REMEMBER THAT THIS JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT SHOULD -- 

• BE ORGANIZED AROUND A SPECIFIC THESIS STATEMENT 
• INCORPORATE SPECIFIC ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES DRAWN FROM THE ASSOCIATED ASSIGNED READINGS
• INCLUDE APPROPRIATE ANNOTATION (AND A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES CITED) CREDITING THE SOURCES FOR YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS.

an example of an informal analytical essay 

What happened both in the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and in the years following? Did what transpired in fact represent a true "restoration" of the pre-Tokugawa political, economic and social ways of organizing Japanese life? Was it instead a "revolution" based on an abandonment of "traditional" ways of doing things? Or does what happened during these tumultuous years simply represent a continuation of a process of modernization, one now increasingly influenced by the impact of the West?

In your consideration of the above series of questions, discuss in your journal the relative roles each of the following played both in the collapse of the Tokugawa bakufu and the rise of the Meiji state:

• the inability of the Tokugawa to implement the kind of effective changes needed to keep themselves in power, even if it meant abandoning long-standing policies advocating maintainance of the staus quo.
  
  
• the impact of abandoning seclusion and allowing the nations of the West to enter Japan after nearly two centuries of exclusion.
  
  
• the growing disparity between Tokugawa ideals and the realities of life under the Tokugawa baku-han system.