Meiji Japan in Global History Workshop

Japan's Meiji era (1868-1912) has been cast and recast in narratives that have focused on change: the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate; the adoption of Western ideas and institutions; high-speed modernization, industrialization, and commercialization; and the rise of Japanese imperialism in Asia.

The workshop will ask if and how Meiji signifies a moment of global connectivity and in what ways this twenty-first century starting point stimulates new questions and offers ways to reconceptualize Japanese engagement with the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century world.