Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration -- 1. Introduction: The Trouble with Nature -- Objections -- Justifications -- Outline of Natures Political History in Japan -- 2. The Topographical Imagination of Tokugawa Politics -- Mental Maps -- China as Imperial Center -- Japans Imperial Center -- Rural Centers -- Centers of Learning -- Divorce Proceedings: Space versus Time -- 3. Early Meijis Contentious Natures -- Natural Forms of Contention: Laws and Bodies -- The Historiography of Meiji Ideologies -- Natures Indeterminate Determinism -- 4. Kat Hiroyuki: Turning Nature into Time -- Kat Hiroyuki and Tenk -- Shinsei taii and Kokutai shinron -- Jinken shinsetsu -- The Reaction to Jinken shinsetsu -- 5. Baba Tatsui: Natural Laws and Willful Natures -- The Equilibrium of Forces in Nature and History -- The Death Wishes of Baba Tatsui and Herbert Spencer -- Tenpu jinkenron: The Reply to Kat -- Catalyzing Nature: The Role of Will in Babas Social Evolution -- 6. Ueki Emori: Singing the Body Electric -- The Basic Body of Tenpu jinkenben -- The Political Problems of Uekis Bodies -- A Dance of Loneliness -- 7. The Acculturation of Japanese Nature -- Social Evolutions Victory -- Social Evolutions Defeat: The Political Inadequacy of a Progressive Cosmopolis -- Nature as Japanese Culture: Bringing the Outside In -- The Last Vestiges of Social Darwinism -- 8. Ultranational Nature: Dead Time and Dead Space -- Shints National Nature -- Economizing Nature -- Educating the National Family -- World-Historical Nature -- 9. Conclusion: Natural Freedom -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
Summary
The author turns the concept of nature into a powerful analytical lens through which to view Japanese modernity bringing the study of both Japanese history and political modernity to a new level of clarity
