A Study of Recent Political Thought

As Japan enters the age of constitutional government, its political thinkers dispute the meaning of liberty, equality, national rights, and economic progress. Kuga Katsunan follows these arguments from the late shogunate through the Restoration and the first Imperial Diet, showing how schools of thought emerge, divide, and sometimes exchange positions.

His account moves from advocates of national wealth and popular rights to the Liberal, Reform, and Imperial schools, then to economists, legal scholars, and critics of Europeanization. Kuga weighs their achievements and contradictions before turning openly to his own national school: an effort to reconcile national independence with internal unity and participation in world civilization.

A newspaper editor and influential Meiji political commentator, Kuga writes with the urgency of a participant. This complete English translation includes the supplied foreword and preliminary remarks, with notes on historical references, political terminology, and uncertainties in the Japanese text. AI-assisted translation.