Europe developed by industrial revolution but of an allegedly declining Europe, with the crisis that Asia will be confronted by in future and he says we should look at such a crisis. I was very impressed by that. I was impressed by the fact that he looks at the history in its movement and that he looks at crisis. And about the contents of the crisis, Asian crisis, we tend to think of an economic crisis which is now attacking Asian nations. When we think of an economic crisis, we tend to think about how much money we will lose or gain.
Thus such an economic crisis is directly connected to our daily living, but the crisis Dr. Reid talked about was completely different. What will become of our society, what will become of us in future? We may have the worst society in future. This is the real crisis. The crisis he told us to be careful about is different. His crisis is not a economic crisis but a crisis of value for the human race. In this sense what he said simulated me very much.
Dr. Kawakasu talked about 500 years ago. Since he already talked about the period from 500 years ago to the Edo Period, I have nothing to add to his speech. Only I would like to talk about several important things about the time closer to the Edo Period. I agree with Dr. Kawakatsu about the relations between world economy and Japan. Another important thing is just about 400 years ago, in 1597, Japan was defeated in a war. I shouldn't say "Japan was defeated" because Japan was not one united nation in those days.
Hideyoshi went over to the Korean Peninsula aiming to conquer the whole Asian region, then was defeated and came back. It was 400 years ago. I think the biggest factor which led to the birth of the Edo Period was, first, world economy, in particular, economy-related silver. Silver had power in Japan and silver came to Asia from South America, since the Spanish people developed South American silver.
Another great factor was, I believe, Hideyoshi's attempt to conquer whole Asia' his expedition. The above two factors and he problem of depletion of domestic resources, which of course occurred only gradually, caused a crisis in Japan just before the beginning of the Edo Period. This was not just a change in history but real globalization. When we look at the beginning of the Edo Period, we find, first, globalization meant crisis. Globalization was not necessarily development but a very dangerous phenomenon. Secondly since there was a possibility of the nation's hitting bottom, it was a period of rehabilitation and recovery. I believe Japan came across this dangerous globalization at that time, Because Hideyoshi's attempt at conquering Asia was completely disrupted and he returned to Japan, we can say he was punished by Asia. As a result various things happened.
One thing was, as Dr. Kawakatsu said, the problem of technology. Since Japan had no technology, Japan was inf1uenced a great deal by China and of course by India in the Edo Period. Japan tried to build itself as a technological country, inf1uenced by China and India.
And the other thing was, what Dr. Kawakatsu said lastly, the possibility of changing culture to civilization, changing from a cultural country to a civilized country, that is to say, Japan had had no civilization before that time and decided to become a civilized country, following the lead of China.
It was a great change, that is, to rehabilitate the country.
Japan wanted to do so based on these two things. When Japan tried to rehabilitate itself, first, it emphasized diplomacy. Since Japan had closed its doors to the outside world, Japanese diplomacy in those days had not been studied very much, but by giving up many guns, Japan converted is foreign policy from an armed diplomacy to a cultural diplomacy. Japan learned cultural diplomacy from Chinese tribute system. Thus the same method was used for the unification of Japan and diplomatic intercourse. There were about 300 small, independent nations throughout Japan in those days. In order to rule all of them without fighting, the Japanese government used a system very similar to the tribute system, which is called Sankinkotai (daimyo's alternate year residence in Edo). The government did exactly the same thing in diplomatic intercourse, that is, in is relations with Ryukyu and the Korean Peninsula as well as East Indian Company of Holland.
The other thing was to strive to become a civilized country, and for that purpose education was needed. When the Japanese went into the Korean Peninsula, they brought back a huge amount of printing types from Seoul. Of course I should say the Japanese stole them from Korea according to the Korean people's point of view. Publication started with these printing types. What was characteristic with Japan was that when publication started, the Japanese court or the military government did not monopolize it. Instead in a very short period of time it spread to private publishers all over Japan. In this way publishing industry started, which quickly changed to wood-block printing. that is, the method of printing on the wooden plate. The reason for this change was the increasing population of readers. I will not go into the details of this. Anyway, in this way education started.
Education and publication started in this way. Systematic
