Status Updates From Molding Japanese Minds

Detailed analysis on the trade-offs among different social and political groups. The author challenged the black-&-white assumption of a monolithic state and its cronies vs. opposition groups. Relationships among groups were much more complicated and should be understood in terms of interest group dynamism. Love all of those bootleggers-&-baptists moments in the book, shows how ppl were acting pretty strategically

Book didn’t jump straight into discussing the moral suasion (教化) process during the imperial era, but started from the Tokugawa era, with very detailed explanations about how this system affected the social/cultural landscape, how it benefited (in concrete terms) the ruling class, and how it laid the foundation for the thinking and policy making after the Meiji Restoration. I really like this approach.