| NOTA |
(★)(The Meiji Restoration of 1868 is almost universally acknowledged as the dividing point between traditional and modern Japan. It was marked by a variety of changes in the different social spheres ; one of the most basic of these was the creation in the political sphere of a new kind of monarchic government, which tended to centralize and strengthen the state. This study examines the last, most obscure, and feeblest phase in the history of the imperial institution before its reemergence and sheds light on the origin of this new conception of the monarchy. During the period before the Restoration, the effective central government of Japan was headed by shoguns of the Tokugawa house ; the emperors were not only politically impotent, they were virtually imprisoned. Imperial weakness was not a new condition, for the strong, Chines-style imperial office of early times had already begun to atrophy in the ninth century. However, until the beginning of the Tokugawa period in the seventeenth century, the emperor´s office retained a certain amount of power and influence. The Tokugawa period marked a new phase in the relations between the throne and the government, because then for the first time the imperial institution was almost totally isolated from almost every governing office. This isolation persisted until the closing years of Tokugawa rule. The chronological boundaries of this study extend from the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in the seventeenth century to the beginnings of the imperial reemergence ten years before the Restoration. In addition, the author provides an introductory chapter which gives a brief account of the origins of the imperial office and of the various stages of its development before the Tokugawa period. Herschel Webb is an Associate Professor of Japanese at Columbia University. He is the author of ´An Introduction to Japan and Research in Japanese Sources : A Guide´.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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