Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Meiji Restoration
The reading of Strayer has changed my view of one part of the theory of the Meiji Restoration that I had from the documents in class. Before reading Strayer, I had a view that the Japanese were more arrogant, and felt superior towards the outside world. However, through the reading I saw that out of all the other countries that we have studied, especially China, Japan has been quite open to outside ideas. Of course, they started out rather harsh towards the outside world, this seemed to work for them. Unlike China, they had already urbanized their country without much help from the outside world. One difference between the documents and the reading was that the documents did not attribute any success of the Japanese to the outside world, where Strayer talked more about Japan's encounters with the outside and how they were open to Western ideas. Most of the classes theories talked about about how Japan shot down the world around them and gained power by putting other countries down. Through the reading I have learned that this is not true, and that Japan was a place of peace that accepted Western ideas.
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I agree with your observation about Strayer and the documents. I also thought that the Japanese were very arrogant and indiffrent to outside ideas.
ReplyDeleteTaylor - great point and well said. Japan did try to convince its people that it controlled its own future and that its only influence was itself. However, as you pointed out, Japan evidently took in western influences (some subconsciously) and translated them into ways that could enhance Japanese society. These western influences were just given different names or put into Japanese understanding, convincing the Japanese population that Japan indeed created its own success.
ReplyDeleteVery true. It is interesting, though, that the Japanese should so readily appropriate outside views, then refuse to acknowledge that they learned that skill from others. It worked fabulously as a means of promoting their own nationalism and showing their superiority. To promote morale, they took other ideas and called them their own.
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