The Political History of Modern Japan: Foreign Relations and Domestic Politics
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Key individuals -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Notes on Japanese names and dates -- Preface to the English edition -- Preface -- About the author -- About the translators -- 1 The political characteristics of the Tokugawa political system -- Comparisons of the West and the Tokugawa Japan -- Sixteenth-century Japan and the West -- Western pluralism -- The centralism of the Tokugawa political system -- The issue of legitimacy -- Easy collapse, easy unification -- Legacies of the Tokugawa Japan -- The peace dividend -- The samurai ethos -- 2 Responding to the West -- Open the country or keep it closed? -- Japanese perception of the outside world -- Expectations placed on the shogunal leadership -- The issue of imperial sanction for the treaty and the shogunal succession -- The unrest of the Bakumatsu -- Outbreak of the "Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian" movement -- The search for and collapse of a shogunate-domain alliance framework -- The collapse of the shogunate -- The conditions necessary for a "low-cost" revolution -- 3 Building the Meiji state -- Establishing a centralized government -- Securing wider support -- Concentrating power -- Establishing the foundations of power: military affairs -- Establishing the foundations of power: finances -- Creating "citizens" -- Creating a national foundation: introducing Western civilization -- Mobilizing human energy -- 4 Rise of opposition -- Establishing foreign relations and the samurai revolt -- The international order and modernity -- Seikanron -- Rise of the antigovernment groups -- Appeasement and its limits -- The Satsuma Rebellion -- The freedom and people's rights movement -- Development of the people's freedom and rights movement -- The 1881 Political Crisis -- The peak and decline of the people's rights movement