Social Theory Japanese Experie by Arnason

Author:Arnason [Arnason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Ethnic Studies, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781317793137
Google: -CZeAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-12-16T04:56:33+00:00

7

Crisis, Containment and Transformation

Developments during the Tokugawa period paved the way for later transformations, but this does not mean that the connection between early modem background and advanced modem breakthrough is easy to analyse or explain. Rather, we must begin by noting several paradoxical aspects of the process in question. First, the structural stagnation of the Tokugawa state makes its strategic success all the more remarkable: after the consolidation of the bakuhan system in the first half of the seventeenth century, there was no sustained attempt to transcend the limits which it set to state-building, but the established mechanisms of control were strong enough to contain the social forces, conflicts and crises that developed within the Tokugawa order and as a result of its very persistence. The results of social and economic development were neither utilized for more ambitious state-building nor allowed to threaten the all-round ascendancy of state over society. When a conjunction of internal and external factors brought about a terminal crisis and a mutation of the regime, the pattern of change was no less distinctive than the ways of maintaining stability had been: the assault on the Tokugawa system came from within its core structures (a rift in the bakuhan system and a realignment of the samurai elite were the crucial causes of breakdown, but the reconstruction of the centre led to a radical transformation of the whole social fabric). An upheaval initiated and administered by forces rooted in the old self-contained order thus culminated in their adaptation to a new social and global context. This exceptionally thorough self-reconditioning would not have been possible without another rapid and momentous departure from Tokugawa tradition. Both the division of the country into domains and the division of society into estates were essential to the power structure established by Ieyasu and his successors; both were, by the same token, obstacles to the national unity envisaged by the architects of the Meiji state, and the reforms designed to overcome them gave rise to an exceptionally effective central government. Finally, the ideological stance of the latter reflected the cultural reorientation that accompanied political change. This was, as we have seen, not simply a return from isolation, but it did involve a decisive shift towards a new combination of closure and openness. The Westernizing turn after 1868 was only the more directly visible side of the new model; its obverse was a more inclusive and dynamic form of particularism, capable of countering the example of Western nationalism with a more radical variation on the same theme.

It is the contrast between the first point and the three following ones that will be most central to our discussion, and as we shall see, it is - though far from illusory - less clear-cut than surface appearances might suggest. Not that we can accept any version of the argument which explains the Meiji revolution as a logical outcome of long-term shifts in the Tokugawa balance of power between state and society. The bakuhan power structure showed

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