest for progress, the Japanese have cherished the trait of national self-reliance. Until the Jeiji Restoration, Japan had pursued a national policy of seclusion that forbade almost all contact with the outside world. The nineteenth century was one of exploration and imperialism for most of the world. The Japanese would not be left alone, merely because they wanted to pursue a national policy of autarchy. European powers began establishing commercial relations with Japan. In 1953, a commodore in the US Navy visited Japan with the aim of opening trade contacts. After years of negotiations, treaties were signed authorizing an opening of a few ports to foreign trade. Simultaneously, Japan embarked on a policy of expansion in China and Korea due to its need for fertile soil and natural resources. This policy led to war with China in and with Russia.

Japanese scholars of economics present nine contributions addressing the development of economic thought and modernization in Japan, primarily over the last 150 years. The contributions begin with discussion of several currents of economic thought during the Tokugawa period, which represented the intellectual prerequisites of modern economic growth in Japan. Developments in the Meiji era, the interwar period, and economic thought after 1945 are then explored, followed by Marxian and non-Marxian approaches to economic development and the political economy, and an essay on the considerable influence of Adam Smith on Japanese economics during and after WWII. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Examines the phases and patterns of the two nations' rapid transitions from rural and agrarian to urban and industrial societies, comparing international factors, political structures, economic growth, social factors, and educational patterns.

Tracing and evaluating the development in the history of Japanese culture and society that permits Japan's rapid and continuing modernization, Professor Yoda provides a new and original approach to the modernization of Japan. He starts from the assumption that Japan was better equipped for modernization because pre-modern Japan had already started to abandon Confucian influences. In his account of modernization during the Meiji-period he focuses on general patterns inherent in Japanese culture and society enabling Japan to integrate foreign elements without having to follow foreign models slavishly. "Patterns in culture", such as the Japanese preference for juxtaposing the new and the ancient, are contrasted with China's preference for discarding past institutions in revolutionary processes. The transferability of paradigms such as "absolutism" is accepted with some modifications. In the major descriptive part of the work, the history of economic, political, institutional modernization is presented on the basis of quotations from original Japanese (and Chinese) sources, arranged within the methodological framework of universal historical concepts, indigenous cultural patterns and specific conditions in both countries. The book is composed of two articles previously published in Japanese and Chinese, two new chapters written especially for the volume, and background information provided by Professor Radtke.

Magisterial in vision, sweeping in scope, this monumental work presents a seamless account of Japanese society during the modern era, from 1600 to the present. A distillation of more than fifty years’ engagement with Japan and its history, it is the crowning work of our leading interpreter of the modern Japanese experience. Since 1600 Japan has undergone three periods of wrenching social and institutional change, following the imposition of hegemonic order on feudal society by the Tokugawa shogun; the opening of Japan’s ports by Commodore Perry; and defeat in World War II. The Making of Modern Japan charts these changes: the social engineering begun with the founding of the shogunate in 1600, the emergence of village and castle towns with consumer populations, and the diffusion of samurai values in the culture. Marius Jansen covers the making of the modern state, the adaptation of Western models, growing international trade, the broadening opportunity in Japanese society with industrialization, and the postwar occupation reforms imposed by General MacArthur. Throughout, the book gives voice to the individuals and views that have shaped the actions and beliefs of the Japanese, with writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as political leaders given their due. The story this book tells, though marked by profound changes, is also one of remarkable consistency, in which continuities outweigh upheavals in the development of society, and successive waves of outside influence have only served to strengthen a sense of what is unique and native to Japanese experience. The Making of Modern Japan takes us to the core of this experience as it illuminates one of the contemporary world’s most compelling transformations.

Essays on the Iwakura Embassy, the realistic painter Takahashi Yuichi, the educational system, and music, show how the Japanese went about borrowing from the West in the first decades after the Restoration: the formulation of strategies for modernizing and the adaptation of Western models to Meiji culture. In the second half of the volume, the darker side, the pathology of modernization, is seen. The adjustment of the individual and the effects of progressive modernization on culture in an increasingly complex, twentieth-century society are recurring themes. They are illustrated with particular intensity in the experience of such writers as Natsume Soseki and Kobayashi Hideo, in the thought of Nishida Kitaro, and in the millenarian aspects of the new religions. Originally published in 1971. 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.