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.

Detailed and diverse, Proliferating Talent challenges us to rethink a crucial period in Japanese history. The eight essays translated here broadly cover the eventful half century that witnessed the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rise of the modern Japanese state to the position of an international power. Edited by J.S.A. Elisonas and Richard Rubinger, professors of East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University, Proliferating Talent is full of nuances and carefully textured readings in which local developments are carefully balanced against major national events.

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.

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