Kindaika

Abstract

The study of modernization in Japan has attracted concerted effort on the part of Japanese scholars, channeled in part through an inter-university, inter disciplinary seminar with which the author is associated (1958-59). The fundamental method is the highly valid, yet peculiarly Japanese, one of bio- historic study, concentrating in particular on the sub-leaders who stood between the topmost elite and the Japanese people during the Tokugawa and Meiji Periods of the mid- and late nineteenth century.