ABSTRACT
MORI ARINORI (1848–1888) never attained the rank of Prime or Foreign Minister, nor did he survive to become an elder statesman, but his career vividly illustrates the eclecticism and vitality of the Meiji elite. Thirty years ago Ivan Hall's detailed biography echoed Fukuzawa's criticism of Mori as a thinker who failed to achieve ‘true maturity’. Now Alistair Swale's much briefer study sympathetically explores Mori's ‘conservatism’ and rebuts accusations that he became less ‘liberal’ in his final years.
