Empire and Constitution in Modern Japan

Since the beginning of the Meiji period when Japan evolved into a modern and powerful nation-state, ideas of empire and constitution imbued Japanese rule and progress. In Empire and Constitution in Modern Japan, Junji Banno expertly analyses how these conflicting concepts operated together in Japan from 1868 until 1937.

By ‘empire’, Banno means the Japanese impetus to create its own empire; by ‘constitution’, he identifies Japanese efforts to create a constitutional government. In this book, Banno discusses the complicated relationship between these two concepts, ranging from incompatibility in some periods to symbiosis in others. Furthermore, understanding the complex and competing nature of these ideals, he persuasively reasons, is key to our understanding of why Japan and China went to war in 1937, leading to Pearl Harbor just four years later.

Translated by eminent scholar Arthur Stockwin, Banno’s highly accessible account of the dynamics of pre-war Japanese political history provides an engaging survey of imperialism and constitutionalism in modern Japan. It will be of vital importance to all scholars of modern Japanese history.

Junji Banno was a Professor of History at the Institute of Social Science of Tokyo University, Japan. Between 1971 and 2012 he published numerous books on modern Japanese history, three of which have been translated into English: The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System (1992), Democracy in Pre-War Japan (2001), and Japan's Modern History, 1857-1937 (2014). Junji Banno sadly passed away in 2020.

Arthur Stockwin is Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK. He is the author of Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan (1988), Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan (2003), and Governing Japan (4th ed. 2008). In 2004 he was presented with The Order of the Rising Sun on behalf of the Emperor of Japan for his efforts to promote Japanese studies in the United Kingdom, and in 2009 was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to academic excellence.