(no subject)
George M. Wilson, Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
I really enjoyed Wilson's article on millenarian threads in the Meiji ishin in Conflict in Modern Japanese History, so it wasn't a huge . shock I enjoyed this (very slim) volume that picks up on a number of bits of that essay (which appears again here).
Pretty theoretical, arguing against a purely linear view of history ('and then this happened, then this, then this, then this'), even though he does note that linearity is a feature of both Chinese & Japanese thinking on time. He also seeks to draw in several viewpoints in examining the lead up to the restoration: commoners (especially in regards to the ee ja nai ka movement), the bakafu, foreigners, and the disaffected samurai who are the usual focus of such studies.
What we get is a picture of disorder, dissatisfaction with the status quo from a lot of corners, a desire to 'redeem the realm' as well as a nationalistic urge to 'rebuff the foreigners.' Redeem the realm here doesn't necessarily mean 'restoring' the emperor to the seat of power, but rescue it from perceived (and sometimes very real) ills facing the bakufu system.
Moderately controlled chaos. The eventual winners were those who managed to install themselves as the real, if not spiritual, seat of power; they promptly imposed order and suppressed the popular threads.
Leaving aside the question of how any one group directly or causally affected the other groups, it is easy to see why so fluid a situation yielded new alignments and let the various groups move away from doing things as they originally intended. By 1865 the foreigners were ready to choose sides among samurai antagonists. The common people embraced religion, or carnival, in an effort to transcend the troubles of the present. The bakufu conceived new policies that flew in the face of traditional arrangements. The loyalist samurai began to act in ways that finally challenged the authorities to stand up and fight.
The stage was set for the Meiji Restoration. (131)
I really enjoyed Wilson's article on millenarian threads in the Meiji ishin in Conflict in Modern Japanese History, so it wasn't a huge . shock I enjoyed this (very slim) volume that picks up on a number of bits of that essay (which appears again here).
Pretty theoretical, arguing against a purely linear view of history ('and then this happened, then this, then this, then this'), even though he does note that linearity is a feature of both Chinese & Japanese thinking on time. He also seeks to draw in several viewpoints in examining the lead up to the restoration: commoners (especially in regards to the ee ja nai ka movement), the bakafu, foreigners, and the disaffected samurai who are the usual focus of such studies.
What we get is a picture of disorder, dissatisfaction with the status quo from a lot of corners, a desire to 'redeem the realm' as well as a nationalistic urge to 'rebuff the foreigners.' Redeem the realm here doesn't necessarily mean 'restoring' the emperor to the seat of power, but rescue it from perceived (and sometimes very real) ills facing the bakufu system.
Moderately controlled chaos. The eventual winners were those who managed to install themselves as the real, if not spiritual, seat of power; they promptly imposed order and suppressed the popular threads.
Leaving aside the question of how any one group directly or causally affected the other groups, it is easy to see why so fluid a situation yielded new alignments and let the various groups move away from doing things as they originally intended. By 1865 the foreigners were ready to choose sides among samurai antagonists. The common people embraced religion, or carnival, in an effort to transcend the troubles of the present. The bakufu conceived new policies that flew in the face of traditional arrangements. The loyalist samurai began to act in ways that finally challenged the authorities to stand up and fight.
The stage was set for the Meiji Restoration. (131)