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Japan's Spongy-Middle Revolution
In 1961, Thomas C. Smith published a short essay entitled “Japan’s Aristocratic Revolution.” In his characteristically clear and economical prose, he begins, “There was no democratic revolution in Japan because none was necessary: the aristocracy itself was revolutionary.” The essay goes on to make an argument now so familiar as to feel self-evident: low-ranking samurai carried out the revolution we call the Meiji Restoration without much help from either the peasant masses or the bourgeoisie. In this talk I will substitute Smith’s “aristocracy” with a less clearly defined class of actors who inhabited a spongy middle stratum of Tokugawa society: status-straddlers, some on the lowest fringe of the samurai class and others well-connected commoners. In addition to complicating our understanding of Tokugawa society, I will propose a way to frame the collapse of the early modern order as social history.
Date:
19 February 2026, 17:00
Venue:
St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Pavilion Room, 4th Floor Gateway Building
Speaker:
Professor David Howell (Harvard University)
Organising department:
Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies
Organisers:
Dr Yosuke Buchmeier (Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford),
Professor Roger Goodman (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
administrator@nissan.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Nissan Institute Seminar in Japanese Studies
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Andrew Melling
