Word: meiji
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Scarcely a half-century had passed since the barbarians aboard Perry's black ships had humiliated the shoguns, and now Japan was a politely pugnacious power. The Meiji Restoration (the Emperor died in 1912) was a miracle of national self-regeneration, but the lessons imperfectly learned from the imperialist powers of the 19th century contained, or perhaps simply intensified, some dangerous poisons: a hunger for autocracy, a reliance on force, a fear of isolation from the world, and a rankling sense of grievance. The world would hear more of them. -By Otto Friedrich
...rites of passage (births, marriages, funerals and death anniversaries) and, for the community, a sequence of colorful, joyful festivals. So popular is Hatsumode, the New Year's visit to local sacred places, that specially installed traffic lights guide millions of worshipers along the gravel paths of the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo...
Japan learned that lesson, in reverse, not once but twice. After the Meiji Restoration, the new imperial government sent study missions to the U.S., France and Prussia, then tried to set up a national education system based on Western liberal utilitarian thought. The experiment was short-lived. Much the same thing happened after the U.S. occupation. The American-imposed structure of grade school, junior high and high school was retained, along with coeducation and compulsory attendance until age 15. But many of the other...
...city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. Except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted), Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meiji print...
...shrines stand a stone's throw from each other in Tokyo's Shibuya district. One looks toward the past; the other embodies the present. The first, the Meiji memorial, a Shinto edifice of Japanese cypress embellished with gilded copper, is dedicated to Emperor Hirohito's grandfather. The other, which glints a deep azure in the sun, is the modernistic steel-and-glass headquarters of NHK, Japan's public broadcasting system, symbol of a national obsession: television...