From Model of Modernization to Paragon of Life Quality: Japanese Image of Germany Over the Past One Hundred and Fifty Years Toru TAKENAKA Meiji Japan, which considered modernization as the most pressing task, saw in Germany the very model for this national project. While the Japanese introduced many institutions and technologies from Germany, the view gained ground that regarded the country and its people as morally exemplary. This view was augmented in the interwar period by the new argument that stressed the affinity in the “national character” between Japanese and Germans, reflecting Japan’s growing self-confidence in the wake of its rise to a world power after World War I. The image of Germany as model of modernization in both material and immaterial terms remained basically unchanged beyond the deep fault of 1945. This image rather went through wider popularization as higher education, whose institutions had been strongholds of the Germanophile mindset in prewar Japan, significantly grew in the 1960s and the 70s. It was in the 1980s that a new image of Germany emerged. This view indeed did not differ from the old one in that it still saw Germany as praiseworthy model. The country and its people should, however, be looked up to not because of its success in modernization, but in realizing high quality of life by advanced social welfare system and well-preserved natural environment. This shift of perspective was made possible because the post-materialist orientation was diffused in the Japanese public when the age of the “high economic growth” came to an end in the 1970s.