![]() More voters has not always meant a more engaged electorate, yet the rights and freedoms enjoyed by the Japanese people, as well as the responsiveness of the state to the popular will, all increased dramatically after World War II. One yardstick of this change is the number of eligible voters in Japan: 450,000 in 1890 (1.2% of total population), 1.5 million in 1912 (3%), 12.4 million in 1928 (20% the first national election after passage of universal manhood suffrage in 1925), 41 million in 1947 (52% following women gaining the vote), and today 94.5 million (76% of the total population). We see in Japan a momentous transition from a limited democracy prior to World War II, under a constitution where sovereignty was vested in a semi-divine ruler, to liberal democracy on a progressive (and largely American) model after the “MacArthur” Constitution of 1947, which gave sovereignty to the people. Subjects to Citizens: A Tale of Two Constitutions Technological advances have led to profound changes in the nature of work, transportation, and communications, and have profoundly shaped modern Japan's relations with the outside world (not just in the sense of facilitating contact and trade overseas, but also in creating more dependence on imported resources like oil). There is more technology in today’s average toilet in Japan (most of which warm, wash, and dry, while some serenade and even chemically analyze your bodily functions) than in the most sophisticated mechanical devices in the world at the dawn of the twentieth century. Technological Change: Steam Trains to Mecha-Toilets At the very least, I hope this list can serve as a starting point, a first step in conceptualizing and framing the last 100 years of Japanese history and a beginning for debating and discussing how best to approach twentieth-century Japan in a classroom setting. Other historians and teachers are sure to find many ways in which my ranking is lacking, overemphasizing one theme or ignoring another, simplifying too much or being insufficiently critical. ![]() This list, like any top ten, whether of the best movies of the year or of America's leading universities, is inevitably very subjective. ![]() To make the story of modern Japan a little more manageable, I have followed the lead of late-night television and sketched out a top-ten list of what I consider to be the most important themes, trends, and topics in Japan’s twentieth-century history. What themes should be stressed? What aspects of the modern Japanese experience-political, social, economic, cultural, intellectual-should be emphasized? How can the complexity of the past century in Japan-the continuities and discontinuities, the tensions, strains, and contradictions, the ironies that litter the historical narrative-be distilled down to a “classroom-ready” form? Capturing that history, whether it be in a short essay like this one, in a social studies class, or in a full semester-length course, can be a daunting challenge for any teacher, at any level. ![]() The pace and scale of changes that Japan witnessed in the twentieth century were nothing short of breathtaking.
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