New Times in Modern Japan
Chapter One
DISCOVERY OF PASTS
Morse in Japan remains what he has been all his life-a man locked in a
silent struggle with time, one whose days are filled with a pursuit of
practical truths that can be shared with a world hungry to understand
itself.
-Robert A. Rosenstone (1998)
WE ARE QUITE FAMILIAR with the Meiji period as one of considerable
transformation of all aspects of life on the archipelago. But its
characterization as a move from old to new-as simply exiting from its
self-incurred immaturity-obscures the historicity of modernity, that
process described above by Rosenstone: a "pursuit of practical truths" for
a "world hungry to understand itself." Several steps are necessary to
begin that process: first, the idea of immaturity suggests that one's
present society is incomplete and living in the past. In other words,
there is a recognition of a progressive time and a separation of pasts
from present. Second, one must recognize that the world of inadequacy is
man-made, not because of a degeneration from some originary ideal, but
because of the artificial constructions posed by such primitive ideas and ... read full excerpt from New Times in Modern Japan ebook
