Mito and the Politics of Reform in Early Modern Japan

Michael Alan Thornton (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

264 Seiten

2023
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-1-7936-4191-5 (ISBN)

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This book examines early modern Mito, today an ordinary provincial capital on the outskirts of the Tokyo commuter belt, but once the headquarters of Mito Domain, one of the most consequential places in all of Japan. As one of just three senior branches of the Tokugawa family—which ruled over Japan for 260 years—Mito’s ruling family enjoyed unparalleled status and exerted enormous influence throughout its history. In the seventeenth century, its scholars produced some of early modern Japan’s most important historical scholarship. In the eighteenth century, it developed a robust and pragmatic program of reform to confront depopulation and foreign threats. In the nineteenth century, it became the birthplace of a revolutionary ideology that transformed Japan into a modern, imperial nation. The power of these ideas swept across Japan, inspiring activists everywhere to take up the cause of building a new nation—but they also devastated Mito, leading to a brutal civil war that scarred its people for generations. This book complements existing studies of Mito’s ideas by focusing on the history of Mito as a place and telling the stories of Mito’s politicians, reformers, and ordinary people from the beginning of the domain’s history to its end.

Michael Alan Thornton is postdoctoral associate at the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University.

Foreword

Acknowledgments

A Note on Names and Dates

Map of Japan

Map of Mito Domain

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Origins of Mito Domain and Tokugawa Mitsukuni’s “Golden Age”

Chapter 2: Eighteenth-Century Mito: Crisis, Reform, and the Birth of the Late Mito School

Chapter 3: “Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian”: Mito in the Age of Imperialism

Chapter 4: The Politics of Mito’s Tenpō Reforms

Chapter 5: Nariaki, Yoshinobu, and the Birth of Modern Japan

Chapter 6: The Violent Restoration: Civil War and the End of Mito Domain

Conclusion: Mito and Modern Japan

Bibliography

About the Author

Erscheinungsdatum	27.07.2023
Reihe/Serie	New Studies in Modern Japan
Verlagsort	Lanham, MD
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 231 mm
Gewicht	426 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
ISBN-10	1-7936-4191-9 / 1793641919
ISBN-13	978-1-7936-4191-5 / 9781793641915
Zustand	Neuware