Month: October 2021

The Making of Modern Japan – Continued Thoughts, Ch. 6-10

Ch.6 begins by discussing the development of a mass culture in Japan, while Ch. 10 finishes with the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate.

As I discussed in the previous post, it is important to recognize the progress which was made in the Tokugawa era, and the real nature of mass. Merchants and farmers, while rarely talked in the histories compared to warriors and kings, had their own changes and desires during the Tokugawa era and in its final days. They were interested in the world as it was, and then the world as it was changing when the black ships came.

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The Making of Modern Japan – Opening Thoughts, Chapters 1-5

I know I really should retitle this blog to Japanese Thought, as I primarily focus on Japan. But that is fundamentally where my interest lies even though I do regularly listen to The History of China podcast. Yet there is still so much of Japan which I don’t know, and naturally my background and training means that I have a tendency to default to tendency to history instead of more modern affairs.

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History and Historiography Review: The Mikado’s Empire

I’m always pretty fascinated by histories written in the pre-Modern era, which I generally define as book written before the Second World War. Certain modern individuals would call such works “problematic”, but I find them interesting both as a way to learn things from the actual book as well as a chance to learn about what the writer himself of that era finds to be interesting or not.

The Mikado’s Empire, written by William Elliot Griffis as seen in the above picture, is a perfect example of why I like books of that era. The book was originally written in 1883 by Griffis, who came to Japan from the United States to teach them science in their modernization efforts. There are additional addendums written in 1886, 1890, 1894, as well as a final chapter on the first Sino-Japanese War.

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