The Meiji Restoration by William G. Beasley (review)

REVIEWS 183 from the Departmentof Stateand the Officeof Inter-AmericanAffairs.Yet hisanalysis isnotthorough. Secretary of TreasuryHenry Morgenthau,jr played a central role in economicdiscussions, and Green shouldhave usedhis voluminousunpublished diaries or at veryleastthethreepublished volumes, Fromthe Morgenthau Diaries. Some issues at the Inter-American conferences are raised: the economic aspectsat Panamain I939 and variousconcerns at Chapultepec and SanFrancisco in 1945.Greenuses theseto criticizeUnited States multilateraldiplomacy. But what aboutthe conferences beginning with Montevideowhichled to wartimeco -operation? Greenalsoneglects to dealwiththefascinating personalities who developed policy.He mentions Roosevelt's 'givethem a share'statement at a press conference toillustrate thepresident's position towardLatinAmerica, but that statement doesnot explainpresidential viewson hemispheric affairs. Theseshouldhave beenclearlyarticulated.With the tremendous amount of material on Roosevelt, suchas Frank Freidel'smulti-volumebiography,this gap couldhave been filled. Individualsllke Cordell Hull, SumnerWelles, Laurence Duggan, andNelson Rockefeller alsoshould havebeencharacterized, but are not.This isespecially importantbecause Wellesresigned in the summer of I943, Hull retireda yearlater,andRoosevelt diedin earlyI945. Greengoes beyondthat period.With the manypersonnel changes that occurred, he does not illustratehow 'goodneighbor' diplomacy wasconsistently followedby the Truman administration, whiledeclaring that bothfollowedsimilarpolicies. Green concludes his studyby suggesting that, insteadof establishing longterm peace,'goodneighbor' diplomacy increased the tide of revolutionagainst many Latin Americandictatorships which cameto power during Roosevelt's presidency. Somewhere the authorshouldhavementionedthat Latin American nationshad experienced many dictatorships and revoltslongbefo.re the New Deal. He correctlydeclares that the 'goodneighbor'policywasnot aspositive asis generallyperceived;however,it is nowhereasnegativeasGreensuggests. The bilateral and multilateral issues which he examinedwere only a few of the problemswhich the Roosevelt administration confronted.They certainly do not comprise a historyof the mythsand realitiesof 'goodneighbo.r' diplomacyasthe author claims.At worst,thisstudygivesa distortedview of what transpired;at best,it poses questions whichotherhistorians mustanswer. IRWIN F. GELLMAN Morgan State College The Meiji Restoration.wIi•i•i^vtG. BE^SI•EV. Stanford,StanfordUniversity Press, I97•. Pp.xiv,513.$I7.5o. Professor Beasley's new work on the Meiji Restorationis likely to remain the standard introduction to the subject in Englishfor sometimeto come.In many waysit calls to mind E. Herbert Norman'sclassic but now dated Japan's Emergenceas a Modern State (I94O). Like Norman'swork it is not a monographbut a synthesis, weavingnarrativeand analysis togetherin a lucid, balanced , andjudicious style. 184 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Much water hasflowedunderthe bridgesinceNorman'sday. Pro.fesor Beasley has not only beena carefulobserver of the current,he hasalsotravelled the streamto its sources. The bookis basedin largemeasureon hisextensive reconnaissance of unpublished Britishdiplomaticpapersand basicpublished Japanesedocuments, especiallythe papersand biographies o.f leaderslike -ShimazuHisamatsu , OkuboToshimichi, Kid6 K6in, and Saig6Takamori.For bothfact andinterpretation the authorisalsomuchin thedebtof otherWestern scholars, suchas Craig, Dore, Harootunian,Jansen,and T.C. Smith, who havemadesignalcontributions to our understanding of the Restoration. Like mostof thesewriters,he is in basicdisagreement with the large corpusof Japanese interpretive and monographic workwhichstresses 'cl•tss analysis' of bakurnatsu politicsand triesto ferretout the 'class motives' of its actors. He is rather more in sympathy with non-Marxistscholars like Inobe Shigeo,Sakata Yoshio,and Oka Yoshitake,who emphasize the foreignproblemas the main catalystof politicalchangeand stress the nationalist motivesbehindthe restoration . There arefeweranalytical fireworks in Beasley's workthanin Norman's, but by the sametokenthe bookbringsusmuchcloserto what wasgoingon inside the heads(and councilchambers) of politicalleaders, government officials, and reformistactivistsin the late i85os and 186os.The abundantuseof biographical sketches, the economical summaries of keymemorials, and the lucid exposition of debateoverpolicyquestions givea concrete sense of thealternatives men sawbeforethem. Perhapsthe greatest strength of the booklieshere,in its rejectionof a sense that the restoration wasan 'inevitable'or 'predetermined event.'One comes awayfrom readingit with a sense that someotheroutcome perhaps a 'Japanese Magna Carta,'asBeasley putsit- mighthavebeenequally plausible. The bookdoesnot neglectthe broadtrendsof event,whichare essentially described asa series of waves of politicalinitiatives, oftenoverlapping oneanother ,takenby domestic groups with differingconceptions of howbestto respond to the 'dangers fromwithout.'The authorisat hisbestin treatingthe years from 1853to 1868,a periodhehasalready writtenonin an earlieressay on bakurnatsu foreignpolicy.The narrativerevolves aroundthoseoutsidethe bakufuwho sought institutional change.Particularattentioncentres on the activitiesof Satsuma,a domainwhoserole hasnot beendealt with in suchdetail in previous Western-language workson the Restoration. The chapters dealing with the periodafter i868, whentheleaders of thenewgovernment embarked on the taskof buildinga modernstate,society, andeconomy, losethemomentum of the earliersections o.fthe book,but theyalsocontainmuchnew and interesting information, particularly onpost-Restoration reformin thedomains. The main weakness of the...