Research On The Development Of Japanese Political Modernization

Modernization is the trend in the development of world’s history. As one of the important part in social modernization, political modernization reflects the whole society’s progress in a certain extent. Although it is difficult, Japan walks firmly forward on its political modernization road in the past140years. It is a tortuous and long development process. In the late19th century, under the pressure of western powers, Japan was forced to open doors. To meet the challenge, elite group of Meiji government started to learn from the western world and introduced political system. They hoped to make a strong and prosperous country by the political reform. The reform made Japan rise sharply to be a great power in the world, which is also changed the political pattern of East Asia. Since then Japan was also starting foreign aggression, which brought disasters to other Asian countries. After the two world wars, Japan paid a painful price for his military expansion, and also ruined his early modernization achievements. After Second World War, under the guidance of the U.S., Japan established the bourgeois democratic political system. Since then Japan stepped onto the political modernization path. Japan’s democratization is the result of American occupation authority, but it met the needs of Japanese political modernization development objectively. It also realized the stability of Japanese politics, and gave Japanese more political participation space. These also laid a foundation to Japan’s economic prosperity in1960s. But during the process of Japanese democratic politics development, as lacking of effective regime alternation, a series of problems arose. These problems became the potential threats to Japanese political modernization. Democrats’election victory in August2009, is the first regime alternation in Japanese constitutional history. It becomes a hot topic and causes people’s attention about how will the Japanese political modernization develop, As a main line of Japanese political modernization development process, this paper combines the research views of history and politics. Based on the predecessors’achievements, it focuses on the interpretation of events and existing problems of Japanese modernization politics during different stages. Then it points out the features of Japanese modernization, which hopes to offer advices and speed up to China’s political modernization development.