Abstract

In studying the background of Japan's expansionist policy it is necessary to take into account the part played by Yoshida Shōin, one of the most picturesque and colorful personalities in modern Japanese history. Yoshida was one of the outstanding figures of the movement which in 1868 overthrew the Shogunate and restored the Imperial authority. “If we are going to speak of the Restoration,” Mr. Iichiro Tokutomi points out in his biographical study, “we must necessarily speak of Yoshida Shōin. Just as a mother may die in giving birth to her child, but the child lives and grows to manhood, so we may say he was the mother and child of the Restoration.”

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