历史小径·世界史英语精读30篇（4）
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The Meiji Restoration and Institutional Borrowing
明治维新与制度借鉴
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After 1868, Japan’s Meiji leaders dispatched missions like the Iwakura Embassy to study Western institutions—not to copy them wholesale but to adapt selectively.
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They adopted Prussian-style conscription and civil codes while rejecting parliamentary sovereignty, preserving imperial authority at the constitutional core.
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Railway construction followed British engineering standards, yet land acquisition policies drew from Tokugawa-era domain management rather than English common law.
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The Ministry of Education modeled teacher training on French écoles normales but mandated Shinto ethics instruction to reinforce national identity.
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Industrial policy favored zaibatsu conglomerates with state-backed monopolies, blending capitalist enterprise and bureaucratic oversight unlike laissez-faire models.
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Legal reforms abolished feudal status distinctions but retained hierarchical workplace norms embedded in labor contracts and promotion criteria.
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Even the national anthem and flag were designed as modern symbols to unify diverse domains under a singular, secularized imperial ideology.
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Foreign advisors were hired under fixed-term contracts, ensuring knowledge transfer without long-term dependency or cultural assimilation.
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Meiji modernization succeeded not by becoming ‘Western’ but by treating foreign systems as modular inputs within a distinctly Japanese governance architecture.
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Its legacy informs contemporary debates on technological sovereignty—how to import AI frameworks while maintaining regulatory and ethical autonomy.