INQUIRY QUESTIONS TO ASK

What specific policies touching on your area of investigation were adopted to maintain Tokugawa control during the early seventeenth century? What challenges, if any, to these control attempts were made and by whom, towards what end? What was the state's reaction? How did this kind of interaction (challenge / response) contribute to growth and change within your field of interest and thereby promote the modernization process?

What "unintended consequences" did the status quo policies adopted by the Tokugawa have in your area of inquiry? That is, how did attempts to prevent change actually encourage it? How did the state react when so challenged by the unexpected?

What kinds of influences predominated in the field of innovation? Where did they originate; why did they appear -- in response to what kind of stimulus and towards what end? Who was responsible for their emergence and spread (core / periphery; within or without the establishment; elite / common; sacred / secular; among dissenters or reformers?)

The modernization process must be rooted in tradition. In what ways did "tradition" -- maintained, transformed, invented, or rejected -- play a significant role in the shape assumed by the systems and institutions, products and results of this process at work in the area of inquiry you have chosen to explore? What "traditions" were invoked, overturned as obsolete or given weight and authority within your interest area? In other words, exactly how was tradition used within your specific area of inquiry to propel modernization in early modern Japan along a specific trajectory?

Though nominally isolated from contact with the outside world by a series of seclusion edicts, the influences of the rest of the world continued to seep into Japan during the Tokugawa period. How, if at all, did these external influences impact the modernization process within your area of interest? For what reason? To what end? With what result?

What effect(s) did changes taking place in your arena of focus have elsewhere on the modernization process? What other economic / political / social / cultural consequences can be linked to those occurring within your area of specific concern? How did the changes taking place elsewhere influence (negatively / positively) those within your focus area?

How did growth and development taking place in other areas of Tokugawa era life in general affect / influence changes in the arena you have chosen to investigate? Did these changes elsewhere exert a positive / negative impact within your area of inquiry?

The Tokugawa shored up their political, economic and social power through the application and effective use of Neo-Confucian philosophical ideals and the underlying Buddhist and Shinto religious beliefs / practices already present in Japanese culture. How, if at all, were these philosophical and religious justifications later an influencing factor in the modernization experienced within your area of interest?