| NOTA |
(★)(This book elucidates four broad areas of Takahashi´s life. The first has to do with his education. How did Takahashi, with his inauspicious beginnings and straitened childhood, come in maturity to hold a sophisticated set of political and economic ideas? Takahashi, because of the year of his birth and low rank, was essentially an autodidact ; he had neither a classical samurai nor an elite modern education. His only usable skill was a fluent command of English, which he began to develop at the age of ten with foreign missionaries in Yokohama. In fact, Takahashi was one of a small group of low-ranking samurai born in the 1850s who learned to speeak English well because they were either too young to study by rote memorization in late feudal schools, or too old to learn in the formally-structured classrooms of elite Meiji period schools such as Tokyo Imperial University. These men had the advantage of learning by speaking from childhood with native English speakers, not from textbooks.The second area of study is Takahashi´s service at the highest levels of government between 1904 and 1927. My third subject is Takahashi´s countercyclical policies during the world depression, and their efficacy. How was Takahashi able to introduce policies that most financial statesmen in Japan and the West in 1931-32 opposed as outrageously unorthodox? The fourth and final subject is the relationship between Takahashi´s deficit financing and the rise of militarism. It is widely acknowledged that Takahashi was not a militarist. Takahashi was not merely an important political leader : his life was also fascinating. While the primary goal of this book is to analyze Takahashi´s education and involvement in government, there are many good tales to tell along the way. One can trace Takahashi´s success to his unorthodox early life --because of it he had a detachment and pragmatism, a gregarious and even insouciant conviviality that made it easy for him to chat up strangers, and a total lack of self-consciousness with foreigners, unusual for a Japanese of his lifetime.[from ´INTRODUCTION´] ◆Richard J.Smethurst is Professor of History and UCIS Research Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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