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To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History Illustrated Edition

by Mark Ravina (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 32 ratings
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The samurai radicals who overthrew the last shogun in 1868 promised to restore ancient and pure Japanese ways. Foreign observers were terrified that Japan would lapse into violent xenophobia. But the new Meiji government took an opposite course. It copied best practices from around the world, building a powerful and modern Japanese nation with the help of European and American advisors. While revering the Japanese past, the Meiji government boldly embraced the foreign and the new. What explains this paradox? How could Japan's 1868 revolution be both modern and traditional, both xenophobic and cosmopolitan?

To Stand with the Nations of the World explains the paradox of the Restoration through the forces of globalization. The Meiji Restoration was part of the global "long nineteenth century" during which ambitious nation states like Japan, Britain, Germany, and the United States challenged the world's great multi-ethnic empires--Ottoman, Qing, Romanov, and Hapsburg. Japan's leaders wanted to celebrate Japanese uniqueness, but they also sought international recognition. Rather than simply mimic world powers like Britain, they sought to make Japan distinctly Japanese in the same way that Britain was distinctly British. Rather than sing "God Save the King," they created a Japanese national anthem with lyrics from ancient poetry, but Western-style music. The Restoration also resonated with Japan's ancient past. In the 600s and 700s, Japan was threatened by the Tang dynasty, a dynasty as powerful as the Roman empire. In order to resist the Tang, Japanese leaders borrowed Tang methods, building a centralized Japanese state on Tang models, and learning continental science and technology. As in the 1800s, Japan co-opted international norms while insisting on Japanese distinctiveness. When confronting globalization in 1800s, Japan looked back to that "ancient globalization" of the 600s and 700s. The ancient past was therefore not remote or distant, but immediate and vital.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0190088370
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0190088378
  3. Edition
    Illustrated
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    January 1, 2020
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    9.2 x 0.9 x 6.1 inches
  8. Print length
    330 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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"It is rare to find a text which focuses so much on the Meiji's internationalization in the particular way which this text does...Ravina's book is rich in cultural and intellectual history, and is wide-randing geographical and temporal boundaries make for an engaging read for those interested in macro-level analyses." -- Scott C.M. Bailey, Kansai Gaidai University, Journal of World History

"by accentuating a robust history of Japanese reform and global engagement, Ravina offers important clues to how a truly global history of change in nineteenth-century Japan might look" -- Frederick R. Dickinson, Pacific Affairs

"[O]ffers a wonderful reinterpretation of the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime and the emergence of the modern Japanese nation-state in the 19th century. The book is replete with insightful observations and contributes in many new ways to understanding this pivotal event....Highly recommended."--CHOICE

"A timely reinterpretation of the social and political transformations of the early Meiji period, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Japan's place in the modern world. Tracing the confluence of global and local forces of change, as well as the impact of lessons remembered from the deeper past, it offers an impressively broad-ranging account of this most consequential of historical moments."--Daniel Botsman, Yale University

"This wonderful new history of the Meiji Restoration banishes once and for all the old image of a passive Japan reacting to pressures from the West. Mark Ravina emphasizes Japanese agency in its dealing with the imperialist powers as well as the continued importance of China to the Meiji leaders. In his discussion of domestic politics, he gives the Tokugawa shogunate credit for anticipating many of the modernizing reforms implemented by the Meiji state. Ravina has given us a refreshing and important new survey of one of the modern world's great revolutions."--David L. Howell, Harvard University

"To Stand with the Nations of the World releases Japanese history from East-West, tradition-modernity binaries, freeing it to participate in the global history of nation-state formation and nineteenth-century imperialism. In this enthralling reinterpretation of the Meiji Restoration, Ravina highlights the skilled political discourse that integrated universal ideals with Japan's distinctive past."--Julia Adeney Thomas, author of Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology

"By many accounts, Japan's new leaders after 1868 demonstrated an uncanny knack for creating a modern nation-state along Western lines. One of the leading experts of the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, Ravina instead reveals the considerable tensions among early modern precedents, ancient imperial models, and populist and statist visions in efforts to embed Japan in the emerging global order."--Sheldon Garon, author of Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life

"To Stand with the Nations of the World is a thought-provoking and detail-rich work that should be engaging at many levels of specialization. The writing is lively and clear and largely jargon-free except for Ravina's own conceptual contributions, no barrier to undergraduate readers. It would be entirely suitable as a reading in a mid-level Japanese or Asian history course, or any graduate-level course." -- Jonathan Dresner, World History Connected

"An analysis of Japan's modern history in the full light of contemporary world history. One goal is to give non-specialists a stronger understanding that Japan's integration with the rest of the world was not abrupt or passive...To Stand with the Nations of the World is a thought-provoking and detail-rich work that should be engaging at many levels of specialization. The writing is lively and clear and largely jargon-free...no barrier to undergraduate readers. It would be entirely suitable as a reading in a mid-level Japanese or Asian history course, or any graduate-level course. World History scholars and teachers will profit from considering the transnational situations described here, as complications to the standard narratives and categories." -- Jonathan Dresner, World History Connected

"To Stand with the Nations of the World...encompasses foreign relations, politics, economic history, and intellectual history...A clear, concise analytical narrative enlivened by entertaining details supports Ravina's argument." -- Anne Walthall, American Historical Review

"Ravina presents an ambitious and refreshing new treatment of the [Meiji] restoration on its own terms. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources and secondary scholarship, this is a work that demonstrates Ravina's long engagement with, and knowledge of, his subject-matter...By complicating existing dichotomies that continue to influence views of Japan, Ravina succeeds in placing the restoration into world history with Japan highly aware of, and active in, the events of the time...Ravina provides an excellent overview of the Meiji restoration that is both useful to scholars of Japanese history and accessible for students and interested readers from other backgrounds." -- Oleg Benesch, English Historical Review

"Ravina...impressively rereads and recasts the old material to provide new interpretations of what caused Japan's course change in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji years...To Stand with the Nations of the World makes a powerful contribution. Challenging tired dichotomies (Japan versus the West, tradition versus modernity), Ravina provides a provocative framework for seeing the middle decades of the 1800s as a single whole in which leaders on all sides were determined to take 'universal' practices from both the contemporary West and their own past to create a strong nation-state." -- James L. Huffman, Journal of Asian Studies

"Ravina's work, based on careful research in primary sources and informed by the latest published scholarship, is a wonderful read, providing a compelling reinterpretation of a critical turning point in Japanese history." -- Steven J. Ericson, Journal of Japanese Studies

"Mark Ravina's book...is an important and timely contribution to our understanding of a complex and nested set of events. It is the first major narration of the Restoration as a whole (in English) for a generation and, as such, it is a call to us all to bring the insights of new methods of history to a classic debate...This is important and exciting work." -- Ian Rapley, International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter

"Ravina's book is a fresh look at the much-studied background to the Meiji restoration." -- Louis Cullen, International History Review

About the Author

Mark Ravina is Professor of History at Emory University. He is the author of The Last Samurai and Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition (January 1, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 330 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0190088370
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0190088378
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.2 x 0.9 x 6.1 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 32 ratings

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Mark Ravina

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
32 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jim Lough
5.0 out of 5 stars Important Book about the Emergence of a Nation into the Commmunity of Nations
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2021
Verified Purchase
A great read about how Japan went from a inward, feudal society into a Modern Nation
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Viva LasVegas2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Unique perspectives, worth-reading
Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2021
Mark Ravina has original interpretations of the Meiji Restoration, placing it in the era from the seventh century onwards. Many views of the Meiji Restoration portrayed the event as marking the transition from a "traditional" polity to a modern, Western-style nation-state. Ravina, however, argues cogently that understanding the Restoration requires going beyond "a false contrast between 'traditional Japan' and the 'modern Western world'": "It was not a clash between 'modern' and 'traditional' or between 'Western' and 'Japanese' but a struggle to transcend those dichotomies and to create new institutions and practices that could simultaneously evoke both Japanese uniqueness and Western progress"
One person found this helpful
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R.L.D.
3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2018
I love reading history, and since living in Japan since 1974 I was really looking forward to this book. But it was rather boring. It got to feeling I was in a professor's class listening to a lecture--a not very exciting one. Advice: Read the Intro and In Conclusion sections, and skip the rest.

With the author's mentioning of how many people read and helped with the book, I was surprised by so many typo/grammar/editing problems. Along the way, there was some interesting information, but be prepared for a very academic type book.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Second to NUN
5.0 out of 5 stars 明治維新
Reviewed in Japan on October 5, 2021
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明治維新は英語で言うと Meiji restoration　で日本語の語感と異なりますね
それはそれとして、自分が生まれるほぼ百年前と考えるとそんなに大昔でもなく
日本の国が存亡の危機にあった出来事の一つ
自らの国の歴史を知るのは大事なことかと思います
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