ABSTRACT
One of the great puzzles of late nineteenth-century history can be captured in a succinct phrase: why Japan? Out of all of the Asian countries – China, Korea, Thailand, India – grappling with the penetration of European imperialism in the nineteenth century, why was it Japan, and Japan alone, that managed to respond comprehensively to the Western onslaught, to simultaneously industrialize rapidly and build up its military prowess, forcing the Western powers to grudgingly acknowledge its growing hegemony in Northeast Asia and on the Pacific?
