"This book is a detailed examination of the intellectual and cultural history that gave birth to Japan's Meiji Constitution at the end of the nineteenth century. In this book, the author employs a cross-cultural perspective to analyze how modern Western ideas of constitutional government were assimilated and adapted by the newly established Meiji state. Japan's leaders had witnessed the piecemeal devouring of Qing-dynasty China by the Western powers, and were determined that Japan should not suffer the same fate. they staked the future of their nation on a concerted effort to understand the political and legal structures that appeared to be the source of the strength and dynamism of Western civilization. The author relates how key leaders of Meiji Japan experienced the west through fact-finding missions and extended overseas travel and research and show how their international experience shaped the policies and character of the nation that they helped build. He looks beyond the constitution as a legal document and demonstrates how its architects used it and the supplementary laws and institutions supporting it to catalyze the emergence of a modern nation-state." -- BOOK JACKET.

That Imperial Japan closely resembled authoritarian Germany was no simple coincidence. This book explores the effect of German thought on nineteenth century Japan, focusing on Hermann Roesler—the most influential collaborator. The Meiji leadership was committed to an authoritarian form of government. At the same time it was also clearly committed to a constitutional system. The mid and late 1880's saw the efforts of Japan's most capable leaders directed to the formation and rationalization of this ambivalent system. Because German socio–political ideas played an important role in this process, it is necessary to examine closely the extent of German influences on the Japanese leaders. All the standard Western works on Meiji Japan refer in passing to the influence of German, and in particular of Prussian, political and legal theories. Of the many German scholars who worked in Japan during the mid–Meiji period who were responsible for weighty changes, Hermann Roesler is considered one of the most influential in regard to political thought. Employed by the Japanese government as adviser on legal affairs from 0878, he was until 1893 one of the most trusted and esteemed collaborators of Ito Hirobumi.

The Japanese constitution as revised by General MacArthur in 1946, while generally regarded to be an outstanding basis for a liberal democracy, is at the same time widely considered to be—in its Japanese form—an document which is alien and incompatible with Japanese culture. Using both linguistics and historical data, Kyoto Inoue argues that despite the inclusion of alien concepts and ideas, this constitution is nonetheless fundamentally a Japanese document that can stand on its own. "This is an important book. . . . This is the most significant work on postwar Japanese constitutional history to appear in the West. It is highly instructive about the century-long process of cultural conflict in the evolution of government and society in modern Japan."—Thomas W. Burkman, Monumenta Nipponica