Landlords and Rural Capitalists in the Modernization of Japan

Thomas C. Smith

The Journal of Economic History, 1956, vol. 16, issue 2, 165-181

Abstract: There is impressive evidence that wealthy peasants contributed significantly to the success of the Meiji Restoration, the political revolution that launched Japan on her career of modernization. These rural capitalists, for such they were, helped to give the revolution direction as well as power. How otherwise is one to account for a government dominated by samurai, the elite carriers of tradition, following policies that did great violence to Japan's past and destroyed the privileged status of the warrior class? But if the influence of the representatives of rural wealth was so strong, why did they consent to a clique of warriors holding political power almost as a private prerogative for a generation after the Restoration? Despite the demand for a share in power in the eighties, they did consent and weakly accepted the Meiji constitution which sanctified authoritarian government.

Date: 1956
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:16:y:1956:i:02:p:165-181_05

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().