BURNING AND BUILDING: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890

BURNING AND BUILDING: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890. By Brian Platt. Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Asia Center (distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London). 2004. xi, 325pp. (Maps, graphs, figures.) US$45.00, cloth. ISBN 0-674-01396-4.

This is a very scholarly, always interesting, but ultimately slightly puzzling book, which fills in our understanding of exactly how Japan's modern education system emerged in the Meiji period out of the Tokugawa system that preceded it. The scholarship lies in the extremely detailed analysis of local history archives in Shinano (current-day Nagano) Prefecture-long considered one of the most educationally oriented regions of Japan-which allows Brian Platt to trace both the development of individual institutions and also broader local educational policy. He demonstrates that local residents were far from passive in the face of government plans to build a modern nation-state around a centralised education system. While some wholeheartedly...