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International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
On The Meiji Restoration: Japan's Search For Sovereignty?
by Masaru Kohno
Abstract
It is generally taken for granted that the Meiji Restoration was a watershed event that incorporated Japan into the modern sovereign state system. This conventional wisdom is misleading. The Japanese political system that existed prior to the Meiji Restoration, the so-called Tokugawa Baku-Han regime, was comparable with many modern sovereign states in its exercise of public authority and its ability to control cross-border movements. Furthermore, as Krasner has shown, sovereignty itself is a problematic concept, the fundamental norms and principles of which are frequently violated. A case study of the 1862 incident known as Namamugi Jiken demonstrates how Japan was recognized and treated internationally, revealing that while some aspects of Japan's sovereignty were conveniently violated, other sovereignty norms were certainly respected by the Western nations. These norms constrained the range of choices available to the key actors involved in this incident and thus significantly affected the subsequent course of events, which ultimately led to Tokugawa's collapse in 1868. Hence, it was the complex (hypocritical) nature of Japan's existent sovereignty, and not its absence, that explains why the Meiji Restoration occurred the way it actually did.
On The Meiji Restoration: Japan's Search For Sovereignty? (PDF File)