ABSTRACT
In this paper, I take issue with this unilinear and Western-dominated narrative of modernity. While the West's influence on Japanese statebuilding since the mid-1800s is undeniable, I advance instead a two-level structurationist approach, which shows how the transformation of Japan's modern state was based on a more complex process whereby the interplay of both international and domestic forces in key historical junctures have shaped the characteristics of the Japanese state in ways not readily captured by these conventional claims. In the second section, I draw on mainstream theories of modernity and state formation advanced by scholars in the fields of political science and historical sociology, and the parallel arguments that can be seen in the works by contemporary historians of Japan, to illustrate both the utility and limitations of these existing perspectives in rendering modernity in the Japanese context. In th third section, I draw on the structurationist insights of Giddens (1979,1984), Wendt (1987,1994), and others to construct an alternative framework that illustrates how power, purpose, and identity are mutually implicated in shaping the political sphere at both the domestic and international level, and how the interplay of these two levels in key critical junctures shape the transformative process of the modern state. Informed by these discussions, I illustrate how this alternative framework can be applied to better explain the transformation of the modern Japanese state since the mid-1800s and discuss in the fourth section both the theoretical and normative implications of this alternative framework.
