Throughout most of Japanese history, monarchies and feudal military dictatorships ruled the country. However, after a coup d’etat in January 1868 that stripped Tokugawa Yoshinobu of authority, Japan entered a tumultuous and revolutionary period known as the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912). Following hundreds of years under the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the country was forced to construct a new government that appealed to the people. Moreover, as this period marked the continuation of Japan’s new relations with foreign countries for the first time in centuries, there was tremendous pressure to pursue distinct ideologies from foreign governments.
Therefore, the Meiji Era enabled vastly different perspectives to propose courses of action for economic, social, and cultural development. From socialism rooted in Christianity to Japanese Marxism, various systems were posited as options for the new centralized government. Thus, this section explores the numerous perspectives of Japanese resistance against the former government and the dominant ideologies that persisted throughout the era.
FURTHER READING
Beasley, William G. 1972. The Meiji Restoration. ACLS Humanities EBook. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00345.
Theodore, William, Carol Gluck, and Arthur E Tiedemann. 2005. “The Meiji Restoration.” In Sources of Japanese Tradition. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press.