Much can be learned about the character of a political movement by examining the personal relations between its principal members as well as their political writings, speeches, and ‘formal’ activities in the movement. This is all the more the case if the movement is politically radical, for radical politics often generate a radical subculture which has as its chief function the moulding of an ideal revolutionary personality which will serve the movement in all of its vicissitudes and be a model for the type of citizen the movement wishes to create in society.

In the past decade or so there have been several critical revisions of the long-accepted view of the important role of the state in Japan's economic development and programme of modernization generally. Professor Harry Oshima has attempted to demolish the argument that the Meiji governments' policies were at all economically beneficial. On the contrary, he has said, those policies retarded growth, particularly through their neglect of agriculture. Professor Hugh Patrick has cautioned us against giving the Meiji governments too much credit for the development of the banking system. Private enterprise, he has insisted, was also important. Most recently, Professor Kozo Yamamura has delivered yet another broadside against what he considers the myths of Japanese economic history. This time he criticizes the view that the government, by intervening and pioneering model plants, played a significant role in Meiji Japan's industrial dcvelopment.