Abstract
This work commenced with the assertion that there is a need to comprehend the Meiji Restoration not so much as an instantaneous event but as a far-spanning movement that had profound roots in the social conditions and intellectual discourse of the late Edo Period. The extent to which early tendencies toward the reconstitution of Imperial rule would have been worked out given the absence of foreign incursions in the early nineteenth century is significant, and largely unanswerable. However, given the spur of foreign encroachments and the palpable inadequacy of the Edo system of government to meet those challenges, the emergence of the Imperial Household as the fulcrum enabling national transformation was emphatic and unequivocal. The Imperial Household possessed what the Shogunate did not: the capacity for charismatic inspiration, a religious dimension that would enable incongruent forces and disparate elements to be recast into a new whole as if they had always been destined to be so conjoined.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Basil Blackwell, 1983, pp. 110–36.
M. Asukai, Nihon Kindai Seishinshi no Kenkyū, Kyoto University Press, 2002, pp. 380–1.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2009 Alistair D. Swale
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Swale, A.D. (2009). Conclusion: Conservatism, Traditionalism and Restoration. In: The Meiji Restoration. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245792_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245792_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36925-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-24579-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)