Japan's nineteenth-century history is the crossroads for three overlapping, but normally distinct, perspectives on social change. Each perspective constitutes a search, respectively, (1) for the origins of rapid modernization, (2) for the unraveling of the premodern social order, and (3) for the consequences of sweeping reforms. No one of these searches is yet near completion, but together they already offer convincing evidence of far-reaching changes in social structure. When bolstered by information from abundant materials such as local histories, which are rich in detail but eschew broad generalizations, the scholarship associated with these three perspectives provides an unusually strong historical foundation for attempts to summarize the main lines of social change in a nineteenth-century, still little modernized country.

Exploration of the origins of rapid modernization derives from questions about contemporary Japan. In search of the fundamental and distinctive qualities of Japan's “economic miracle,” a number of social scientists have turned back to the organizational characteristics, the work attitudes, and the general social structure that immediately preceded the modern era. Historically based catchphrases such as Chie Nakane's “vertical society” (tate shakai) and Hayami Akira's “industrious revolution” (kimben kakumei) are suggestive of the results of this retrospective inquiry, conveying the impression of a people prepared even before modern reforms were initiated for directed, concerted, and diligent action. In like manner, others eager to discover the roots of Japan's unusual modern development continue to find evidence for extraordinary qualities already widely dispersed among the Japanese people in the nineteenth century.