SOME POSSIBLE LINES OF INQUIRY TO CONSIDER

• The role of religion in modernization (education / national identity)
  
• Building a "traditional" culture: the emergence of a literary and / or artistic canon
  
• Developments in sacred / secular architecture
  
• Changes in the political administration of the state (local / national) and the reasons therefore
  
• The "scholars of national learning" and the modernization process
  
• "Dutch scholars" and the role of the West in Early Modern Japan
  
• The contributions of popular culture (woodblock prints, kabuki, popular literature, haiku) to modernization
  
• Urbanization's contributions to the modernization process in early modern Japan
  
• Growth and Change in early modern rural Japan
  
• From samurai to bureaucrat: administrative modernization
  
• The emergence of a codified "Way of the Warrior" and its impact on Early Modern Japan
  
• Contributions of "the entertainment industry" to the modernization process
  
• Technological transformations and their impact in early modern Japan
  
• Keeping the world at bay: early modern Japanese diplomacy's contributions to the modernization of a "closed country"
  
• Thinking about the "Modern" - Contributions of Confucianism
  
• Religious Pilgrimage in Early Modern Japan