, The New Generation in Meiji Japan, was a study of the first generation of Japanese to receive an education in the new Western-oriented schools and the problems of cultural identity that it caused for young Japanese. This project led him to several studies of the way in which Japanese nationalism and Meiji conservatism were constructed to respond to the influence of Western culture. Pyle became fascinated with the dynamics of historical change which he explored in The Making of Modern Japan and in a long article in the first issue of the Journal of Japanese Studies (of which he was the founding editor) entitled “The Advantages of Followership” which studied the way the Japanese sought to learn from the history of industrialization in the advanced countries and to avoid the struggle between labor and capital that had resulted.