Cultural Changes during the meiji era
Key Points
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LinksWoodblock prints of domestic westernization -Superb, visual essay from M.I.T.
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Historiography: Orde Arne Westad on differences between Chinese and Japanese nationalism
"Both Japanese and Chinese nationalisms took part of their core purpose from ideas adopted from the West. But even so they were very different in character. Japan developed a form of ethnic nationalism, in some ways similar to the new nationalisms found in Germany and Italy, or in parts of Eastern Europe. Defining all Japanese as one ethnie, the state constructed a religion (Shintoism), an educational system, and an army that taught the new message: All Japanese were one, bound together by bloodline and territory (what the Germans called Blut und Boden) into one national state. In China such an ethnic nationalism was difficult to imagine. China had been everything, not just a group of people tied together by some form of inheritance. China was a culture as well as an empire, and it took a long time—really up to today—before Chinese fully began seeing themselves as one group, defined by where they live and what they look like." -from 'Restless Empire'