Conceptualizing Bourgeois Revolution: The Prewar Japanese Left and the Meiji Restoration

Abstract

That the Meiji Restoration marked Japan's proruption as a modern industrial nation-state has become a commonplace among those who study Japanese political history. The event may lack the romantic drama and mythology of the French revolutionary upheaval of almost a century before, yet the Restoration has remained a source of fascination for scholars seeking patterns in the events that transcend national boundaries to form the seamless web of human history.