The Meiji Era and the Modernization of Japan...Part 1
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- Lance_Lindley
- mariaandrea
- pseudoerasmus
- pseudoerasmus
- mariaandrea
- cjs85
- wingbaby
- Kurishin
- win12341
- SamuraigurlRae
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» Lance_Lindley - Male overpopulation
The Chinese value male offspring over female offspring for the same reason most agrarian, feudal/monarchal societies did: the males are the laborers, the warriors and the bearers of the family name. Maria would know better than I (China's not my specialty) but it seems huge portions of China are still socially/technologically not very far advanced from that era.An interesting point I read in a newspaper article about the end result of the overprevalence of males -- historically it has a tendency to make countries very aggressive militarily, apparently directly related to the shortage of mates...
Also saw an interesting piece on infanticide right after a woman defected from rural China. She had been in charge of carrying out government-mandated (forced) abortions in a rural province. She smuggled out video tapes of women, pregnant with their second child, being held in cages in a government abortion clinic. Seems this woman had no twinge of conscience about her work until she suddenly found herself pregnant with HER second child. Then she fled to the U.S., shrieking about the inhumanity of it all.
-- posted by Lance_Lindley
» mariaandrea - Population Control
Alan, I've answered your question more fully in the discussion thread Chinese Female Infanticide.Lance is right about the traditional reasons for such tragedies as infanticide and the importance placed on male babies. Another factor in those traditional reasons is that when women marry, they leave their families and are no longer contributing members. Males usually take on the responsibility for caring for elderly parents and relatives. This isn't always the case, but the realities of family planning in China do have some very negative consequences.
Lance, I read that article on-line for use in a reasearch paper I am writing on this topic. If anyone else would like to read it, it's located at ABC News
Thanks for reading!
Maria Christensen
<img src="http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/3760/files/yinyang.gif" align="center" border=0>
Oriental History
-- posted by mariaandrea
» pseudoerasmus - Japan
I think Maria Christensen's account, at least insofar as it touches on the history of Japanese economic modernisation, is a highly traditional one in neglect of much recent work in economic history which stresses the continuity of the Meiji period with the Tokugawa period. That is, Japan had not been a complete economic basketcase until Commodore Perry showed up and the Meiji Restoration abruptly embarked upon forced industrialisation.On the contrary, the Tokugawa Shogunate was an economically dynamic period in Japanese history, with much commercial & industrial activity and standards of living rising rapidly.
For a summary of this view, David Landes's chapter on Tokugawa Japan in his "Wealth and Poverty of Nations" is a good start, as are the first two chapters of Kozo Yamamura's "The Economic Emergence of Modern Japan". For the "new" social-economic history of Tokugawa Japan, try Susan B. Hanley's Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture.
-- posted by pseudoerasmus
» pseudoerasmus - India
Sramek wrote:This was a really great article. There was a similar intellectual movement for modernization in early 19th century India..., but unfortunately before that could really reach critical mass, the English colonizers stopped encouraging the study [Orientalism] of Indian languages and culture.
??? What about all those grammars and lexica of Indian languages? The most important linguistic scholarship in Sanskrit (after Panini's 7th century grammar) is British. The grammars of Sindi, Panjabi, Gujarati , etc. were written down, in some cases even standardised, by the British. Who developed Hindustani (the generic name for colloquial Hindi & Urdu) as India's lingua franca??? The English. I don't think British Orientalism flagged at all. On the contrary, the late 19th century saw a renaissance.
Anyway, if there developed a wide cultural gulf between the ruled and the rulers in British India, the Anglo-Indian war of 1857 (aka the Sepoy Mutiny) is largely to blame.
Unfortunately, India had to put up with another century of direct Western rule, whereas Japan escaped that fate [also suffered in an informal way by China]
It's a minority view, but I'm of the opinion that British colonialism constituted a net benefit to India. After all, without British colonialism, there would never have been a united India; there would have been none of the administrative apparatus left by the British and still in use today; few if any of the great educational institutions India possesses; little of the vast railroad network; and certainly not the English language which gives India a competitive edge internationally and which unites India at least as much as Hindi (given that the Dravidian South refuses Hindi).
-- posted by pseudoerasmus
» mariaandrea - Tokugawa Japan
I apologize if I gave the impression that Japan was economically "backward" during the Tokugawa period and that only the Meiji oligarchs were responsible for economic modernization. You're quite right that the economy flourished at that time. The Tokugawa period was one of peace and stability. (The actual, sometimes conflicting, relations between the Tokugawa shogunate and the daimyo deserves a separate article and I will try to work on that).To expand just a little on your well made point, the stability of the time allowed both culture and the economy to flourish. Cities grew, useable farmland increased, commercial crops were grown for the first time, and agricultural science thrived. Kabuki theater was born, and art and literature found full expression. Though there were no universities, the literacy rate was as high as many European countries, and higher than some. Cottage industries were common and the standard of living was high. Isolation was, in fact, a "good" thing in many ways.
Perhaps I should have pointed out that I was attempting to portray Japanese reaction to their discovery of the scientific and industrial revolutions going on in the Western world, and how they adapted an already stable system to western means of production (emphasizing Western here). I was focusing more on a lead in to Japanese Imperialism and the necessity of using and adapting Western technology to build a strong base from which the Japanese could compete globally and also defend their nation from Western imperialism, thus avoiding what China and other Asian nations were experiencing at the time. I admit I also gave more room to the cultural aspects of the Meiji Era.
I think this is the inherent problem with my goals for this site. I want to be able to provide readers who may have little or no background in Asian history with a start in the subject, but in doing so, I often leave out important details that are necessary to a thorough study and more knowledgeable readers. This is where I really rely on comments and input in these discussions. Please visit often. Next week's article is on the Opium Wars, and with your much more thorough background in economics (as compared to mine :-)) I'm sure you'll have some interesting insights. I don't mind at all being taken down a notch or two in the pursuit of truth. (If I ever take offense at being wrong about something, just virtually slap me :-)).
Maria Christensen
<img src="http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/3760/files/yinyang.gif" align="center" border=0>
Oriental History
-- posted by mariaandrea
» cjs85 - domestic features.
While this is a good introduction to the Meiji restoration I feel it makes a common mistake of emphasising the incursion of foreigners at the expense of examining the internal disintegration of the the feudalist society. The relationship between chonin (merchants), daimyo & samurai, in particular should not be underestimated. It would be quite reasonable I think to argue that the coming of the west was relatively peripheral fall of the Tokugawa's. The west certainly determined the direction that Japan embarked upon under Meiji.Nonetheless this is a very useful page and a good starting point for research on the Meiji Japan.
I am looking for source material / stories about the Boshin War - do you have any suggestions.
-- posted by cjs85
» SamuraigurlRae - i need some help
im looking for some good information on the actual meji revolution.....any one have any good sites or things of that nature-- posted by SamuraigurlRae
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