Japanese Thought In The Meiji Era

This collection of essays by distinguished scholars takes us into a critical and exceptionally interesting period in Japanese history. The fourteen essays explore the evolution of social and political thought and practice during this crucial period, the question of women's rights, the conflict between modernizers and zealots, Japan's political, military, and diplomatic relations with other countries, and other topics.

A comprehensive intellectual history describing the forces that made Japanese thinkers both receptive and hostile to Western ideas and values.

While many historians take the view that Japanese philosophy only started with the Meiji Restoration and the entrance of Western culture into Japan, Hajime Nakamura demonstrates that there has been a long history of philosophy in Japan prior to the Meiji. Beginning in 592 AD, when Japan first became a centralized state and continuing into the early modern era, this work deals with the important problems and salient feature of Japanese philosophical thought at all stages in its development.

Ideology played a momentous role in modern Japanese history. Not only did the elite of imperial Japan (1890-1945) work hard to influence the people to "yield as the grasses before the wind," but historians of modern Japan later identified these efforts as one of the underlying pathologies of World War II. Available for the first time in paperback, this study examines how this ideology evolved. Carol Gluck argues that the process of formulating and communicating new national values was less consistent than is usually supposed. By immersing the reader in the talk and thought of the late Meiji period, Professor Gluck recreates the diversity of ideological discourse experienced by Japanese of the time. The result is a new interpretation of the views of politics and the nation in imperial Japan.

The description for this book, The Culture of the Meiji Period, will be forthcoming.