Search

Traces the history of the Japanese Tsutsumi family's enterprises in transportation, retailing, travel, and leisure, from the family's colorful founder Pistol Tsutsumi to the present. Examines the management styles and marketing techniques that have allowed the family's Seibu and Saison enterprises

(1993). Hired Swords: The Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 177-177.

This volume traces the manner in which, through perceptions of and interaction with both China and the states of the West, Japan's self-perception as an Asian nation, as a member of the international community, and as a product of its own history and current situation and goals, evolved during the period between mid-19th century and the end of World War II. Contents: Rival States on a Loose ReinoThe Neglected Tradition of Appeasement in Late Tokugawa Japan, Building the National Communications SystemoAdopting and Adapting Western Organizational Models in Meji Japan, Meji Japan and the Educational and Language Reforms in Late Ch'ing China, Shimazaki Toson's Before the DawnoHistorical Fiction as History and as Literature, Forecasting a Pacific War, 1912-1933oThe Idea of Conditional Japanese Victory, Japanese Policies and Concepts for a Regional Order in Asia, 1938-1940, Prophet Without HonoroKiyosawa Kiyoshi's View of Japanese-American Relations, Friend or FoeoThe Ambivalent Images of the U.S. and China in Wartime Japan, A Matter of TranscendenceoWar Experiences and the Transformation of Japanese and American Fighter Pilots, EpilogueoNational Identity, National Past, National Isms.

When universal manhood suffrage was promulgated, with much eclat, on 5 May 1925, its friends and its enemies both agreed that this act was a new high-water mark in the thirty-five year history of Japanese parliamentarianism. Of a national population of nearly 40 million in 1890, the first electorate had been carefully confined to 400,000 adult males who met a stiff property test. By the early 1920s inflation, population growth, and eased voting requirements had gradually spread the franchise to some 3 million persons, still a mere fraction of the populace. Then, at a stroke, the universal suffrage law of 1925 gave the vote to males aged twenty-five and older, swelling the pool of electors four-fold to more than 13 million.

One of the interesting questions concerning the Meiji Restoration of 1868 is the degree to which the Western-oriented intellectuals of Japan compromised their scholarly curiosity about European civilization by serving the pre-Restoration Tokugawa government and its successor, the Meiji oligarchy. In what ways might their duties as civil servants colour their objectivity in studying the newly found academic disciplines of the West? What tensions did late Tokugawa and early Meiji scholar-bureaucrats perceive between their investigations of European knowledge and their service in a partisan regime? An examination of the career of Nishi Amane (1829–1897), who was an important scholar of Western philosophy as well as a bureaucrat in both the Tokugawa and Meiji governments, casts some light on the problem of the intellectual as public servant in early modern Japan. This study will concentrate on three important events in Nishi's life: his decision to flee his feudal clan in order to study the West in 1854; his refusal to join the Restoration movement in 1868; and his defence of the idea that scholars could serve the new state without compromising their objectivity in 1874.

One aspect of the intellectual upheaval which accompanied the Meiji Restoration of 1868 was the phenomenon of bummei kaika, “civilization and enlightenment.” Although it may be useful to think of the early Meiji years as a Japanese siècle de lumières, it is significant that the country's most progressive scholars derived their main inspiration from such contemporaneous Western social philosophies as positivism and utilitarianism, not the European enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It is natural that the proponents of bummei kaika turned for guidance to John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte rather than Diderot or Rousseau, because their goal was to expose Japan to those urbane modes of thought from abroad which would bring her to the “civilized” stage of development envisaged by European social philosophy. The means to be employed consisted of empiricism, not abstract reasoning: “what we should call the truly enlightened world,” wrote Tsuda Mamichi in 1874, “is when practical studies become popular in our country and each person attains an understanding of truth.” Similarly, Fukuzawa Yukichi took nineteenth century England, not eighteenth century France, as the model for Japan's efforts to achieve “enlightenment.”

This work explains how and why Japan supports a community of professional dancers, musicians, production companies, and visual artists that has nearly tripled in size during the past 25 years.Originally published in 1982.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.