Anyone interested in some brief historical and philosophical discussion of sonno joi and kaikoku (opening up the country) and some of the ways these concepts have been considered in bakumatsu/Meiji Restoration history, check out:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0674040376/ref=sib_dp_rdr/104-3944371-7967950#reader-page
Some of the prologue text to the most recent publication (1992) of Aizawa Seishisai's 1825 "New Theses" (in translation) is made available about five pages into the preview. (Aizawa was a Mito scholar and firm proponent of joi.) From the book "Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825" (Harvest East Asian Monographs, Vol. 126), by Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (ISBN#0674040376). I believe this is a version of the book M recommended in regards to Mito scholarship. (Thank you, M!)
I don't have the book itself, but someone graciously indulged my Sagara fetish and has given me the opportunity to read the theses, which I just started tonight. Too cool to be finally reading something I'm sure my hero read as well (even if I am an American located somewhere near the rear end of the world, stupid and incompetent as nature dictates, and have to read it in translation :-D )
phil
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