This is one of the most important books ever published in the West on Japanese culture."" - Times Literary Supplement ""In both scope and sophistication of argument presented, Najita's Visions of Virtue ranks among the best books to appear in recent years in the field of Japanese intellectual history."" - Journal of Asian Studies

The modern political consciousness of Japan cannot be understood without reference to the history of the Tokugawa period, the era between 1600 and 1868 that preceded Japan's modern transformation. In this volume Tetsuo Najita introduces the ideas of the leading political thinker of the period, Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728), providing an important insight into the history and politics of contemporary Japan. Sorai's texts are accompanied by a chronology of his life, a glossary, a guide to persons mentioned in the text, and a guide to further reading, as well as Professor Najita's introduction, which puts the work into philosophical and historical context.

The modern political consciousness of Japan cannot be understood without reference to the history of the Tokugawa period, the era between 1600 and 1868 that preceded Japan's modern transformation. In this volume Tetsuo Najita introduces the ideas of the leading political thinker of the period, Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728), providing an important insight into the history and politics of contemporary Japan. Sorai's texts are accompanied by a chronology of his life, a glossary, a guide to persons mentioned in the text, and a guide to further reading, as well as Professor Najita's introduction, which puts the work into philosophical and historical context.

Historians have long been aware of the richness and complexity of the intellectual history of modern Japanese politics. Najita's study, however, is the first in a Western language to present a consistent and broad synthesis of this subject. Najita elucidates the political dynamics of the past two hundred years of Japanese history by focusing on the interplay of restorationism and bureaucratism within the context of Japan's modern revolution, the Meiji Restoration.

First published by Princeton University Press in 1982, this volume depicts the conflict and uncertainty that have bedeviled modern Japan. The eighteen contributors explore dissent, secession, and conflict first in the 1850s and 1860s, when the Tokugawa regime gave way to the Meiji government, and then from the end of the Russo-Japanese War through the mid-1920s. Includes an introduction by Tetsuo Najita and concluding chapter by J. Victor Koschmann.

Tetsuo Najita explores a powerful theme in the economic thought and practice of ordinary citizens in late Tokugawa and early modern Japan. He examines commoners' writings on the virtues of commerce, the reconstruction of villages, and groups offering credit and loans, particularly the traditional cooperative, the ko, which citizens created to save one another in times of famine and fiscal emergency without turning to their government. The alternative genealogy of early Japanese capitalism that emerges is based on cooperative action, whose motive for profit was combined with a concern for social well-being. Najita's discussion centers on the relationship of economics, ethics, and the epistemological premise that nature must serve as the first principle of all knowledge, and he illuminates comparative issues of poverty, capitalism, and modernity.