Karatani Kōjin examines the evolution of the modernization processes that Japan underwent during the 19th century and tries to discern the meaning of those processes for the Japanese, which differs from the development of modernization in Europe. His study of those processes induces his criticism over two opposite processes: on the one hand the desire to separate from Asia and the Chinese paradigms that informed Japanese society and culture in the 1300 years before the modern reversal, and on the other hand the desire to adopt many aspects of Western culture, in a process of accommodation of those ideas and practices to the concepts and ways of expression that prevailed in Japan. Karatani presents the range of key positions, disputes and characters in that process and argues that literature, language and art underwent an essential transformation during the 19th century, which led Japan to a new era and groundbreaking insights during the 20th and 21st centuries.