ABSTRACT
The most pressing item on the agenda of the Meiji Government was the establishment of a powerful centralized bureaucracy in order to ensure the sovereignty of the new order. Central to the modernization process is the nationwide dispersion through improved systems of communication of information deemed by leaders necessary to permit the effective reshaping of political, social, and economic structures. In Japan, the aspects of the national language also required reshaping in order to permit it to function effectively as a vehicle for the spread of this information. Tetsuo Najita identifies three modes of political thought of particular importance: the materialistic liberalism of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Nishi Amane, which bolstered the Meiji cult of advancement through personal effort; the natural-right theory of Ueki Emori and Nakae Chomin, which fostered the spirit of idealistic protest in Japan; and the theory of social evolution espoused by Kato Hiroyuki and Nishimura Shigeki, which provided a new synthesis between past and present.
