Meiji Restoration

[L.A.P.]

why is the development of capitalism in Japan never discussed?

The rise of capitalist production in Japan is really interesting. Unlike Europe, the bourgeois forces didn't ideologically frame themselves as revolutionary in the Boshin War, they were 'restoring the old society of the imperial court'. The whole history of the feudal shogunates and their power struggles with the imperial court, along with the formation of the Dojima Rice Exchange and the feudal-estates in the (bourgeois) Satcho Alliance being tied up in commercial trade with British merchants, is fascinating.

Anyone have knowledge or comments to make about the Meiji Restoration?

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

I'd actually like to do my masters/phd on this one day, so perhaps in a few years I'll be more qualified to talk about it. I did a module in first year that briefly touched upon the meiji restoration and I found that particular part terribly interesting.

[RedGuevara]

Sadly I wish I knew more about the Meiji Restoration. I've studied more on the Samurai, Bushido and the feudalism of the past. Perhaps you recommend some literature on the subject?

[Prometeo liberado]

Just read Hirohito by Edward Behr. That should shed some light on the topic.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I used to know a lot about it, I took a Japanese history course and still have about 30 pages of notes from it in a notebook somewhere (unfortunately not here though). I don't remember much from that class, only that I found the period of "Taisho liberalism" to be more interesting.

[Japan]

It's pretty interesting. If you'd like to know more about labor in Imperial Japan, there's actually a book called the Labor Movement in Japan that's free online.

Sadly, the worker's movement was practically crushed under numerous "peace preservation" laws. Furthermore, a lot of people were hostile to the idea of a stateless society.

[Dodo]

East Asian class struggles had been pretty different. It is quiet interesting actually, how after WWII, countries like Japan, S.Korea, Taiwan went through massive capitalist transformation not through individual entrepreneurship but through state push for a capitalist society.
Do not know much about Japan, but in the cold war setting and under American influence I reckon it was similar as those countries got heavy support.
Led by authoritarian regimes who kind of force-transformed the economies from traditional to modern in bourgeouis terms and created incentives for a capitalist class to rise in cooperation with the state(bit of a fascist way).
And now, these countries are among top economies.

[RedStarOverChina]

The Boshin war abolished the feudal Shogunate to establish a basis for a modern, centralized Bourgeois state. The war and the modernization of weaponry (first use of Gatling machine gun in Japan) diminishes the importance of feudal samurais.

This was the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, or Japan's Bourgeois Revolution.

After the Boshin War, the samurais of Satsuma domain were dissatisfied with the decline of their status and rebelled under the leadership of Saigo Takamori.

Soon after the rebellion was crushed the Samurai class was abolished. Samurais were given a "severance payment" and many used this to start up businesses, thus becoming capitalists.

This, in a nutshell, is how Japan turned from a feudal society dominated by sword-wielding samurais into a modern capitalist state.

[cobrawolf_meiji]

Japan it self, when it Modernized, wanted to be more like The European Powers. The Shogunate was the first to start Modernizing after seeing the Steamships of the West. It was after the Boshin War that Modernizing went on the run. As for Capitalism in Japan, it was already started thanks to the Dutch in the 16th Century.

After The First World War, fearful of Socialist and Communist Ideas (which also started in the West) the Imperial Government banned all communist and socialist parties, after the Second World War, the paranoid Americans had the Japanese ban the Communist Party from Japan for the next 50 years. So Japan became a capitalist nation thanks to the Europeans.