revolution in Japanese society and government. This revolution did not, like those in nineteenth-century Europe, boil up from below. It was carefully planned at the top and forced upon the people by a relatively small but extremely vigorous group in control of the government. The leaders had the advantage of coming for the most part from the same samurai background, and they had arrived at a similar point of view through similar experiences and influences. Since they were young, they were mentally and emotionally more eager for sweeping changes than their elders. And they were extremely talented, having achieved their leadership by demonstrating superior abilities and a capacity for adjustment to new situations in the confused politics of their individual Daimyo realms, and in the intrigues and counter-intrigues of the Kyoto court.
The leaders of the new regime also had another advantage—they inherited the strong and reasonably efficient Tokugawa government almost intact. The central administration had not been eaten away by decay and corruption, as had often been the case in other countries when revolutionary governments came into power. Japan entered its great revolutionary period a unified, centralized nation, unravaged by any prolonged period of political disruption and disunity.
The contrast with China and Korea, Japan’s only neighbors, was marked. Both these countries, during the nineteenth century, suffered prolonged periods of political decline. The Manchu dynasty of China, after two hundred years of strong rule, was slowly dying from inner decay, and China was to fall into a sad state of political disruption before Republican revo-