Research Catalog

Title

Sakamoto Ryōma and the Meiji restoration / by Marius B. Jansen.

Author

Jansen, Marius B.

Publication

New York : Columbia University Press, c1994.

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Holdings

Details

Description

xviii, 423 p., [4] p. of plates : ill.; 21 cm.

Summary

By the middle of the 19th century, Japan saw itself facing Western imperial ambitions. Having observed the fate of India and of China, it now sought different means. The result was the Meiji Restoration, a unified national state struggling to achieve international equality and leadership in Asia. It was, in effect, a real revolution. In this book the author recounts the Restoration story by examining the career of Ryoma Sakamoto, originally from Tosa, one of the fiefs that played an important role in Restoration politics. Though originally against such Western intruders as Commodore Perry and his followers, Ryoma understood that the only way to counter the West was to emulate it. He envisioned a Japan inspired by the kind of equality that he had observed in the United States. Ryoma, idealistic, individualistic, realized that in order to compete with an industrial outside world, Japan must itself change--after centuries of the Tokugawa Shogunate, leadership had grown impotent. He advocated strengthening the country. Japan had to modernize and in order to do so the government had to be overthrown.

Subject

• Sakamoto, Ryōma, 1836-1867
• 1853-1870
• Japan > History > Restoration, 1853-1870

Genre/Form

• History
• Biographies

Note

• Originally published. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1961.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Sakamoto's Japan -- The response to the West -- The loyalist years -- Service with Katsu -- The Satsuma-Chōshū alliance -- The Kaientai -- The eight-point program -- Restoration -- The restoration in Tosa.

ISBN

0231101732 (pbk.)

LCCN

^^^94039075^

OCLC

• 31374601
• SCSB-11746621

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library