Abstract

The article analyzes the transfer of political patterns between the West and Japan from a «what if history» or counterfactual perspective. In the first paragraph, the influence of German scholars on Japan is framed from the perspective of expectations of what Japanese visitors wanted to hear. In the second part of the article, mainly based on literature in the original language and on primary and secondary sources on the political debate of the Meiji era (1868-1912), the ways in which the Western political ideas and concepts have transited into modern Japan, were translated and assimilated are explored. Finally, we will show how the «what if history» is not only a distorting but also a corrective lens with respect to the «fallacy of retrospective determinism».