"Soon after overthrowing the Tokugawa government in 1868, the new Meiji leaders devised ambitious plans to build a modern nation-state. Among the earliest and most radical of the Meiji reforms was a plan for a centralized, compulsory educational system modeled after those in Europe and America. Meiji leaders hoped that schools would curb mounting social disorder and mobilize the Japanese people against the threat of Western imperialism. The sweeping tone of this revolutionary plan obscured the fact that the Japanese were already quite literate and had clear ideas about what a school should be. In the century preceding the Meiji restoration, commoners throughout Japan had established 50,000 schools with almost no guidance or support from the government. Consequently, the Ministry of Education’s new code of 1872 met with resistance, as local officials, teachers, and citizens sought compromises and pursued alternative educational visions. Their efforts ultimately led to the growth and consolidation of a new educational system, one with the imprint of local demands and expectations. This book traces the unfolding of this process in Nagano prefecture and explores how local people negotiated the formation of the new order in their own communities. "

In 1990, China, rich in natural resources but short on technology and managerial skills, offers enormous potential for trade and economic cooperation with the EC. Japan, the most successful non-Western modernizer, is making a heavy investment in EC industries. What will be the outcome for Europe and the Far East? And for Europe and the rest of the world? For the world balance of power in the twenty-first century? These are some of the questions which this book seeks to answer. First published in 1990, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

Examines the images, hopes, and fears that were evoked during China’s century-long subservience to external powers.

The complex interweaving of different Western visions of China had a profound impact on artistic exchange between China and the West during the nineteenth century. Beyond Chinoiserie addresses the complexity of this exchange. While the playful Western “vision of Cathay” formed in the previous century continued to thrive, a more realistic vision of China was increasingly formed through travel accounts, paintings, watercolors, prints, book illustrations, and photographs. Simultaneously, the new discipline of sinology led to a deepening of the understanding of Chinese cultural history. Leading and emerging scholars in the fields of art history, literary studies and material culture, have authored the ten essays in this book, which deal with artistic relations between China and the West at a time when Western powers’ attempts to extend a sphere of influence in China led to increasingly hostile political interactions.

Modern Asian economic history has often been written in terms of Western impact and Asia's response to it. This volume argues that the growth of intra-regional trade, migration, and capital and money flows was a crucial factor that determined the course of East Asian economic development. Twelve chapters are organized around three main themes. First, economic interactions between Japan and China were important in shaping the pattern of regional industrialization. Neither Japan nor China imported technology and organizations, and attempted to "catch up" with the West alone. Japan's industrialization took place, taking advantage of the Chinese merchant networks in Asia, while the Chinese competition was a critical factor in the Japanese technological and organizational "upgrading" in the interwar period. Second, the pattern of China's integration into the international economy was shaped by the growth of intra-Asian trade, migration, and capital flows and remittances. While the Western impact was largely confined to the littoral region of China, intra-Asian trade was more directly connected with China's internal market. Both the fall of the imperial monetary system and the rise of economic nationalism in the early twentieth century reflected increasing contacts with the Asian international economy. Third, a study of intra-Asian trade and migration helps us understand the nature of colonialism and the international climate of imperialism. In spite of the adverse political environment, East Asian merchant and migration networks exploited economic opportunities, taking advantage of colonial institutional arrangements and even political conflicts. They made a contribution to national and regional economic development in the politically more favourable environment after the Second World War, by providing the valuable expertise and entrepreneurship they had accumulated prewar. The character of the international order of Asia, governed by Western powers, especially Britain, but shared also by Japan for most of the period, was "imperialism of free trade", although it eventually collapsed by the late 1930s.