ABSTRACT
Early in 1868, following a coup at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, responsibility for the administration of Japan passed to a new regime, formally bringing to an end the rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate that had lasted since the start of the seventeenth century. The youthful Meiji Emperor who headed the new regime presided over an era of unprecedented reform. The decades up to World War I, known as the Meiji period, witnessed a radical transformation of many aspects of Japan’s national life. By the time of the Emperor’s death in 1912 Japan had defeated both China and Russia in war, was allied on equal terms with Britain, and was fast becoming an important player in international economic affairs. This transformation has often gone down in history as an unmitigated success story, and in contemporary Japan, under significant pressure to achieve substantial structural reform, the image of ‘success’ offers a potentially powerful exemplar. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the course of the Meiji reform process in order to see what lessons, if any, it might be able to offer for institutional and organisational reform in Japan at the start of the twenty-first century. It will be shown that the image of rapid, successful planned change is at odds with the reality of what was a complex and difficult process, whose outcomes were unpredictable and success uncertain. Contemporary reform attempts would be better informed by recognising this reality, which might in turn limit unrealistic expectations of what is possible, and lead to a greater acknowledgement of those changes that have occurred.
