Modern Japanese leadership

The studies presented in this volume are the much revised versions of papers delivered at the Conference on Nineteenth- Century Japanese Elites held at the University of Arizona on December 21-23, 1963. The conference was unique in that it was not an attempt to discuss anyone question from a variety of viewpoints, nor was it a directed conference in which the participants were assigned specific problems. Rather, the conference came into being as a consequence of the growing awareness among a group of scholars that they were working in the same general area: Japanese leadership in the period of J'apan+s development as a "modern" society. The papers delivered at the conference were the result, thus, of research that had been carried on independently. The conference, in this sense, was really a meeting of common interests in which the participants sought no answers since, indeed, they had not started out by asking any questions. This technique, it turned out, had much to recommend it. The participants not only came away with a better view of what others .were doing in the same area of interest but with a deeper understanding of the way in which the Japanese leadership structure had been affected by and had affected Japan IS development in the period from approximately 1800 to 1950. It is the editors ' hope that those who read this volume will come away also not only with -insight into the nature of those who helped reshape Japanese society but of those who, today, would attempt to reshape their own societies.