It is now generally recognized that Japan has been much the most successful of the countries outside Europe and North America in achieving modernization. The transformation from a feudal society with a Confucian ethic to a ‘modern, Western style economy’ is charted in this book (originally published in 1990) which follows the political, economic and social changes from the decline of the Tokugawa in the 1860s all the way through to the death of Emperor Hirohito and the end of the Showa era in 1989.