This book focuses on the trans-Meiji Restoration story of the ideological transformation that made modern capitalism possible in Japan. To illustrate this transformation, the book looks at four key architects of Meiji Japan's capitalist institutions: Okubo Toshimichi, Godai Tomoatsu, Matsukata Masayoshi and Maeda Masana.

This is an easy-to-read book that explains how and why Japan industrialized rapidly. It traces historical development from the feudal Edo period to high income and technology in the current period. Catch-up industrialization is analyzed from a broad perspective including social, economic and political aspects. Historical data, research and contesting arguments are amply supplied. Japan’s unique experience is contrasted with the practices of today’s developing countries. Negative aspects such as social ills, policy failures, military movements and war years are also covered. Nineteenth-century Japan already had a happy combination of strong entrepreneurship and relatively wise government, which was the result of Japan’s long evolutionary history. Measured contacts with high civilizations of China, India and the West allowed cumulative growth without being destroyed by them. Imported ideas and technology were absorbed with adjustments to fit the local context. The book grew out of a graduate course for government officials from developing countries. It offers a comprehensive look and new insights at Japan’s industrial path that are often missing in standard historical chronicles. Written in an accessible and lively form, the book engages scholars as well as novices with no prior knowledge of Japan.

This volume of essays by Japanese and Western scholars sheds light on the process of modernization in nineteenth-century Japan, focusing on two significant aspects of Japan's .transition to a modern society: the decision to live for a time with the necessary evil of relying on the skill and advice of foreign employees (oyatio gaikokujin) and the decision to dispatch Japanese students overseas (Pyugakusei). The. essays make clear that the success of both these programs went beyond aiding Japan's modernization goals; their indirect effects often extended much further than planned, influencing even today the fields of education, science, and history and affecting other countries' knowledge about Japan

In the sweltering summer of 1894 Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu knelt before the Japanese emperor Meiji to report that Japan's "long nightmare" was over at last. After forty years of humiliation, Japan was ridding itself of the hateful "Unequal Treaties." These treaties had been imposed upon a politically divided and militarily weakened nation by powerful mercantilist Western nations in mid-century. The treaties had hindered Japan's economic development because of discriminatory tariff restrictions, they had poisoned Japan's foreign relations, and they had truncated its legal sovereignty by virtue of extraterritoriality. The final six months of negotiations are carefully examined, employing Mutsu's extensive personal and official correspondence as well as telegrams and secret British and Japanese documents.

This is a concise, reliable guide to the people, places, events, and ideas of significance from the Meiji Restoration to the present.