This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the economics of Meiji Japan, and a brief foray into social attitudes towards Westernization. How did Japan transform itself from being largely cut off from the world economy to central to it within half a century, and what impact did all this change have on the national self-image and culture?
Sources
Crawcour, E. Sydney, “Economic change in the nineteenth century”, Sukehiro Hirakawa, “Japan’s Turn to the West,” and Gilbert Rozman, “Social Change”, in The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol V: The Nineteenth Century
Pyle, Kenneth. The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 1885-1895
Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan
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