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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
A two part review, by a sociologist, Reinhard Bendix, and a historian, H. Harootunian, evaluating W. G. Beasley's major book, The Meiji Restoration. The review deals with the book from the perspective of a comparativist in social structures and as a question, in contemporary historical consciousness.
1 The wording is, or course, from J. R. Leven-son, who meant something different from what I have in mind. Sec Confucian China and its Modern Fate III, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965), 85–109.Google Scholar
2 The conception of ‘successive displacement’ has been put forth by Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge, (Pantheon Books, New York, 1972), pp. 21–55,Google Scholar and earlier in The Order of Things (Pantheon Books, New York, 1970). Fou-cault has, I believe, offered the richest and most original suggestions concerning the methodological possibilities of intellectual history since Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia. I have dealt with some of these possibilities such as the idea of displacement in my essay, “The Consciousness of Archaic Form in Kokugaku,” delivered at the Seminar on Japanese Intellectual History held in Atami, March 25–28, 1974, under the joint sponsorship of the Japan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, The papers will be published in a forthcoming volume edited by Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner.Google Scholar
3 Pepper, Stephen, World Hypotheses, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 232–279.Google Scholar
4 The question of sōmō and its corresponding organizational associations in the bakumatsu has been the subject of a number of recent studies. The most exhaustive and supportive for my position on this subject is, Masanao, Kano and Shunsuke, Takagi, eds., lshin henkaju ni okeru zaisonteki shochōryū, (Tokyo, 1972), pp. 12–59,Google Scholar 135–185. Also, Noboru, Haga, Sōmō no seishin, (Tokyo, 1970).Google Scholar There is also Masami, Ōmachi, Sōmō no keifu (Tokyo, 1970), pp. 99–204, in which the relationship between peasant militia and sōmō-like organizations are examined.Google Scholar
5 Yoshio, Sakata, Meiji ishinshi, (Tokyo, 1960), pp. 140 ff.Google Scholar
6 I think this view informs Smith's, T. C.The Agrarian Origins oj Modern Japan, (Stanford, 1959), where neither the Restoration nor peasant rebellions are related to Tokugawa economic development. But Smith does, in his last chapter, connect Japan's subsequent economic modernization to the Tokugawa economic experience which he has written about.Google Scholar
7 The debate itself can be found in the pages of the Rekishigaku kenkyū but the most eloquent expression of it is Shigeki, Tōyama, Meiji ishin to gendai, (Tokyo, 1969).Google Scholar
8 The study of yo naoshi has been advanced by Junnosuke, Sasaki, first in his Bakumatsu shakairon, (Tokyo, 1969),Google Scholar which defines the conditions leading to millenial expectation and then later in a collaborative work which he edited, Murakata sōdō to yo naoshi, I, (Tokyo, 1972),Google Scholar especially pp. 381 ff. Haga Noboru's recent Yo naoshi no shisō (Tokyo, 1974) is also useful.Google Scholar Two recent special issues of the Rekishigaku kenkyū have also concentrated on the problem of peasant movements and socio-economic conditions in the late Tokugawa period. kenkyūkai, Rekishigaku eds., Sekaishi nin-shiki to jimmin sensōshi kenkyū, (Tokyo, Oct., 1971),Google Scholar especially pp. 48-92; and Rekishi ni okeru minzoku to minshushugi, (Tokyo, November, 1973), pp. 83–116.Google Scholar