History Inquiry: World History × Japanese History

At that time spices passed through Muslim and Italian merchants and were traded at high prices, so the desire to trade directly became a major motive for opening new sea routes. The Industrial Revolution (late 18th century) and the Suez Canal (1869) belong to a far later age; they are the standard trap that tests your sense of chronology. If you also remember religious zeal (an extension of the Reconquista) as a motive, you can use it in essay answers as well.

The huge inflow of silver lowered the value of money and pushed prices up: this is the “Price Revolution.” Lords who lived on rents fixed in amount became poorer in real terms, and the dissolution of feudal society advanced. The typical trap reverses the causal chain “more silver → higher prices.” In inquiry-style courses you are asked to explain exactly this causation, how the flow of silver changed social structure.

With the opening of new sea routes the leading role in trade moved from the Italian cities of the Mediterranean to Atlantic ports such as Lisbon and Antwerp (the Commercial Revolution). “Italy prospered” is the reverse trap that mixes up cause and effect. Organize it together with the Price Revolution (rising prices) as the two great economic effects of the Age of Exploration and you will not confuse them.

Luther's criticism of the sale of indulgences, which was meant to raise money for rebuilding St. Peter's Basilica, was the starting point of the Reformation. Understand it together with his claim that one is justified by faith alone. The Society of Jesus was born later, as a counter-move against the Reformation, so watch out for choices that reverse the order. Questions about the order of cause and effect (indulgences → Luther → Counter-Reformation) are frequent.

Calvin preached predestination and regarded diligence in one's calling as an act that reveals the glory of God, so that as a result the accumulation of wealth was affirmed and support spread among merchants and manufacturers. This contrasts with Lutheranism, which spread mainly through the princes, and this difference of social base is the heart of comparison questions. Do not fall for choices that misread predestination as “you are saved if you make an effort”; hold onto the exact idea that salvation is decided in advance.

The Catholic side reaffirmed its doctrine at the Council of Trent, and the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola and others, sought to recover ground through overseas missions and education (the Counter-Reformation). Xavier's mission to Japan was part of this current, and it is a favorite inquiry topic because it links world history and Japanese history. Indulgences were the target of criticism, so the choice saying they were expanded is the reverse of the truth.

The divine right of kings traced the king's authority to God and justified absolutism (it was argued by Bossuet and others). Social contract theory, which bases power on a contract with the people, and the separation of powers were rather the ideas of those who criticized absolutism, and the standard trap swaps these opposing positions. If you remember each theory by its function, that is, by what it justifies, you will not mix them up.

Colbert promoted mercantilism (Colbertism), aiming at an export surplus through royal manufactories and protective tariffs, and this supported the finances of absolutism. Laissez-faire and physiocracy appeared in the 18th century as criticisms of mercantilism, so watch out for choices that reverse the chronological order. Remember it as a set: absolutism means a standing army and a bureaucracy plus mercantilism.

Because a Manchu minority had to govern a Han majority, the Qing skillfully combined coercive measures such as the compulsory queue and the literary inquisition with conciliatory ones such as continuing the civil service examinations and appointing Manchus and Han in parallel. Asking about this two-sided structure of carrot and stick is typical of inquiry-style questions, so a choice that states only one side is insufficient. The abolition of the examinations belongs to the early 20th century (the New Policies), a different age.

Akbar abolished the jizya, the poll tax on non-Muslims, and by reconciling with Hindus he consolidated the foundations of the empire; the strict Aurangzeb revived it, provoked revolts in many regions and became one cause of the empire's decline. Swapping “the ruler who abolished it” and “the ruler who revived it” is the most frequent trap. What is tested is a causal understanding that links religious policy with the rise and fall of the empire.

The Ottoman Empire granted the non-Muslim religious communities, the millets, self-government and freedom of worship on condition that they paid taxes, and this stabilized a vast multi-ethnic empire. It also recruited the sons of Christians through the devshirme (for the Janissaries and other posts), so both “forced conversion” and “no appointment of officials” are the opposite of the facts. Comparing this “rule through tolerance” with the conciliation policies of the Qing is a typical inquiry-style pattern.

In the Glorious Revolution James II was driven out, and William III and Mary II acceded after accepting the Bill of Rights, so that the foundations were laid for the constitutional monarchy that leads to the phrase “the monarch reigns but does not govern.” The execution of the king and the republic belong to the Puritan Revolution (Charles I was executed in 1649), and swapping the results of the two revolutions is the standard trap.

Facing financial difficulty after the Seven Years' War, Britain tightened colonial taxation with the Stamp Act, the Tea Act and similar measures, and the resistance of the colonists under the slogan “no taxation without representation” (the Boston Tea Party and so on) grew into the War of Independence. North-South conflict is a topic of the Civil War (from 1861) after independence, a trap that mixes in an event about 90 years later. Remember it as a chain of causation: war costs → taxation → resistance.

To repair finances that had deteriorated through support for the American War of Independence and other spending, the government sought to tax the privileged orders and convened the Estates-General; from the conflict over its method of voting came the National Assembly and then the storming of the Bastille. Napoleon is a figure who appears after the revolution, so treating him as its cause reverses the order of events. The flow “financial crisis → Estates-General → revolution” is the one most often asked.

In Britain several conditions overlapped: colonial markets, capital accumulated through trade, a labor force that had left the land in the second enclosure movement, resources such as coal and iron, and the technical experience built up in manufactories. The railway was a result of the Industrial Revolution (the first half of the 19th century), so a choice that places it among the causes reverses cause and effect. Explaining “why Britain” through several factors at once is a standard inquiry topic.

With the establishment of the factory system based on machinery, society split into industrial capitalists and wage laborers, and long working hours, child labor and urban sanitation became serious problems (later regulated by the Factory Acts and similar laws). Handicraft workers who lost their work to machines launched the Luddite movement of machine-breaking, so “became stable” is the reverse. The fact that people flowed from the countryside into the cities is also frequently offered in choices pointing the wrong way.

Legitimacy was advocated by the French foreign minister Talleyrand and aimed at restoring pre-revolutionary sovereignty and order; it determined the conservative character of the Vienna system. National self-determination is a principle from after the First World War (Wilson's Fourteen Points), so this is an anachronistic trap that mixes in a concept about 100 years later. If you organize the later liberal and nationalist movements as reactions against this system, the flow becomes clear.

Imperialism arose when monopoly capital, grown huge through the Second Industrial Revolution centered on heavy and chemical industry, sought not only raw materials and markets but also places to invest capital, and states backed this up with military force. The Great Depression (1929) and the Cold War (after the Second World War) are clearly later ages, and those choices test your sense of chronology. If you can explain the shift of emphasis from “exporting goods” to “exporting capital,” you will be strong in essay answers too.

Britain's north-south policy and France's east-west policy collided at Fashoda in Sudan, but France, wary of the rise of Germany, gave way and war was avoided; relations turned instead into the Entente Cordiale of 1904, in which each recognized the other's predominance (Egypt for Britain, Morocco for France). Understanding this turning point, where confrontation changed at a stroke into partnership, is what separates students, so the choice saying it became a war is wrong.

Against the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria, Italy) that went back to Bismarck, the Franco-Russian Alliance, the Entente Cordiale and the Anglo-Russian Entente joined together into the Triple Entente among powers wary of Germany's Weltpolitik. Swapping the members of the two camps is the simplest and most frequent trap. Note also that Italy, in conflict with Austria over the “unredeemed Italy,” entered the war on the Entente side.

As it dragged on, the First World War became a total war in which the state mobilized production, labor and even thought, and new weapons such as tanks, poison gas and aircraft were thrown into it. To make up for the men sent to the front, women worked in munitions factories and elsewhere, and this became one reason for the postwar expansion of women's suffrage; it is a frequent example of the causal link “war changed society.” The very fact that the expectation of a short decisive war was disappointed is what lay behind the shift to total war.

This claim symbolizes the Weltpolitik of Germany in the age of Wilhelm II (the Berlin-Baghdad railway policy and the naval race) and indicates a break with Bismarck's diplomacy, which rested on the balance of power and the isolation of France. The Reinsurance Treaty was in fact left unrenewed, so that choice is the reverse. As naval expansion deepened Anglo-German antagonism, this is the starting point of the chain of causation that runs through the formation of the Triple Entente to the First World War; it is a frequent inquiry-type theme that asks you to read a source and connect its meaning with a change of diplomacy.

Rakuichi rakuza was a policy that abolished guild privileges and market taxes in order to draw in newly rising merchants and to raise castle towns into centers of the economy. “Protecting the guilds” is a trap whose content is exactly the opposite, and if you remember the character raku (楽), meaning free of regulation, you will not go wrong. Understand it together with the abolition of barrier stations, as part of Nobunaga's work of unification, in which removing obstacles to the flow of goods turned economic power into military power.

The Taiko land survey measured land throughout the country by uniform standards (the kokudaka (石高) system of rice yield and the Kyoto masu measure) and registered a single actual cultivator in the survey register under the principle of ichi-chi issakunin (一地一作人), one plot one cultivator, so that the layered web of rights in the estate system disappeared. Land was shown in kokudaka, not in kandaka, and confusing it with the kandaka system of the Sengoku daimyo is the standard trap. Go one step further and remember that kokudaka became the standard for the land tax and for the military service of daimyo, and thus the foundation of the bakuhan (shogunate and domain) system.

The sword hunt edict (1588), issued under the pretext of casting the Great Buddha of Hokoji (方広寺), confiscated the weapons of the peasants; it made them concentrate on cultivation and so prevented ikki (一揆) uprisings, while at the same time promoting heino bunri (兵農分離), the separation of warriors and farmers into distinct statuses. Those from whom the weapons were taken were the peasants, not the warriors, and swapping who acts and who is acted upon is the typical trap. Organize it together with the land survey and the edict on social status as the starting point of the early modern status society.

Alternate attendance (made a formal system by the Kan'ei (寛永) version of the Laws for the Military Houses, the buke shohatto (武家諸法度)) made daimyo serve in Edo every other year and keep their wives and children there, so that the cost of the journeys and of maintaining two households pressed hard on domain finances. On the other hand it also produced a by-product, the development of the highways, the post stations and the consumer economy of Edo, and asking about both sides of this causation, how a policy of control promoted economic development, is typical of inquiry-style questions. Note as well that the burden deprived the daimyo of the means to revolt.

The aims of seclusion were the prohibition of Christianity and the shogunate's monopoly of trade and information, and exchange continued through the “four gateways”: Nagasaki (the Dutch and Qing China), Tsushima (Korea), Satsuma (the Ryukyus) and Matsumae (the Ainu). A choice that pictures complete isolation is an error and differs from present textbook understanding. The Dutch were permitted because they were a Protestant country that did not carry out missionary work, so beware also of the faulty reasoning “because they were a Christian country.”

To rebuild finances Yoshimune pushed forward the agemai system (in return halving the period daimyo had to spend in Edo), the fixed-rate land tax and the development of new fields, and he also built up institutions with the Kujikata Osadamegaki and the petition box. The dissolution of the merchant guilds was a policy of the Tempo Reforms (天保の改革) under Mizuno Tadakuni (水野忠邦), and asking which of the three great reforms a policy belongs to is the most frequent swap pattern. Remember by matching each reform with its keywords: Kyoho means the fiscal rebuilding of the “rice shogun.”

Tanuma took an active line that drew profit out of commerce and distribution: official recognition of the merchant guilds, monopoly sales, the drainage of Inbanuma (印旛沼) and the expansion of trade at Nagasaki. Sadanobu, in the Kansei Reforms (寛政の改革), responded instead with agriculture-first austerity: the storing of rice, the edict urging peasants back to their home villages and the cancellation of samurai debts. Reversing “Tanuma who used commerce” and “Sadanobu of frugality” is the standard trap. The difference between the two lines is the most frequent comparison question about the direction of shogunal policy.

With the Kansei ban on heterodox learning Sadanobu fixed Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism as the orthodox learning and strengthened the education and control of the shogunal retainers. The licensing of the merchant guilds belongs to Tanuma Okitsugu, the agemai system to the Kyoho Reforms (Yoshimune), and the law returning people to the countryside to the Tempo Reforms (Mizuno Tadakuni), so lining up policies from different reforms is the classic way these questions are built. Whether you can sort policies one by one by “whose reform is this?” decides your scoring power.

Mizuno saw the monopoly of the guilds as the cause of soaring prices and ordered them dissolved, but in fact the machinery of distribution was disrupted, the effect was slight, and their revival was later permitted. Asking about the gap between the intention of a policy and its actual result is typical of inquiry-style questions, and the choice saying that it succeeded as intended is the bait. Together with the collapse of the land requisition order, the failure of the Tempo Reforms is an important topic showing the decline of shogunal power.

Kasei culture was borne mainly by the commoners of Edo and was rich in the spirit of wit, satire and play: comic fiction, nishiki-e (錦絵) color prints (Hokusai and Hiroshige) and senryu (川柳) verse. “A culture of newly rising townspeople centered on Kamigata” is a description of Genroku culture (元禄文化), and swapping the central place and the period is the most frequent trap. Note as another feature that the spread of education and the growth of publishing and lending libraries carried culture to commoners all over the country.

Genroku culture, from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 18th century, was borne by the townspeople of Kamigata (Osaka and Kyoto) against a background of economic growth, and Saikaku, Chikamatsu and Basho depicted real human life vividly. In Kasei culture of the early 19th century the center of culture had moved to Edo, and its features are satire and wit, a decadent tendency, and the vogue for travel and for prints of famous places. Asking you to explain the move of the cultural center from Kamigata to Edo in connection with the shift of the economic center is the standard inquiry-style comparison question. Swapping the two central places is the biggest trap.

In the return of the domain registers (版籍奉還) the former lords went on administering their domains as domain governors, so it was incomplete; only with haihan chiken was a centralized system established in which prefectural governors appointed by the central government ruled the regions. Asking about this difference of stage, “the return of the registers is incomplete, the abolition of the domains completes it,” is standard, and confusing the two costs you points. The official recognition of landownership is a separate topic belonging to the land tax reform.

The land tax reform issued land certificates (地券) to fix who owned each plot, and by having 3% (later lowered to 2.5%) of the land price rather than of the harvest paid in cash it achieved stable finances unaffected by good or bad harvests. “Paid in rice, based on the harvest” is a description of the land tax of the Edo period, and choices that swap old and new are frequent. Since the burden remained roughly at the former level, uprisings against the land tax reform broke out in many places, and this too is asked as a matter of cause and effect.

Itagaki Taisuke and others, who had left the government after losing the debate over invading Korea, criticized the despotism of the domain-clique bureaucrats and submitted the Minsen Giin Setsuritsu Kenpakusho (民撰議院設立建白書), the petition for a popularly elected assembly, and this became the starting point of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement (自由民権運動). The promulgation of the constitution (1889) and the Imperial Diet (1890) are events on the result side of the movement, and they appear often in questions asking you to put events in order. Remember the flow: petition → League for Establishing a National Assembly → imperial edict promising a national assembly → formation of political parties.

The Constitution of the Empire of Japan was a granted constitution modeled on the German (Prussian) type with its strong monarchical power: the emperor held the whole of sovereign power and possessed prerogatives, such as the supreme command of the armed forces, in which the Diet could not intervene. The rights of subjects were recognized only “within the limits of the law.” Popular sovereignty and eternal rights are features of the postwar Constitution of Japan (日本国憲法), and the comparison of the old and new constitutions is the most frequent contrast question, from classroom tests to the Common Test.

Against the Liaodong Peninsula that Japan had obtained by the Treaty of Shimonoseki (下関条約), Russia, which was aiming to advance into Manchuria, brought in Germany and France and advised its return, and Japan, unable to resist, accepted. This produced the public mood of gashin shotan (臥薪嘗胆), enduring hardship in order to take revenge, and the expansion of armaments, and it laid the ground for the Russo-Japanese War. Swapping the three intervening powers (Russia, Germany, France) or the object of the demand (the Liaodong Peninsula) is the standard trap, and what is tested is the chain of causation: Sino-Japanese War → Triple Intervention → antagonism with Russia.

By the Treaty of Portsmouth Japan obtained leadership over Korea, rights and interests in southern Manchuria and southern Sakhalin, but no indemnity, and the discontent of a people who had endured heavy taxes and heavy sacrifices exploded in the Hibiya incendiary incident (日比谷焼打ち事件). The difference from the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which brought an indemnity of 200 million tael, is the crucial point of the contrast, and confusing them costs you the mark at once. It is also an inquiry-style topic in that it asks about the gap between the government's need to hurry into peace because national strength had reached its limit, and the fact that the people had not been told the real situation.

Japan concluded one Japan-Korea convention after another, taking over diplomatic rights (the second convention, and the setting up of the Residency-General (統監府)) and then internal administration, strengthening its control step by step; it suppressed resistance such as the righteous army movement and annexed Korea in 1910, setting up the Government-General of Korea (朝鮮総督府). What is tested is an understanding of the process, gradual reduction to a protectorate leading to annexation, so the choice saying that annexation came at a single stroke is wrong. The League of Nations was founded in 1920, so beware also of the trap that mixes in a term from the wrong age.

Against the third Katsura Taro cabinet, which had been formed through a political crisis over the demands of the army, Ozaki Yukio (尾崎行雄), Inukai Tsuyoshi (犬養毅) and others developed a movement to defend constitutional government under the slogan “down with the domain cliques, defend constitutional government”; the people too surrounded the Diet, and the cabinet fell in a little over 50 days. As the first case in which the power of public opinion brought down a domain-clique cabinet, it is placed at the starting point of Taisho Democracy. The resignation of the Terauchi cabinet over the rice riots (1918) is a different event, and confusing the periods is a source of lost marks.

The hoarding of rice in anticipation of the Siberian Intervention sent rice prices soaring, and the rice riots spread from Toyama across the whole country; the Terauchi Masatake cabinet resigned as a body to take responsibility, and Hara Takashi, president of the Rikken Seiyukai, organized a genuine party cabinet as the “commoner prime minister” who held no title of nobility. The heart of the matter is understanding the causal relation in which a popular movement brought about a change of government; if you memorize the riots and the formation of the cabinet separately, you will lose points on questions that link them.

In 1925 the universal suffrage law (普通選挙法), which gave the vote to men aged 25 and over, and the Peace Preservation Law (治安維持法), which banned associations aiming at changing the national polity (kokutai) or denying the system of private property, were enacted almost at the same time. Asking about the point that the expansion of political participation and the policing of social movements were carried out as a set (carrot and stick) is typical of inquiry-style questions. The realization of women's suffrage came after the war (1945), so the choice that equates universal suffrage with equality of the sexes is the biggest trap.

This is the substance of Yoshino Sakuzo's minponshugi, and the heart of it is that by shelving the question of “who holds sovereignty” he could argue for politics based on the popular will, that is, for universal suffrage and a party cabinet system, without contradicting the Meiji Constitution with its imperial sovereignty. It is the question that separates students most in the field of Taisho Democracy, asking you to read from the logic of the source why he deliberately distinguished his term from “democracy” in the sense of popular sovereignty. If you confuse it with a demand for popular sovereignty, your understanding becomes the exact opposite.