Starter Activities
You do not need an in-depth knowledge of Japanese history for Paper One but it is both useful and interesting to understand something of its past before the Meiji Restoration.
A bit of fun to begin with…
Describe these images,
And these,
- According to Gemini:
Shogun
A recent tv series from FX.
- What do you learn from this source about Japanese culture?
- What are the values of this source to the historian?
- What are the limitations of this source?
4. What do you learn from this source about Japanese culture?
In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, the world was divided into two.
To give a little context to the clip above, here is what the English character is describing.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Tordesillas
Perspectives of the Meiji Restoration
For the bulk of the analysis and history on this unit, I have used the following two perspectives. They are two of the leading historians on the topic.
Edwin O. Reischauer’s Japan: A Story of a Nation
For the time period up to 1900, I have made notes on the book above.
Reischauer’s Chapter Summaries
His key thesis: With high literacy rates (outperforming many contemporary European nations), a growing and successful merchant class, and an effective administrative samurai (who had transitioned from being warriors), Japan had several pillars in place for an amazing revolution.
A critique of Edwin Reischauer: Perhaps he argued that Reischauer had sanitized Japanese history to suit an American audience. The Cold War was in full swing and he may have been aiming to persuade Americans that Japan was a country that was worth the effort, it had been moving towards a liberal democracy and may have done so if not for the Great Depression. However, he ignores the extreme militarism of the 1930s and the human suffering it caused…Japan was not moving towards a liberal democracy, it had authoritarian roots after all.
Herbert Norman’s Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State
For a different point of view on the history, I did the same for this book too.
Norman’s Chapter Summaries – to be completed.
His key thesis: Norman argues that the Restoration took place because lower-class samurai joined forces (largely from areas of the country such as Satsuma and Choshu) with some of the wealthy merchants of the country to remove the Tokugawa Shogunate (or Bakufu).
A critique of Herbert Norman: One of Norman’s arguments is that the the Tokugawa Shogunate, an elite group of samurai, was replaced by another group of samurai from different parts of the country.
If you look strictly at the personnel change in 1868, it looks like a simple elite replacement. But history is rarely just about who is wearing the hat; it is about what they do once they put it on. He ignores the total liquidation of the Japanese feudal structure and the abolition of the samurai class. The Meiji Restoration was a top-down revolution, yes, but it was a revolution nonetheless.