Not exactly about the meiji restoration, but the before and the after, and what happened during the last Tokugawa years, the perry expedition, the emergence of the ideological framework of the restoration … then into the Meiji era itself, its ups and downs, the russian-japanese war, the showa era, the assassinations, the rising militarism etc..
I’ve read Mishima’s sea of fertility, but it’s a story told from the bourgeoisie’s perspective.
To sum it up roughly, l’m looking for something like a Japanese family saga set between 1850’s and pre/post WWII.
Thank you.
by Illustrious_Monk_135
1 Comment
The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki is pretty good for that period but focuses more on merchant class family dynamics. For something closer to what you want, maybe check Shusaku Endo’s work – he writes about how modernization hit different social classes during that transition 📚 His characters really show the cultural whiplash people experienced when Japan opened up to the west