The book is about business culture and business as a vehicle for creating a culture. It is a study of textbook publishing companies in Meiji Japan (1868-1912) and modern China (1890s-1930s), where business practices were modernized and Western culture was introduced to the general public through education. Stories of two influential textbook publishing companies, the Golden Harbor Press (Kinkodo in Japanese) and the Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan in Chinese), are told, compared, and interpreted to address significant questions such as: How did Japan and China react to Western institutions for economic modernization? How was Western culture introduced into these countries? What did modernity and modernization mean to people there? What role did the school textbooks play in the introduction of Western culture? This in-depth study of the two companies offers new insight into modernization processes in East Asia as it details different paths for economic modernization taken by the two companies, unravels complex relations between company law and market-driven and corporate-based economic development in the two nations, and presents empirical evidence on transmission of Western ideas found in the school textbooks published by the companies.

Author Biography

Billy K. L. So is Chair Professor and Head, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Sufumi So is Assistant Professor of Japanese Language, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, George Mason University.