¹ The Emperor institution as a force for unity was largely the later creation of the Meiji reformers, though of course it was built on ancient foundations.

² The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, London, 1912, p. 177.

³ Teggart, Frederick J., Theory and Processes of History, Berkeley, Calif., 1941, p. 286.Google Scholar

⁴ One striking comment on the outlook of the Meiji leaders comes from Dr. Erwin Baelz, a German doctor called to the new Imperial Medical Academy in Tokyo. Writing in 1876, he speaks of “the strangest feature of the situation” in these words: “The Japanese have their eyes fixed exclusively on the future, and are impatient when a word is said of their past. The cultured among them are actually ashamed of it. ‘That was in the days of barbarism,” said one of them….” Another Japanese friend, questioned about Japanese history by Baelz, , replied, “We have no history. Our history begins today.” Awakening Japan, New York, 1932, p. 17.Google Scholar

⁵ It was Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, I believe, who once listed five historical reasons for China's stagnation: (1) unity, as a deterrent to competition; (2) isolation, breeding complacency; (3) the inefficiency of ideographic writing; (4) absolutism, stifling popular initiative; and (5) the straitjacket of Confucian orthodoxy.

⁶ Levy, Marion J., “Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 11, No. 3 (October 1953), pp. 161–97.Google Scholar

⁷ As they bear on economic growth, these points are discussed at length in die author's The Economic Development of Japan, Princeton, N.J., 1954, esp. chs. 4 and 10.

⁸ The outlook of early Meiji statesmen upon the West was never stated more succinctly than by a leader of the first Japanese mission to the United States, Vice-Ambassador Itō, speaking in Sacramento in 1871: “We come to study your strength, that, by adopting your better ways, we may hereafter be stronger ourselves.” Foster, John W., American Diplomacy in the Orient, Boston, 1904, p. 346.Google Scholar

⁹ It is interesting now to see how commonly early Western observers of Japan were struck with what C. R. Boxer characterizes as “some innate core of tough virility in the national character.” De Fonblanque comments after his visit in the 1860's: “No Eastern people is so free from the stamp of the slave as the Japanese.” Baty, Thomas, “The Literary Introduction of Japan into Europe,” Monumentica Nipponica, VIII, No. 1/2 (January 1952), p. 32.Google Scholar General Grant concluded from his tour of the Orient in 1879 that “a well appointed body of ten thousand Japanese troops could make their way through the length and breadth of China, against all odds that could be brought to confront them.” Foster, , op.cit., p. 342.Google Scholar Fifteen years later Sir Robert Hart wrote prophetically: “Japan wants to lead the East in war, in commerce, and in manufactures, and the next century will be a hard one for the West.” Morse, H. B., The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 111, New York, 1918, p. 50.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Japanese government has not been free of these difficulties, of course, with all major decisions tending to be made in Tokyo. It is interesting to hear management experts complain also that Japanese business concerns are overcentralized. Company directors waste time on operating details, at the expense of broad policy, because production responsibility is not properly devolved on plant superintendents.

¹¹ Raw silk exports, mostly to the United States, accounted for more than one-third of Japan's commodity exports to foreign countries over the entire period from 1870 to 1930. They also supplied an invaluable margin of money income to farm households.

¹² Bland, J. O. P., Li Hung-chang, New York, 1917, pp. 227ff.Google Scholar

¹³ “The Small Industrialist in Japan,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, VII, No. 2 (December 1954), pp. 79–93; also “Some Social Factors Bearing upon Japanese Population,” American Sociological Review, XV, No. 1 (February 1950), pp. 20–25.

¹⁴ A small constellation of men, drawn mainly from the Western clans who led the Restoration, ruled Japan for forty years with scarcely a break. Until 1918 these Meiji leaders passed me Premiership around from one to another; they dominated the Privy Council; they commanded the army and navy. From 1885 to 1918 only twenty-nine men served as Premier, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Minister of the Imperial Household, Minister of War, Minister of Navy, President of the Privy Council, and President of the House of Peers. Five were court nobles, and sixteen came from the clans of Satsuma, Choshu, Hizen, and Tosa. The others were mostly their henchmen. Reischauer, Robert K., Japan: Government—Politics, New York, 1939, pp. 108–9.Google Scholar After World War I, as the old oligarchs faded from the scene, and the forces of industrialism and political democracy gathered headway, the pattern of leadership became more divided, uncertain, and unstable. The decision-making process referred to above came to work much less consistently and smoothly in national affairs. It finally broke down altogether when the Kwantung Army took matters in its own hands in 1931.

¹⁵ Cf. Gouldner, Alvin W., “Metaphysical Pathos and the Theory of Bureaucracy,” American Political Science Review, XLIX, NO. 2 (June 1955), pp. 496–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ The attitude of the British is significant. Their factory at Hirado was abandoned in 1624, only ten years after its charter was granted. The conclusion was that the Japanese trade would never amount to anything, since only copper was available for export from Japan and this competed with the output of British mines. Again in 1792 the same argument was cited by a Select Committee of the East India Company against a venture in Japan. Even the energetic Sir Stamford Raffles failed to win adequate support in 1814 for his ambitious proposals to oust the Dutch and move in on the Japanese.

¹⁷ Japan and China again illustrate Adam Smith's dictum: “As by means of water carriage, a more expensive market is opened to every sort of industry than what land carriage alone can afford it, so it is upon the sea-coast, and along the banks of navigable rivers, that industry of every kind naturally begins to subdivide and improve itself, and it is frequently not till a long time after that those improvements extend themselves to the inland parts of the country.” An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Nicholson ed., London, 1886, Bk. 1, ch. 111, p. 8.

¹⁸ The Straits of Tsushima are 120 miles across, not 20. Moreover, through most of history the main centers of power have been farther inland in Asia than in Europe.

¹⁹ Five Gentlemen of Japan, New York, 1953, p. 3.