The Silent Revolution (The Meiji Restoration and the Founding of Japan)

The Meiji Restoration truly shines. Is there another example in history of a non-Western country achieving modernization at so small a cost? The author sees the “rice-paddy Kissinger” (a phrase of my own coining) as the driving force behind the Restoration’s success. Even before the arrival of the Black Ships, a hundred schools of thought were already contending among the common people of Japan. From the arrival of the Black Ships to the return of power to the Emperor, and even after the Restoration, the debate over building Japan as a “nation” burned hot. To see the Restoration as nothing more than a neatly executed “revolution from above” is a one-dimensional judgment. Diversity, autonomy, and devotion from below — these were the Restoration’s true strength. I had no choice but to acknowledge, and accept, that Japan was simply “strong to begin with.”

The fifty years from the arrival of the Black Ships to the Russo-Japanese War are certainly a history Japan cannot help but take pride in. But the sacrifices incurred along the way cannot be forgotten either. The wealth Japan had accumulated over a thousand years flowed out of the country within a mere fifty years of the opening of its ports. The great merchants of Osaka and Edo collapsed. Neighboring countries such as Korea and China were ruined. Even Japan itself did not escape catastrophe. The manga “Rurouni Kenshin,” set in this era, probably owes its popularity to the way it tells of the darkness behind the seemingly brilliant light of the Restoration — and of the hope of overcoming it.

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