In what ways did the political, social, and economic system of the Tokugawa lead to the

disintegration of the Bakuhan system?

From years 1603 to 1869, the country of Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
During this period of Japanese history, the country suffered from a feudal military dictatorship
under the rule of the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. The Feudal period in Japan, also known as
the Edo period, was a time when the caste system was very firmly fixed and only the feudal lords
and the samurai stood on top. Japan also became isolated because of foreign policies rejecting
any offers from western nations to trade with the exception of the Dutch. Eventually due to the
strict social orders and the exploitation of the peasant class by the government Japan became
socially unstable. It was upon the arrival of the United States naval ships led by Commodore
Matthew Perry that Japan was forced to end its isolation from the western empires. This event
created crisis within the country leading to the downfall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Opposition
forces in Japan used the humiliating intrusion of foreigners as an excuse to overthrow the
discredited shogun and the Tokugawa bakufu.

The Tokugawa Shogunate consolidated its power during the reigns of Ieyasu (1603-1605), his son
Hidetada (1605-1623), and his grandson Iemitsu (1623-1651). The Tokugawa Shogunate was the
most effective government that Japan had experienced so far in its history, but it was not a
centralized monarchy. The shogun shared power and authority with the local daimyo in a system
known as Bakuhan. Bakuhan was a combination of the bakufu, which functioned as the central
government, and the han, feudal domains under the control of the daimyo. The Tokugawa family
had direct control over one quarter of the productive land in the country. The rest were
dominated by the daimyo, who had their own governments, castle towns, warrior armies, tax and
land systems, and courts.

The fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate was a result of many events such as wars, rebellion, and
treaties that caused the end of the Tokugawa rule. Historians of Japan and modernity agree to a
great extent that the history of modern Japan begins with the crise de regime of the Tokugawa
Shogunate, the military rulers of Japan from the year 1600. It is therefore appropriate to explore
the relevant themes of political instability, foreign contact and inner contradictions that eventually
led to the decline and subsequent collapse of this regime, while at the same time giving these
factors a closer look in order to understand whether the bakuhan system could have been
preserved had the Tokugawa leaders followed an alternate policy.

Historians debate the importance of the events that occur during the fall of the Tokugawa but
they all agree that foreign invasion, economic crisis, and revolutions are major reasons for the
collapse of the feudal government. The Tokugawa Shogunate was abolished in year 1868 when the
imperialist rebels defeated the Shogunate forces and restored the power to the emperor of Japan.
There has been a debate regarding the nature of the Tokugawa Shogunate, i.e., whether it was
feudal or not. Most historians, such as Barrington Moore Jr and others have argued that
Tokugawa Japan was a feudal state, which came to an end due to Western influences, leading to
modernization. E.H. Norman opines that a society in which political power derived exclusively
from control over agricultural produce and the agricultural producer, regardless of the extent of
sub-infeudation, might fairly be called feudal, even though he disagrees with regard to the
impact of the West. However, recently some Western scholars like Andrew Gordon and some
Japanese historians such as Asakawa and Fukuda Tokuzo have denied that a state so highly
centralized as Tokugawa Japan could be described as feudal. Fairbank has adopted the
terminology of the Japanese social historian, Professor Honjo, who spoke of early or
‘decentralized feudalism’ and late or ‘centralized feudalism’ to describe the nature of the
Tokugawa state as ‘centralized feudalism’. He says that in Japan, a centralization of political
power occurred in the late 16th century but through the use of a basic feudal pattern.

The real power was in the hands of a dynastic military leader or shogun (bakufu). The political
system of the bakufu was called the bakuhan (military government). The shogunate implied a
distinctly separate set of government for the Emperor and his court, and exercised supreme
administrative authority. This office had been hereditary in the Tokugawa family since 1603. The
Tokugawas also set out to create institutions that would stabilize political and social conditions
and thereby prevent a lapse back into feudal warfare. Among their officials, the most powerful
were the councillors of the state (Roju), called the “elders”, who were responsible for national
policy and for supervision of the court and the shogun’s own domain. The shogunate classified
the various daimyo into categories in terms of to the lord’s relationship to the Tokugawa family.
The Tokugawa society was Confucian based. Confucian concepts of natural law and social
hierarchy were applied in determining not only social control and status, but also a moral order
and code of conduct for all classes. This also became the basis of the four-fold class system,
known as shi-no-ko-sho (warrior-farmer-artisan-merchant), which placed samurai, farmer, artisan,
and merchant in a natural order of merit and importance. Samurai were at the top stage of the
social hierarchical order. The samurai were part of the ruling class consisting of shogun, daimyo,
and his retainers. The samurai enjoyed consistency of status, wealth, and power. There were
three ranks of samurai— upper, middle, and lower. Below them were the peasants, who were
accorded second place in society because they produced the basic essential food. However, they
were exploited and were deprived of many privileges. The peasants had been regarded by the
rulers as tax-producing machines, whose surplus crops were to be swallowed by those in power.
They were even forbidden to drink tea of superior quality. The peasants were followed by
artisans. The carpenter, the mechanic, the weaver, artist, sculptor, crafts-worker, were all included
in this class. The artisans mostly were in the same kind of predicament as the peasants. The
chonin (merchants) were at the lowest stage of the social ladder. The chonin were not given a
high status because according to Confucian ethics, a trader lived on the labour of others. They
were not allowed to used palanquins, wear silk or carry swords. All the four classes were assigned
their distinct roles and were not allowed to interact with each other. Each class was facing social,
economic, and psychological problems and were unhappy in the Tokugawa regime.

Samurais were unhappy because they had superior social status yet declined financially. In order
to cope up with the increasing economic difficulties, the daimyo-samurai had become dependent
upon the rich peasants and merchants. This indebtedness of the top social class to the lowest
class obviously undermined the whole theory and spirit of the Tokugawa system. Artisans and
peasants were unhappy because of poverty and shortage of food. The cause of the chonins’
discontent was their inferior social status and the richest of them suffered from various
interferences, high taxes and other restrictions by the bakufu. Thus, the rise of a
daimyo-ronin-chonin alliance with a distinct anti-bakuhan character and a common cause to end
the Tokugawa regime, according to Barrington Moore Jr, represented a breakdown of the rigid
social hierarchies that was part of the system of what John K. Fairbank called ‘centralized
feudalism’. Nathaniel Peffer claimed that the nice balance of the Tokugawa clan, the lesser feudal
lords and their attendant samurai, the peasants, artisans and merchants could be kept steady
only as long as all the weights in the scale were even. However, according to him, the emergence
of the Japanese version of the European bourgeoisie from amongst the merchant classes was the
real deal-breaker in the entire precariously balanced equation. According to W.G. Beasley, the
immediate background to the threat Japan faced from the Western powers was the latter’s trade
with China. The isolationist policy of the Tokugawa regime with regard to foreign trade was
envisaged in the policy of sakoku which aimed to show hostility and aggression to any foreigner in
Japanese waters.

Among historians, there have been two main schools of opinion on what really caused the
downfall of the Shogunate. The first school believed that the Tokugawa system of government
might have continued essentially unchanged had it not been for the forcible opening of the
closed door by the United States and other countries. It had been customary for these historians
to refer to the primitive nature of Japan's economy before 1867 and to treat the Tokugawa period
as though it were an era of almost stagnation. Therefore, the school of opinion argued that it was
only the coming of the foreigners that undermined the authority of the Tokugawa government
and so ruined it. The second school of opinion, however, emphasized the undoubted fact that the
whole regime had been under indirect attack from many directions inside Japan long before
Perry arrived.

In the 17th to 19th centuries, rapid economic growth had produced an advanced economy capable
of ready transformation into an entirely new political and social order. By the middle of the 19th
century, the antiquated political system and absurd political and social philosophy of the
Tokugawa were more than 200 years out of date. The simple concept of the division of classes into
rulers, warriors and commoners had little relation to Japan of the 19th century with its crowded
cities, rich merchants, restless samurai and discontent peasantry.

Despite the division of the land into a large number of feudal fiefs, the people had developed a
strong sense of national consciousness. The growth of nationalism and the development of a
modern commercial economy had made Japan ready for the more efficient political forms of the
modern nation. The coming of the foreigners, symbolized by the Perry expedition, merely
provided the final impulse towards a collapse that was unavoidable.

The theory that the main cause of the Shogunate's collapse was the forced opening of Japan to
foreigners cannot be accepted, but the 2nd school of opinion has inclined to go too far in
underestimating the impact of successful Western pressure on Japan in the 1850's. It is not
possible that the Shogunate would have collapsed had it been able to resist the demands made by
the United States, Russia, Great Britain and other countries of the West. The early Tokugawa
succeeded in creating a system capable of preserving political stability that the machine was still
running relatively smooth. It was therefore necessary for an external pressure to disrupt it. This
pressure provided by the foreigners was consequently fatal to the power of the Tokugawa which
had already been weakened by other forces.

The economy was seriously weakened by Tokugawa feudalism by the early 18th century.
Moreover, the Shogunate itself was on the whole better off than most of the daimyo. It could
debase the currency to its own advantage and it controlled all the great cities and most of the
economically advanced parts of the country. It would be hard to argue that the Shogunate fell
from the economic difficulties, all the easier. The downfall of the Tokugawa regime was thus the
result of the conjunction of 2 processes: the internal decay of feudal society and pressure from
the Western nations. The defeat of the Tokugawa government was a result of the anger Japanese
people had of the western invasion, economic crisis, and abuses of their Shogunate rulers. In
1853 a fleet of U.S. warships steamed into Tokyo Bay and demanded permission to establish trade
and diplomatic relations with Japan. This event is considered by John Whitney Hall to be critical to
the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan.

The 19th century ‘Western impact’ on Japan led first to the opening of the country to foreign
commerce and then in 1868 to the end of the Tokugawa hegemony. According to John Whitney
Hall, “western pressure was acutely felt first as a threat to national security and secondly as a
stimulus to reform”. The Japanese at that time felt that seclusion from foreign policies was good
because they needed nothing from the western nations. They also feared that the western nations
would invade their nation and colonize their territory. The Japanese knew what happened to the
Chinese and how they were forced to sign unequal treaties during the Opium Wars. For these
reasons, the Japanese saw this western invasion as dangerous for their country and they blamed
the Tokugawa Shogunate for being weak. It was only through the coincidence of these forces of
internal decay and external pressure that contributed to the so-called Meiji Restoration in 1868.
However, before Japan could come to a firm policy one way or another, the West intervened to
decide the issue. The United States, by taking California in the Mexican War (1846-48), had become
a Pacific power practically overnight. In 1853, a fleet of American warships commanded by
Commodore Perry delivered a conciliatory letter from the president to the Japanese head of
state and a more belligerent letter written by Perry himself. The gist of Perry's message was that
Japan should open its doors to the United States or it would force Japan to trade.

Conclusion
The bakuhan system was created with flaws from the outset, and the precarious position that
the Tokugawa’s enjoyed was bound to collapse at some point. Compounding these were various
other factors – financial instability, the arrival of Western powers, the unequal treaties, feudal
nature of society, the daimyo-ronin-chonin alliance, the sankin-kotai system and the opposition of
certain daimyo to Tokugawa rule – that led to a situation where it was only a matter of time for
the Tokugawa to fall. It is unsure whether or not the Tokugawas would have survived had events
in the two decades prior to the deposition been handled differently. However, it does not seem
likely that such a significant difference would have been made, as the Tokugawa Shogunate dug its
own grave as events continued on course. Hence, the fall of the Tokugawa bakuhan system was
the result of a variety of internal and external factors, at some points working together while at
others being especially distinct in themselves, and paved the way for the eventual ‘Meiji’
Restoration.
Examine the policies of the SCAP and the transformation of the political economic and
socio culture structuring following American Occupation of Japan.
Japan is one of the most advanced countries in the world. It achieved remarkable
success after losing a war with devastating damage. However, one cannot forget that
America played a significant role in Japan’s postwar recovery under the leadership and
guidance of General Douglas MacArthur during the 7yrs of occupation after the World
War II.
The US Occupation of Japan began with the ending of the WWII. On August 6, 1945 an
atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima by an American B-29 warplane. A couple of
days later, Soviet Union waged war upon the imperial forces at Manchuria and Korea.
Adding on August 9, 1945 yet another atomic bomb released and destroyed Nagasaki
killing between 60,000-70,000 people. Traditionally Japan was reluctant to surrender
easily but these attacks weakened the country and its Supreme Council which was
formed a year prior decided to surrender as bombing had destroyed 50% of the urban
Japan. War came to an end by August 15, 1945, the Allied countries, led by the United
States, occupied Japan for nearly seven years—longer than the actual war between
the U.S. and Japan—until the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force on April 28,
1952. Emperor Hirohito made a public announcement about surrender. This was the
end of the war and the start of US Occupation of Japan.
Immediately following the surrender of Japan, the Potsdam treaty stated that the
Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces would be in charge of Japan. American
President Harry Truman designated General Douglas MacArthur as the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). In that capacity, MacArthur directed the
General Headquarters (GHQ) in Tokyo and supervised the occupation programs in Japan.
Besides the primary aim of demobilization, one of the biggest missions for MacArthur
was to bring American democracy into a traditional, imperialistic country, in which
people worshipped the Emperor as a living God. The current status of Japan in the
modern world is a legacy of MacArthur's successful democratization, which includes
forming the foundation of rapid economic growth and modernization of the
constitution.
The Occupation of Japan required troops in order to help rebuild this war devastated
nation. These armies totaled about 460,000 troops and were controlled directly by
MacArthur. In order to control such a large amount of people, including the Japanese,
MacArthur arranged the control structure into two headquarters – first was called the
GHQ SCAP, which was in control of Japan, and second was called the GHQ FEC and
controlled the US forces in the Far East. Japanese expected violence with the
occupation. As the Supreme Commander, MacArthur had absolute authority over all
Japanese, even the government and the Emperor. The primary aim of the occupation
was to disarm, demilitarize, and democratize Japan to ensure that Japan would not
again become a menace to the US or a threat to the peace and security of the world. As
soon as the Allies found out the existing political and economic structures had
collapsed, MacArthur assumed authority over these areas. He effectively used his
power not only to disarm the Imperial Army and punish the war criminals but also to
help the Japanese to recover from the aftermath of the war — poverty, starvation and
despair.
MacArthur pursued a number of social and political objectives of the occupation,
including demilitarization, punishing war criminals, building the structure of
representative government, modernizing the constitution, holding free elections,
enfranchising women, releasing political prisoners, liberating the farmers, establishing a
free labor movement, encouraging a free economy, abolishing police oppression,
developing a free and responsible press, liberalizing education, decentralizing political
power, and separating religion from the state. He intended to transform it to a
democratic country. He also brought great changes for Japanese women as women
before had very few freedoms or rights. In fact, later women were thought to be
inferior to men, they suddenly earned the right to vote, own property, obtain a higher
education, enter the government, and join the police department. American women
suggested to the SCAP that the contract of marriages should be abolished. These
women claimed that the contract of marriages enslaved the Japanese women to their
husbands. This was soon added to list of demands by the SCAP also planned for major
educational reform. They tried to decentralize authority, while denationalizing and
democratizing textbooks. This reform ran across many obstacles during its
implementation. One of the major reforms being considered was the new Japanese
constitution. Within only two months, MacArthur reported on the achievements of
initial occupation objectives. Demobilization went unexpectedly smoothly and quickly
because of the cooperation by the Japanese government and submissive Japanese
nationals under the mandate of the Emperor to obey the occupation troops.
The formation of the new Japanese Constitution was perhaps one of the most
important goals of the US Occupation of Japan. MacArthur’s government section
worked on creating this document following guidelines that would fulfill the SCAP’s
criteria. These guidelines included suffrage for women, the encouragement of labor
unions, regulation of child labor, liberalization of education, elimination of
government fear tactics and the promotion of a wide distribution of income as well as
ownership. The Constitution of Japan was accepted and approved in October 1946 by
the Japanese Diet and went into effect on the May of 1947. He also drafted the Bill of
Rights.
The US Occupation has had a profound effect on numerous aspects of Japan. In the first
postwar decades, ‘A Companion to Japanese History’ immediate concern of both the
American government and political scientists studying Japan was the efficacy of the
occupation and the transplanted democracy in Japan. These studies contrasted the rise
of militarism in the prewar period with the efforts in the first postwar decade to
implement functioning democracy in Japan.
Beginning in the mid-1960s additional trends emerged such as Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) tenacious grasp on power and corresponding decline in the leftist electoral
threat that peaked in the mid-1950s. The works shifted the scholarly agenda towards a
new goal of explaining LDP organizational and campaign practices that helped the party
continue to win elections. Japanese democracy emerged in the late 1960s when the
opposition began to win control of many of Japan’s local governments in urban areas.
Scholars flocked to this and related topics about protest movements and citizen
participation. In addition to the rise of the opposition parties, the 1960s also saw an
even more significant economic trend that would have a profound impact on the study
of Japanese politics. The LDP shifted its policy emphasis from divisive national security
issues to rapid economic growth. The important source for these analyses of Japanese
politics is the memoir of the important political actor. Because so much of Japanese
politics occurs behind the scenes, these memoirs provide the only evidence as to the
actual factors and discussions that influenced important political events.
The postwar Japanese economy has experienced a major swing: from the 1950s to the
end of the 1980s, it achieved an astonishing record of economic growth. Postwar Japan
rocked by hyperinflation and a completely bankrupt economy. It suffered great losses
both in agricultural produce and industrial sector. A rampant black-market economy
struck down any attempts at reconsolidation. The period 1945–9, that is, between the
end of World War II and the implementation of the Dodge Line, was very important to
the postwar Japanese economy. Two seemingly conflicting trends can be observed and
both of them together have profoundly shaped the postwar Japanese economy. On the
one hand, Japan underwent a series of democratic reforms instituted by the
occupation authorities. These reforms marked some great departures from Japan’s
prewar and wartime legacies. On the other hand, however, in a battle for survival
amidst severe shortages of materials and the resulting hyperinflation, Japan was also
able to preserve many institutions and mechanisms that had developed before and
during the war. The dissolution of zaibatsu changed the organizational structure of the
Japanese economy. Despite the fact that former zaibatsu companies were able to
reorganize themselves into keiretsu, these groupings were never able to control other
companies and industries in the same way. The first anti-monopoly law was enacted in
1947. Even though the Fair-Trade Commission has been weak and the law was
amended twice and often twisted to support Japan’s industrial policy, big corporations
were restricted in their ability to organize into combines. Labor unions also became
more powerful in politics. In the 1945–9 period, underproduction was the major
challenge faced by the Japanese economy. As a result of the defeat in World War II,
Japan lost all its formal colonies which used to be the major sources of supply of cheap
materials and labor, as well as captive markets. Also as a result of the war, much of its
infrastructure and production equipment was either destroyed or overused. Although
production decreased sharply, domestic demand for goods and services increased
rapidly as a result of the postwar repatriation of millions of military and civilian Japanese
from overseas. This led inevitably to hyperinflation. The Japanese government adopted
the famous ‘‘priority production program’’ envisioned by a group of economists
headed by Arisawa Hiromi in an effort to promote production with limited resources in
the coal, iron and steel, and fertilizer industries. Production was given highest priority.
The Korean War provided Japan with a new start. MacArthur had made efforts in the
first stage of the occupation to open economic opportunities and spurred the creation
of many new companies by breaking up the family-owned "zaibatsu," such as
Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo, and Yasuda, which controlled 75 percent of the
country's commerce, raw materials, and transport. But it was hard to see the effect
immediately. The U.S. attempted to ease the burden of financial assist to Japan by
encouraging the Japanese to promote economic development and support themselves.
The Dodge Plan, launched in 1949, was followed by massive layoffs of government and
industrial employees, increased taxes, wage freezes, higher prices for rice,
transportation, and other government-subsidized goods and services, and reduced
public services. This economic recovery program had made significant progress by the
mid-1950s. In three years, Japan's commerce expanded rapidly and Japanese imports
from the United States were cut in half.
However, restrictions on Japan's external activities caused serious problems in the
expansion of Japan's international trade. Because of the absence of a peace treaty, the
Allies did not allow Japan to trade internationally, which undermined efforts to
achieve a self-supporting economy. The lack of trade with China was particularly
devastating. MacArthur argued that the world must allow Japan to trade. The job of
occupation is to restore Japan's production to self-sufficiency. Ultimately, U.S. orders
for military supplies to support the Korean War provided the Japanese economy with
the boost in external demand needed to accelerate economic growth. The military
spending benefited almost every sector of the Japanese economy, from vehicle
manufacturing to textiles. Consequently, the United States saved Japanese economy
not only by reconstructing the base of economic structure but also by purchasing war
supplies from Japan for the war in Korea. Beginning with the Korean War boom, to be
called the “era of high-speed growth” by historians. At unprecedented speed, Japan
changed from a site of destruction and poverty to a place of prosperity. Over time,
most important guiding agency was Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).
Most important subject the social changes embodied in postwar Civil Code was
education reforms, religious reforms and land reforms. Women have come a long way
since the prewar era, inequality still exists in Japan. Despite the 1947 Labor Standards
Law, which stated that people should receive equal pay for equal work, many
companies maintain separate policies for men and women. Men and women receive
different treatment pertaining to promotions and salary. Without the efforts of the SCAP,
the women’s movement today may not have existed at all. The US Occupation also had a
lasting effect on the modern education system of Japan. One of the reforms that were
imposed by the occupation was the organization of school levels. To illustrate, the
6-3-3-4 system was introduced to Japan. This represents six years of elementary school,
three years each for junior and senior high school, and four years for universities. It also
established a board of education. The success of this educational reform can be
represented by the percent of students attending an education institution: “Almost
99% of students enrolled in public elementary schools.”
Reforms in religion brought about by the Occupation consisted principally of a
provision in the new constitution establishing religious freedom (ending governmental
control of religion), the end of national support of Shrine Shinto, and the associated
prohibition of so-called emperor worship in the nation's schools. The most noteworthy
development, however, is the growth of secularism. Most of the nation shows little
interest in religion, and this may be regarded as entirely congruent with legal provisions
giving religious freedom.
The agreement that the land reform brought substantial and very quick results in
improved agricultural economics, but the land reform has often been branded a failure
or only a partial success, for two principal reasons. One is the agricultural crisis of the
past decade associated with the accelerated industrialization and urbanization of the
nation, which has drawn farm labor to more lucrative employment in the cities and
made unprofitable the operation of the small farm holdings of which ownership is
permitted under the regulations of the land reform. The second major source of
complaint is of unfair treatment of former landlords. Occupation authorities appear to
have assumed, erroneously, that landlords as a class were unscrupulous exploiters of
helpless tenants. Compensations given to landlords were so small that they might
better have been called confiscation fees.
In conclusion, following the atomic destruction Japan surrendered to America and
MacArthur led Japan. This occupation has affected Japan socially, economically, and
militarily. If it wasn’t for the US Occupation, Japan may have developed differently
following the war. Overall, the Japanese have benefited from the control of the SCAP.
The US was a voice of organization during a time of chaos. Instead of punishing more
Japan for the war, the US aided Japan in its recovery thus creating a strong US partner.
established the foundation of the U.S.-Japan relationship and for Japan's role as a
leader of the world's economy and guardian of security in the Pacific. Sixty years have
passed since the end of the war, and the legacy of the occupation is still alive.

Bibliography
- Koch, Kris; The US Occupation of Japan (In what ways did it influence Japan?).
- Endo Mieko; Douglas MacArthur’s occupation of japan: Building the foundation of
US-Japan relationship. (University of Montana)
- Gordon, Andrew; A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa times.
- Goodman, Grant; The American Occupation of Japan: A Retrospective view.
- History Channel- Japan under American Occupation-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grqtxI_MJC0&list=TLPQMTkwNDIwMjCCJnE
WjSsHZQ&index=1&has_verified=1 .
The Motivations Behind Imperialism
Japan had initially been a passive spectator to the advance of Western power in Asia
and lost the opportunity to pre-empt a dominant position on the Asian continent or
in the Pacific. Moreover, its limited political, economic, and military resources did not
allow it the luxury of staking a claim to more distant regions of the globe, even if the
Meiji leadership had been so inclined. Thus, in establishing a colonial empire, Japan
was obliged to assert claims over neighbouring areas close to home, where it could
maximize its political, military, and economic strength.
Security
Peter Duus echoes Hilary Conroy’s classic emphasis upon national security while
placing Japanese expansion squarely within the international vogue of
empire-building. The empire was shaped by strategic considerations. Japan's
colonial territories were obtained as the result of a deliberate decision by
responsible authorities in the central government to use force in securing a
territory that would contribute to Japan's immediate strategic interests. These
interests were directed initially toward Korea, China, and Manchuria.
However, the same rationale of security made it impossible to give finite limits to
Japan's imperial ambitions even after it had assembled its formal empire. In the
early Meiji period, it was the "Korean problem" and the extension of a Japanese
foothold in Asia; in the Taisho and early Showa periods, it was the
"Manchurian-Mongolian problem" and the conflict with Chinese and Russian
interests in northeast Asia; in the 1930s, it was the "China problem"; and in the 1940s
it was the "southern advance problem."
Pan-Asianism
The sense of cultural affinity with its subject peoples, unique among the imperia of
modern times, shaped the Japanese attitudes toward colonial governance. A sense of
idealism related to the "uplifting" of less fortunate Asian neighbours was part of the
imperial motivations of late nineteenth-century Japan. But an officially sponsored
sense of national destiny to inspire reform from above and to guide backward Asian
peoples along the path of modernity pioneered by Japan did not appear until the
early twentieth century, when the formal empire was already in place.
Social Darwinism
New perceptions of Japanese rank and status greatly promoted the emergence of
Japan as a colonial power. The Japanese abandoned the harmonies of the
Sino-centric cultural order for the strident doctrines of inevitable international
struggle trumpeted by the social Darwinism of the day. There was also quick
acceptance by Japan of the Western indicators of prowess and prestige that
measured a nation's progress in a new and dangerous world. Colonial empires,
along with constitutional government, industrialization, national bureaucracies, and
modern armies and navies, were seen as hallmarks of national progress and vitality
and international power.
Economic Interests
Economic explanations of the European "new imperialism" in the late nineteenth
century emphasize the dominating financial interests of the capitalist class, the
persistent congestion of capital in domestic manufacturing, and the consequent
need to open up new markets and new investment opportunities in foreign lands.
Japanese imperial expansion, however, began before the nation's industrial growth,
and a shortage of capital was one of Japan's main economic problems in the 1890s.
The Japanese government, like that of late nineteenth-century Germany, had
difficulty in luring domestic capital into colonial investment at the outset of its
imperial venture.
Recent approaches to the study of economic interests in Japanese imperialism have
highlighted the economic concerns and have shown that the upper echelons of
government and business shared a common belief in the economic promise of Asia.
However, these economic interests emerged most clearly after, not before, the
initial steps were taken on the road to empire. And the ambitions of Japanese
business in Asia were largely directed toward mainland China and Manchuria, and
had little role in the assembling of the formal colonial empire. Thus, they provide
inadequate evidence for arguments about its economic inevitability.

The Making of an Empire

The first overseas territories that Japan acquired were the "no man's islands" of the
surrounding seas. In the 1870s and 1880s, Japan established effective sovereignty
over the Bonin, Ryukyu, and Kurile islands, as well as strengthening its grip on
Hokkaido through an intensified program of colonization. It was a reassertion of
national authority over territories traditionally within the Japanese cultural sphere
and was more like a clarification of national boundaries. Japan's turn toward the
Korean peninsula marked its first step outside the Japanese cultural area and its first
effort in modern times to exert influence over an alien people.
Taiwan
Japanese colonialism began with a military pacification effort in Taiwan by Japanese
forces. Directed against a resistance movement headed by local Taiwanese leaders
unreconciled to the prospect of Japanese rule over the island, the five-month
campaign (June-October, 1895) ravaged parts of the island and was costly to both
the Japanese army and the indigenes. This left all but the island's inner mountain
regions under firm Japanese control.
The rapid occupation of Taiwan was least likely to provoke Western intervention
but most likely to satisfy public demands for victory. Japan had acquired Taiwan
without long-range objectives for its management. The island was seen in some
quarters as being as much a liability as an asset due to the initial period of chaos
and mismanagement under military rule, similar to early European colonization. Goto
Shinpei, who led the colonial government in Taiwan, restructured the political, social,
and economic order, transforming it from an embarrassment into a colonial
showcase.
Korea and the Liaotung Peninsula
Beginning in the 1880s, there was increasingly aggressive Japanese involvement in
Korea. They worked sporadically with Korean reformers to undermine Chinese
influence, and authority of the traditional Korean government. In 1894, Japanese
armies quickly drove the Chinese out of Korea, crossed the Yalu River, and occupied
the strategic Liaotung peninsula. And by February 1895, they had seized Weihaiwei
on the Shantung peninsula.
During the negotiations at Shimonoseki in February 1895, Japan demanded and was
ultimately awarded Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaotung peninsula. It was
immediate strategic and diplomatic circumstances that determined Taiwan would
become the first outright possession of the Japanese colonial empire.
The "Triple Intervention" of Russia, Germany, and France forced Japan to retrocede
Liaotung to China, which was then leased to Russia. The outright annexation of
Korea was neither planned nor necessary and would have risked the active
opposition of the foreign powers, especially Russia.
Having had to return Liaotung, an infuriated Japan tightened its grip on Korea.
Japanese "advisers" forced a growing number of modernizing reforms on a weak but
stubborn Korean government, efforts that made Japan and reformism ever more
detestable to the Korean upper classes. Simultaneously, Japan increased its economic
stake in Korea with the construction of railways and a rapid growth in commercial
activity.
Between 1898 and 1904, Japanese ascendancy in Korea seemed temporarily checked
by the counter-expansion of Russian influence, as stressed by Tsunoda Jun stressed
on the geopolitical challenges posed by an eastward-expanding Russia. Russia was
offered an arrangement – Man-Kan kokan – that would recognize Russian primacy
in Manchuria in exchange for a completely free hand for Japan in Korea. After
fighting Russia in 1904-05, Korea was absorbed into the Japanese colonial empire.
The penultimate stage of its colonization was the creation of a Japanese
protectorate over the country in November 1905, backed by overwhelming Japanese
military force, which transformed Korea into a virtual Japanese satellite.
Ito Hirobumi aimed at creating a modern and benevolent administration capable of
gaining Korean cooperation while strengthening Japanese control. This "moderate"
approach by an essentially civilian administration soon met opposition in both Japan
and Korea. Japanese hard-liners in the government, and ultranationalist pressure
groups outside it, kept up an incessant criticism of the "weak-kneed" policy of the
resident general and demanded the immediate annexation of Korea. In Korea itself,
the bitter protest of Korean patriots of the masses swelled into open rebellion
between 1908 and 1910 and was extinguished only by the most brutal military
suppression.
Ito’s assassination in 1909 by a Korean patriot provided the more oppressive
elements in Tokyo a pretext for ending the last fiction of Korean autonomy. In 1910,
Korea was formally annexed into the Japanese empire, and an iron-fisted general,
Terauchi Masatake, was officially installed as governor general.
By 1922, Japan's formal colonial empire was complete. Ishikawa Hiroshi described
Meiji Japan’s mid-nineteenth century overtures toward Korea as attempts to adhere
to international law, and both Unno Fukuju and Alexis Dudden detailed the path
toward annexation in similar terms. The formal empire became a base and an arsenal
for the increasingly dangerous effort to dominate ever-expanding buffer zones and
was finally overtaken by disaster in World War II.

World War One and the Interwar Period

World War I became a new arena to showcase a temperate vision of Japanese
diplomacy, which progressive historians long identified as the start of Japanese
monopoly capitalism. Hirama Yoichi found Japanese wartime naval operations a
confirmation of Japan’s pivotal cooperative role on the early twentieth-century
global stage. Thomas Burkman found a genuine ‘‘internationalist’’ bent in interwar
Japan in the country’s active participation in the League of Nations. Frederick
Dickinson highlighted the dramatic political and ideological impact of the Great War
on Japan, and characterized the Twenty-one Demands of Shantung not as an
unusually aggressive prelude to conquest in the 1930s, but as an extension of the
pattern of Great Power competition in China after 1895.
Political change in Japan and abroad from 1914 to 1920 began to push Japanese
authorities toward a more liberal administration of the colonies. At home there was
an erosion of the influence of both the genro and the military, and a simultaneous
rise in political party power. Abroad, the emergence of Wilsonian idealism, and the
principle of the self-determination of peoples, placed Japanese colonialism
increasingly on the defensive.
However, national resentment to Japanese cultural atrocities in Korea exploded in
March 1919. The Japanese response, launched against an unarmed popular
movement, was instantaneous and bloody. Wayne Patterson characterized such
attempts to control unruly Korean nationals as a demonstration of Japan’s
diplomatic competence and authority. However, protests around the world against
colonial reaction in Korea was the spark that encouraged political forces in Japan to
moderate Japanese colonial policy.
In 1920, the Japanese government announced a number of social, political, and
economic changes designed to permit greater self-expression for Koreans, abolish
abuses in the judicial system, eliminate discrimination in the treatment of Japanese
and Koreans in public service, equalize educational and economic opportunity,
promote agriculture and industry, and generally give Koreans greater voice in the
management of their own affairs. But strategic considerations and resistance by the
Japanese military pushed aside efforts of applying the principle of civilian rule,
unlike in Taiwan.
The facade of liberal reform and modest accommodation of the interests of Japan's
colonies initiated in the 1920s was dissolved by aggressive nationalism and military
necessity in the 1930s. The social and economic dislocations at home and the
uncertainties and instabilities abroad – particularly in East Asia – are among the
primary causes that many historians have assigned to the shift of Japan toward
domestic authoritarianism, an accelerated tempo of nationalism, and the resurgent
influence of the military in shaping national policy.

Manchuria
The Japanese empire became expansive, though less through considered decisions at
its metropolitan centre than through the arbitrary initiatives of Japan's field armies
abroad. Moving first from the Kwantung Leased Territory and Korea into Manchuria
and from there into north China, Japanese garrisons on the continent, acting largely
on their own, ushered in an era of military expansion outside the boundaries of the
formal empire.
Usui Katsumi described the escalation of Japanese aims in China in the latter 1930s
as primarily a response to the rise of Chinese nationalism. Other studies of China
‘‘experts’’ in both the Japanese Foreign Ministry and army tell the tale of good
intentions ultimately derailed by more aggressive visions of expansion.
After the Manchu dynasty was overthrown in 1911, China had fragmented into
regions dominated by military warlords, and Chinese nationalism in the 1910s and
1920s took on an increasingly anti-Japanese character. During the late 1920s, when
the reunification of China began, many Japanese viewed it as a threat to Japanese
interests.
Convinced that Japan’s position on the continent was being seriously undermined by
both world economic depression and the new Manchurian warlord’s leanings
towards the Nationalists, field army officers in Manchuria took matters into their own
hands in September 1931. Without orders from Tokyo General Staff headquarters,
they provoked a clash with Chinese soldiers on the South Manchurian Railway as a
prelude to full-scale invasion. This ‘Manchurian Incident’ is usually viewed by
historians as the pivotal event setting Japan on the road to war.
The Wakatsuki Cabinet, with Shidehara as foreign minister, tried to restrain the army,
while the League of Nations and the United States insisted on a peaceful settlement.
Domestic pressure for the takeover of Manchuria forced the Wakatsuki Cabinet to
resign, and the succeeding Cabinet sanctioned the move of the Kwantung Army into
northern Manchuria. Japan set up the puppet state of Manchukuo, which the
Western powers refused to recognize, and when the League of Nations labelled Japan
an aggressor, it withdrew from the League. Domestic political turmoil over the next
few years was connected to the rise of nationalist sentiment and the military’s role in
politics.
Ian Nish spoke of the professionalism and good intentions of both Japanese and
Western diplomats in the failure of international cooperation over the Manchurian
Incident, and David Lu’s study of Japanese foreign minister Matsuoka Yosuke stressed
on the difficult external pressures on Japanese policy-makers in the 1930s. Kenneth
Pyle argued that the undermining of international liberalism and a trend toward the
formation of exclusive economic blocs constituted a fundamental change in the
international order, to which Japanese leaders responded by creating an autarkic
regional base. Additionally, war came to be seen as a necessary resort for Japan’s
national security and autonomy.

Descent to Fascism and Outbreak of World War Two

In the 1930s, two major factions emerged in the Japanese government: the Imperial
Way Faction and the Control Faction. Factional rivalries and the Young Officers
movement reached a peak with the February 1936 rebellion, which was suppressed
by the Control Faction, marking the end of factional rivalries. Restoration of army
discipline now cleared the way for a more concerted effort led by military leaders to
mobilize national economic and social resources for war. Military expenditures
increased, and military activities in north China were stepped up.
A minor skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing in 1937 that escalated into
war. This ‘China Incident’ quickly evolved into a de facto, though undeclared,
Sino-Japanese war. After occupying Beijing and Tianjin, fighting spread to Shanghai
and up the Yangtze River. In taking Chiang’s capital of Nanjing in December, the
Japanese committed atrocities against the Chinese civilian population as well as
military personnel on a scale ranging from tens of thousands in apologist Japanese
estimates up to 300,000 in Chinese estimates.
Japanese army leaders looked at the Soviet Union as a potential enemy, so they
signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936 with Germany and Italy, only to be
humiliated when Germany and the Soviet Union subsequently signed a
non-aggression pact. Japan then signed the Tripartite Pact forming the
Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis alliance in September 1940 and started troop movements
in Indo-China. And so began the Second World War in Asia.
Sources:
Duus, Peter. 2008. The Cambridge History of Japan. Edited by John W. Hall, Marius B.
Jansen, Madoka Kanai and Denis Twitchett. Vol. VI. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Tipton, Elise K. 2008. Modern Japan: A Social and Political History. 2nd. New York:
Routledge.
Tsusui, William M. 2007. A Companion to Japanese History. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd.
Vyushti B
History Hons III
181029
History of Modern Japan and Korea
Question: How did the social and educational reforms help Japan emerge as a
modern nation-state?
Answer:
The Meiji Restoration was a Japanese variation of a global trend of
revolution, which began in 1868 and went on till the 1890s. It ended the Tokugawa
shogunate and returned control of the country to direct imperial rule under
Emperor Mutsuhito, which some call a return to civilian rule. Many historians call it
a “revolution from above” or an “aristocratic revolution” as members of the elite of
the old regime – the samurai – spearheaded the attack on the old order. But no one
can deny that it propelled Japan from the Middle Ages to the 19th century in a
matter of decades.

Causes
A well-recognized Meiji intellectual, Tokutomi Soho, argued that it was not
Meiji leaders but circumstances that created contemporary Japan. He saw feudal
Japan as already weakening, with the emergence of rural leaders who were
economically powerful but denied political authority. Others, including the last
Tokugawa Shogun, Yoshinobu, argued that it was the forces of imperial loyalists who
were responsible for the Restoration.
An influential study of the Meiji Restoration was made by the Marxists in the
1920s, when internal repression and an aggressive Japanese foreign policy made
them re-examine the nature of the Japanese state. The Labour-Farmer faction,
called the rono-ha, viewed Restoration as a fundamentally bourgeois revolution
which ended feudalism and laid the foundation for capitalist development. The
other faction, called the koza, argued that the Meiji Restoration was not a
successful capitalist revolution but one which ushered in an absolutism. This was
based on the Emperor System, and the power of this system rested on feudal
dealings which had sustained in the countryside. JW Hall disagreed with the Marxist
view and believed the Meiji Restoration was neither a bourgeois nor a peasant
revolution, although both peasants and merchants were involved in attacking the
Shogunate.
An influential Japanese ideologue, Ikki, put forward the idea of a
Restoration-revolution, recognizing the progressivism and the conservatism. EH
Norman saw the Restoration as the work of a coalition of lowers samurai and
merchants. This coalition was crucial to creating the Meiji state and was responsible
for its unique characteristics – foreign expansionism and internal centralization.
Albert Craig argued that the upper samurai were very few, so any movement would
contain a large number of lower samurai. Thomas Huber defined the lower samurai
by their income, and said the category included village officers. Shibahara Takauji
saw the popular anti-feudal sentiments as the driving force behind the Restoration.
However, Conrad Totman, claimed the masses participated everywhere, and one
cannot equate anti-feudal with anti-Bakufu.
Marius Jansen questioned the actual danger posed by foreign intervention,
arguing that the governments were either not interested or not in a position to
exercise their power. But he conceded that the Japanese perceptions of foreign
threat were a driving force in calling the people to take action. The fear of foreign
loans played a crucial part in this era as well as in the Meiji era.
Conrad Totman said the main cause of the Meiji Restoration was the internal
collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, created by an inability to respond to the forces of
the modern world. The movements of the early 1860s were voluntary but failed to
unify the country. His analysis stressed on the importance of national political
thought, and consequently did not give much importance to the troubles faced by
the domains.
Harold Bolitho, who studied the fudai daimyo of Tokugawa Japan, disagreed
with Totman. He argued that the weak shoguns had increased the power of the han,
making the interests of the domains crucial in the last years of the Bakufu. The han
went on to form a coalition under the symbolic leadership under the Emperor and
challenged the Bakufu, pressing for political change.
Huber agreed with Bolitho in placing importance on imperialist pressure, but
he disagreed with both Bolitho and Totman, arguing that domain consciousness and
national consciousness were not crucial in the anti-Bakufu movements. He saw the
Bakufu as essentially conservative and incapable of change, and the reformers, at
best, as marginal players.

Political Changes
Leaders of the new Meiji government in 1868 were thrilled at the ease and
speed with which they overcame the Tokugawa Shogunate. They remained insulted
by the unequal and coerced foreign presence and worried about the prospect of
continued foreign encroachment. But they were equally fearful of resistance from
domestic opponents, who had domain armies and considerable amounts of
Western arms. Propelled by both fear and discontent with the old regime, they
generated an ambitious agenda of reform. They abolished all the daimyo domains,
dismantling a political order that had existed for 260 years. Leaders of the new
provisional government, such as Kido Koin of Choshu and Saigo Takamori of Satsuma,
decided the politically fragmented system of domains had to be overhauled.
The move toward an integrated national polity began in March 1869. The
new government convinced key daimyo of prestige and power to voluntarily
surrender their lands back to the emperor and were quickly reappointed as domain
governors with high salaries. This “return of lands” established the principle that all
lands and people were subject to the emperor’s rule. By early 1870, all daimyo had
formally returned their lands and taken appointments as governors of their
domains, but retained significant autonomy. The Meiji reformers worked to place
domain governments in sympathetic hands and pressed the daimyo to appoint men
of talent to key administrative posts. They backed such persuasion by threat of
force, creating an imperial army primarily from Satsuma and Choshu samurai. It
was untested, but stronger than any single domain’s forces or any likely
combination of forces.
Having bought off potential opposition leaders and built support in key
domains with these measures, in August 1871, the government had the emperor
announce that all domains were immediately abolished. They were replaced with
“prefectures,” consolidating the political units dramatically from 280 domains to 72
prefectures, whose governors were appointed from the centre. The central
government could now collect taxes from domain lands. Most of the new governors
were not former daimyo. Daimyo were granted permanent annual salaries
equivalent to roughly 10% of their former domain’s annual tax revenue, and
simultaneously relieved of all the costs of governing.
Meiji leaders then had to erect a new national political structure to govern
these domains turned prefectures. The Sat-Cho rebels and court officials placed
themselves atop a provisional government to rule in the name of emperor,
establishing the Council of State as the highest political authority and monopolizing
its highest posts. This was revised in 1869, and again in 1871, when it was replaced
by a tripartite set of ministries of the Centre, Left, and Right, further subdivided into
various functional ministries. Such a structure persisted until 1885, when the Meiji
leaders inaugurated a cabinet system modelled explicitly along European lines.
At the head of this government was a prime minister supported by a cabinet
of ministers, and this was codified in the Meiji constitution of 1889. The
constitution also provided for a deliberative assembly, inspired by the German
government, called the Diet, and state ministers were responsible not to the Diet
but to the emperor. The government soon moved toward a more impersonal,
merit-based mode of recruitment. In 1887, it began a system of civil service
examinations which became the primary qualification for service in the prestigious
ranks of the ministries of the Japanese imperial state.
Economic Changes

To the Japanese, manufacturing and trade seemed an important source of

European national power as military might in battleships and cannons. Economic
strength appeared to be the base that supported the military superstructure of
European states. Consequently, the government undertook many steps to realize the
foremost Meiji slogan of building a “rich country, strong army,” or fukoku kyo hei. The
most important economic reform of the 1870s was the new tax system. The new
Meiji government began its life in poverty, drawing revenue from a narrow base of
former Tokugawa lands and borrowed funds from some of the major Osaka merchant
houses. In 1873, the government announced a new national land tax designed by
Okubo Toshimichi, that was designed to stabilize state revenues at a level roughly
comparable to the sum total of bakufu and domain taxes.

This changed the economic relationship of individual landowners to the state

and each other. It provided for a national land survey, conducted in the mid-1870s,
that matched an owner to every piece of land, and issued deeds. It also assessed
the market value of all plots of land. Finally, it set the land tax at 3% of assessed
value. The new tax system also brought the national government into a direct
economic relationship with individual male household heads. The new system
shifted the risk and opportunity of commodity price changes onto the taxpaying
farmer. Naturally, taxes and state budgets became two of the most contentious
political issues of the Meiji era.

The new government used a portion of these tax revenues for public works
and institution-building projects to create the infrastructure of a capitalist industrial
economy. It dredged harbours and built lighthouses to improve coastal shipping. It
built telegraph lines beginning in 1869, and in 1871 it opened a postal system
modelled on the British system. It encouraged the founding of joint stock companies
among private investors. By the mid-1880s, it had established a uniform national
currency, the yen, backed by a central bank modelled along European lines. The
government took the lead in building a railroad network and encouraged private
investment in railroads. Many former daimyo and high-ranking samurai pooled their
pensions to join wealthy commoners in a railroad investment boom in the 1880s that
helped bring a modern stock market into existence. By 1890, Japan boasted 1400
miles of railroad. The railroad changed people’s sense of time, of distance, and
social behaviour.

Beyond projects of infrastructure building, the Meiji government played an

unusually direct role in building and operating industrial enterprises. Government
leaders were convinced that private investors lacked the initiative and knowledge to
run modern factories. They were also convinced that foreign investment was
dangerous, so foreign capital was not banned outright but was not welcomed
either. The first modern industrial enterprises in Japan were financed largely from
domestic sources. In the 1870s, the state financed and ran a number of so-called
model enterprises: shipyards, coal and copper mines, engineering works, arsenals,
and cotton-spinning, silk-reeling, glass, sugar, and even beer factories – about two
dozen large enterprises in total. Anxious to import foreign people as consultants and
managers, they engaged several thousand “hired foreigners” who offered important
advice in a wide range of economic and social endeavours.
Economic historians disagree over the importance of the government’s role
in orchestrating economic development in Japan. Some stress that the total
investment in state enterprises was far less than in the military; that the
government only built twenty or so factories, a few mines, a telegraph system, and
some rail lines; and that none of these turned a profit. In fact, most of the “model
factories” lost money. In the early 1880s, the government sold the money losers
among its enterprises at bargain prices to private investors. The few more
successful ventures, primarily coal and metal mines, were sold later in the decade
at more competitive prices.
The government had initially hoped to encourage private investors in new
industrial fields, but could not entice or force the Edo era merchants, or landlords,
or others, to take the risk. After the model factories had been sold off, officials were
even less optimistic as the people lacked experience and were appropriately
cautious, given the risks faced by these early endeavours.
However, these state activities were important for another reason as well.
They generated faith, both inside and outside the government, in the potential and
importance of the state’s role in supporting economic development. But the
hands-on state role was less a heritage of traditional Japanese economic thinking
than it was a well-considered new choice made by the Meiji leaders. They were
developing a view that the world was divided into competing national economic
units. They saw Japan as a latecomer and turned to a German philosophy of
state-led development.

Social Changes
By 1876, less than a decade after the Restoration coup, economic privileges of
the samurai were wiped out entirely. The leaders expropriated the samurai
primarily for financial reasons, and were met with stiff resistance. The government
reduced samurai stipends when it abolished the domains, but in the mid-1870s
these pay-outs still consumed roughly half the state revenues. Their ranks included
many talented people sitting idle, so the samurai’s stipends were basically welfare for
the well-born.
This enraged many former samurai, particularly those that had supported the
Restoration drive, who felt betrayed by their former comrades now running the Meiji
government. In 1869, they reduced the large number of samurai ranks to two –
upper samurai, called the shizoku, and lower samurai, called the sotsu. In 1872, a
large portion of the lower samurai were reclassified as commoners, known as heimin,
although they retained their stipends.
In 1873, the government announced that even stipends would be taxed. The
next year, it announced a voluntary program to convert stipends to bonds. The
bond would pay interest ranging from 5-7%, with smaller bonds paying higher
rates. Few samurai volunteered, so the government made this program compulsory
in 1876. Their annual incomes fell by anywhere from 10-75% and the right to wear
swords was denied to all but soldiers and policemen.
This was part of a larger transformation of society from a system of fixed
statuses to a more fluid, merit-based social order. The government lifted formal
restrictions on the rest of the population, such as the restrictions of the Tokugawa
era on modes of travel, dress, and hairstyle. Restrictions on occupation were
abolished. The government ended legal discrimination against the hereditary
outcaste groups of Tokugawa times, such as the eta and hinin. Many of those with
education and money, in particular the landowners, moneylenders, and petty
manufacturers at the upper levels of rural society, thrived in the more open social
order of the Meiji era. Others depended on the unreliable benevolence of landlords
to survive illness, crop failures, or price declines. The samurai, who were educated
and ambitious, mostly landed on their feet. Others invested their bonds in new
businesses and failed miserably, while still others took up arms against the new
government or joined political movements on behalf of a parliament and
constitution.
Even before the samurai were fully dispossessed, the Meiji leaders decided
they had to renovate the military from the bottom up. Key figures from Choshu were
deeply impressed at the superior performance of their mixed farmer-samurai militias
in the Restoration wars. In April 1871, the government created an imperial army of
just under ten thousand samurai recruited from the Restoration forces. Yamagata
Aritomo, inspired by Europe, was fully convinced that conscription key to building
military strength and disciplining a loyal populace. By 1873, the government
decreed a system of universal conscription for all males above the age of twenty,
who were now obligated to three years of active service in the military, and four
years on reserve status.
 The 1873 decree noted several exemptions for household heads, criminals,
the physically unfit, students and teachers in many prescribed schools, and
government officials. It also allowed people to buy their way out for a huge fee of
270 yen, which was more than the annual wage for most people. As a result, the
army had trouble meeting the quotas for what the government itself labelled a
“blood tax.” Between 1873-74 there were sixteen riots in which nearly 100,000
people were arrested and punished. As in Europe, a patriotic spirit that could induce
willing military service had to be drummed into the masses. Teachers and texts in
the new public school system echoed the message of conscription. Japan’s army
passed its first major test when it put down a large samurai rebellion in 1877, the
success of which resulted in certain enthusiasm for the imperial rescript of 1882.
The navy was built up in the 1880s and 1890s, and by the mid-1890s, Japan’s military
was strong enough to move from the defence to offence. By this time, military
service also came to be accepted as the patriotic obligation of Japanese men by most
recruits and their families.

The Meiji government instituted a new system of education with remarkable

speed. In 1872, it declared four years of elementary education to be compulsory for
all children, boys and girls. Observation of European and American societies
convinced leaders such as Kido Koin that mass schooling, like mass conscription, was
a fundamental source of the economic and military power of the West. Their initial
models were primarily American and French, and the 1872 decree established a
system of elementary schools, middle schools and national universities. They
believed an ignorant populace would be a great danger to their projects of building
political and economic power.

Girls were expected to learn the skills needed for future domestic roles as
wives and mothers as well as loyal subjects of the emperor, while boys were
expected to take their knowledge into a wider public realm of endeavour in the
cause of building the nation. The elementary schools were to be financed by a 10%
local surcharge to the national property tax. In the 1870s, angry taxpayers reacted to
compulsory schooling as they had to the draft, and passive resistance of simply not
going to school was higher. Rates of attendance for school-age boys and girls stood
at 25-50% of the eligible population for the first decade of the new system. Irokawa
Daikichi said the hopes of the masses in restoring the past were thwarted by arbitrary
changes in their customary practices, and it was this disillusionment and discontent
that fuelled the movements against policies such as universal education and
conscription.
However, by the end of the 19th century, rates of elementary school
attendance reached levels of 90% or more. By 1905, 98% of school-age boys and
93% of girls were attending elementary schools as the law required. In Tokugawa
Japan, a major tension set the merit ideal against the hereditary status system. The
Meiji reforms resolved this ideological tension clearly in favour of merit.

One of the most significant new departures of the of the early Meiji
government was the decision to put the emperor at the very centre of the political
order. Restoration activists carried out their coup in the name of the Meiji emperor.
After the emperor’s triumphal progress from Kyoto to Edo in 1868, the early Meiji
government struggled to decide where to locate a permanent capital. In 1889, the
decision for Tokyo to be the capital was made permanent. The government called the
emperor’s Tokyo residence a “temporary court” until that year, when it was officially
renamed the “Imperial Palace.” Tetsuo Najita, a contemporary, explained that the
Japanese emperor did not have a specific structure of power to restore, and
whatever grandiose images came to be associated with him after the Restoration,
or ishin, were the result of the ideological construction of the contemporary state
and not the legacy of recent history.

Along with the transfer of the capital, the image of the monarchy was
transformed as well. The government emphasized on the symbolic weight of the
emperor and empress. The empress and her retinue adopted Western clothes in
the 1880s as part of the effort to project an image of the monarchy as a modern
institution. The emperor also underwent a striking metamorphosis to become the
symbol of a modern monarch. The constitution greatly elevated the emperor’s legal
and cultural authority. Between the 1880s through the 1930s, the imperial
institution became an all-too-powerful unifying force. It came to link individuals to
immediate communities of family, workplace, and neighbourhood – and beyond that
to the imagined community of nation and empire.

Conclusion
For more than a century, historians have been arguing over how to describe
the profound changes of the first decades of the Meiji era. Early historians typically
used the French and other European revolutions since the late 18th century as their
model, describing the changes set in motion by the Meiji Restoration as an
incomplete or distorted revolution. Even in recent years, many historians have
explicitly or implicitly understood the history of the Meiji era and the early 20th
century from this sort of comparative perspective.
Testuo Najita has looked at the transformation that took place during the
Restoration. He said the Tokugawa concerned themselves with ordering society and
saving the people, but the Meiji concerned themselves with the idea of a rich
country and strong army. This change, from saving to mobilizing the people,
occurred through debate and confrontation, not consensus and harmony. Russian
historian Latyshev, noted that there were over 200 peasant uprisings between 1868
and 1873, calling the Restoration an “unaccomplished revolution.”
 While there were many causes for the Restoration, it had significant
consequences, including the rise of militarism that led to the outbreak of World
War Two. But what is more crucial to recognize is that the Meiji Restoration, like
modern revolutions across the world, was an ongoing, turbulent process responding
to its specific internal and external forces.
Sources:
1. Gordon, Andrew. 2003. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times
to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press.
2. Sarao, KTS. n.d. History of China and Japan 1840-1849.
Q. Analyze the nature of the Meiji Restoration. In what ways was it Anti-Feudal.
The Meiji period was preceded by the feudal rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which
had come to power in 1603. Power in this period was wielded by the dynastic military
leader or shogun (Bakufu) who commanded the military and political support of the
various hierarchically subordinate feudal lords. While the institution of the Emperor
was an ancient one, he was a mere figurehead. The effective seat of power in Japan
was in Edo, at the residence of the Shogun while the city of Kyoto, the capital of the
Emperor had a largely ceremonial purpose. The Tokugawa Shogunate operated
through an elaborate administrative apparatus called the Bakufu system. The control
of the Tokugawa Shogunate began to deteriorate towards the middle of the 19th
century and the meek submission of the Bakufu to the slightest threat of military force
from the West and the unwillingness of the Shogunate to consult the other daimyo of
Japan coupled with the disregard for the opinion of the Emperor resulted in a backlash
against the Tokugawa Shogunate.
The process of Restoration was a lengthy process which unfolded over a period of time.
The immediate background to the downfall of the Tokugawa Bakuhan was the
Satsuma-Choshu alliance (1866) and the military defeat at the hands of the daimyos
from the Choshu domain. Led by the militarily powerful ‘outer daimyo’ domain lords of
Satsuma, Choshu, Hizen and Tosa the discontent daimyo of Japan rebelled against the
Shogunate, overthrowing the Shogun and in 1868 proclaimed the assumption of power
by the Emperor Mutsuhito who took on the title ‘Meiji’ or the Enlightened One and
inaugurated the Meiji era (1868-1912). This was the commencement of the Meiji
Restoration.
Though the insurgents intended to restore imperial rule, Hugh Borton points out that
initially there was only a shift in loyalties of the feudal lords from the Bakufu to the
emperor. The essential control over taxation, title to the land and military power still
remaining in the hands of approximately 267 daimyo or feudal lords. It was expected
that the institution of the Shogunate would continue despite the restoration and that
the daimyo of Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa and Hizen would control the institution. However,
the daimyo resolved to abolish the Shogunate altogether, laying the foundation for a
new political system. As Hugh Borton points out, it was only after the new regime
addressed the economic problems that the political problems were paid attention to.
A series of measures were initiated, which included namely- land tax reforms, abolition
of feudal domains, creating self-sufficiency for food, creation of a much-needed labour
force and measures for agricultural improvement.
An entry point to the discussion of the Meiji Restoration can begin with the mention of
the Charter Oath. In the early months of 1868, the new leaders proclaimed the Charter
Oath which broadly established the principle of wide consultation before taking
decisions and spelt the end of the old exclusiveness of the Bakufu system. This was
intended to secure the support of the other daimyo as well as that of the old officials
of the Tokugawa order whose administrative expertise was of vital importance in
establishing the new order. is enshrined the intention of the new regime to establish
deliberative assemblies’ platform for public discussions. A Diet (bicameral legislature)
was created in 1889 and it had two Houses- the House of Peers, whose members were
generally form the imperial family and the other elite; and the popularly elected
House of Representatives. The latter was kept in check by the former. However, the
House of Representatives had a very important power-it could reject the budget
prepared by the cabinet if it wanted to.
J. W. Hall highlights that the two most outstanding features of the entire Restoration
period were the overwhelming sense of foreign threat and the leadership taken up by
the samurai class. It is interesting to note that the term ‘restoration’ and not ‘revolution’
has been used to describe this sequence of crucial events in the Japanese history.
According to Hall, in comparison to the other European Revolutions, Japan’s
‘restoration’ was quite different. There was a near absence of social antagonism or
political ideologies which had fueled the French and Russian revolutions. There were
no mobs in the streets and even though there were some peasant uprisings, they
remained largely local and non-political.
The debate about the nature of the Meiji Restoration is hinged upon the following
issues. Firstly, one has to determine who the participants were in this restoration
process and examine the reaction of various classes- the peasants, samurai, the
daimyos etc.; and secondly, it is important to find out whether the restoration was
anti-feudal in character. Contemporary writers like Fukazawa Vukichi (1875) justified
the Restoration. There was a need felt to place Japan’s experience in a larger worldly
context. A group of Japanese historians called the Min’yusha Historians hold the
opinion that the restoration was required to get completely rid of the problems faced
by the Japanese society. These historians tend to equate the event of Restoration with
the English and the French Revolution.
Most of the Japanese historians glorify the role of the bourgeoisie, and especially the
smaller rural merchants in the Restoration. They assert that the driving force came from
the class of the non-samurais. It is interesting to note that while power had been seized
by the domain lords, effective power under the new order came to be devolved upon a
new class of lower to middle ranking samurai: men who had learnt to manipulate their
own feudal lords and gradually, the Emperor and his courtiers. By the end of the 1860s,
the ‘Meiji oligarchy’ had come into existence consisting of a small group of talented
administrative officials and courtiers drawn from the chief domains. This theory was
elaborated upon by a western scholar Hugh Borton. EH Norman opines that over time,
the daimyos became very close to the chonin or the merchant class. A daimyo-chonin
alliance that was typically anti-bakuhan in nature had come into being. This alliance
had furthered the process of the decline of the Shogunate and led to the Meiji
restoration. However, some Japanese scholars such as Toyama Shigeki believe that it
was the peasants who merit attention since they were the ones who led mass uprisings.
Farmers were no longer docile and massive but were gradually becoming politically
aware about their rights. J White and some other western historians seem to disagree
with this Shigeki’s position and instead argue that there was no link between the
peasant uprisings in the countryside and the restoration. The uprisings and food grain
riots that took place in 1866 were isolated events. They also assert that largely speaking,
in spite of these uprisings, there was stability in the villages after all.
Stephen Vlastos strikes the balance between these two opposing arguments. He points
out that the major uprisings that had occurred in the years between 1866-69 took place
in areas where the Bakufu had a stronghold. Thus, he proposes that even though these
uprisings may not have had a direct impact as such, they certainly hastened the entire
process of the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime. In Marxist understanding, the Meiji
Restoration can be viewed as a bourgeois revolution. Craig and Jansen, while critiquing
this view argue that the middle class and the lower samurai hadn’t really formed a class
alliance since the entire lower samurai class didn’t participate. The lower samurai class
were not aiming at representing their own class. They had vested interest and wanted
to escape the The Meiji Restoration miseries of their condition and therefore took part
in the restoration. They highlight the ‘quicksilver’ role of the individuals who were
constantly shifting their loyalty. While Craig and Jansen attribute the participation of the
lower samurais to purely economic reasons, JW Hall believes that there were political
reasons as well. According to Hall, they were committed to bring about a change and
wanted the Tokugawa government to take stronger steps against foreign
encroachment. And as opposed to the Marxist interpretation, Hall states that the Meiji
Restoration was neither a bourgeois nor a peasant revolution.
By 1868, top leaders of the new provisional government decided that the politically
fragmented system of domains had to be overhauled. The objective was to set up a
centralized state structure geared towards modernizing Japan in an effective manner.
The daimyos were asked to give up their titles and domains. Approximately 250
domains were abolished and around 72 new administrative units called ‘prefectures’
(ken) were established in their place. These prefectures were to be governed by the
state-appointed governers , who were generally the relatives of samurai leaders from
anti-tokugawa tozama areas (Choshu, Satsuma, Tosa and Hizen). Hall suggests that the
feudal lords were made to surrender using two strategies, namely pressure and
inducement. The fragmented feudal armies were replaced by one single imperial army.
Even the privileges of the elites had been reduced to the minimum.
The samurais also lost their former prestige. They were compensated with annual
stipends. This was done in a gradual process. Keeping with the abolition of feudalism, in
1869 the government reduced the numerous samurai ranks to two –upper samurai
(shizoku) and lower samurai or sotsu. In 1872 majority of lower samurai were
reclassified as commoners or heimin, still receiving their stipends. In the next year, the
state began taxing the stipends of the samurais. The samurais had the choice of
converting their stipends into bonds.
By 1876, it was declared that all the stipends would be converted into bonds. As a class,
they were being eliminated and were absorbed in the society as mere commoners.
Andrew Gordon has seen this development in a positive light and states that these
measures had led to the social liberation of the samurai. This was so because they now
had the choice to opt for other occupations.
However, if one takes a closer look, there were certain features that reinforced the
elements of feudalism. To begin with, most of these newly appointed governors were
in fact the former daimyos. As remuneration, the daimyos were given an annual
pension which was 10% of the land revenue they had been accruing earlier when they
controlled the domains earlier. They were also relieved from their duties and
responsibilities. It was a favourable situation for the daimyos and therefore they did not
resist these measures. And even the samurais were given stipends in lieu of the
privileges they once enjoyed.
Moreover, even though the Diet was established and the constitution facilitated the
formation of deliberative assemblies, it is important to note that the House of
Representatives, which was popularly elected did not really possess powers. It was
the House of Peers, whose members were generally chosen from the elite classes and
feudal barons, which wielded the real power. N Peffer brings to our notice that there
were continuities that can be traced from the pre-Meiji era. By this he implies that even
though the new constitution had the nuances of a modern state, namely a Diet, posts
like that of Prime Minister etc, the oligarchic nature of the regime wasn’t shrugged off
completely.
In this way the central government in the space of about 4 years acquired control over
jurisdiction over the entire population, together with control of all the former
revenues of the domains, dissolving a system that was over 260 years old and laying
the basic requirements for the creation of a modern state. The Meiji Restoration
marked a final break with the ancient feudal order in Japan and marked its
transformation into a modern, industrialized society. The monopolization of power by
the Meiji oligarchs also stimulated a movement for greater democracy in the political
system with the launching of the Popular Rights movement which ultimately culminated
in the proclamation of a new Meiji Constitution
BIBLEOGRAPHY
1. W.G. Beasley: Modern History of Japan
2. Nathaniel Peffer: The Far East: A Modern History
3. Andrew Gordon: A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present
4. Marius B. Jansen (ed): The Emergence of Meiji Japan
5. Hugh Borton: Japan’s Modern Century from Perry to 1970
6. Hugh Borton: Japan’s Modern Century from Perry to 1970
7. James L. McClain – Japan: A Modern History
8. JK Fairbank – East Asia
Meiji Constitution of 1889 and the birth of modern Japan

The history of modern Japan began in 1868 when the rule of absolutist government of

Tokugawa Shogunate that had reigned over Japan for centuries was broken. Following

the restoration of Emperor’s ruling power a new central government established and

the country experienced profound social, economic and political change. The political

thinkers, intellectuals and statesmen of Meiji “Enlightenment” introduced modern

Western concepts including Western knowledge, weaponry, technology, even

Western dress to the Japanese audience. In the international world of 19th century

which was completely dominated by European nation states the Western ideals were

a source of inspiration for many Japanese. At the same time Japan felt an immediate

need to protect itself in the hostile and aggressive world of Western empires.

Unequal treaties were forced on Japan during 1850s and 1860s following the forced

opening of the country by U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry mission in 1853. By virtue

of these treaties Japan’s control over its own foreign trade was limited and

extraterritorial jurisdiction over foreigners in Japan were imposed. Japanese

statesmen regarded Westernization in compatible with Japanese traditions as the

only way to counter Western threat and to improve Japan’s international status.

Japan followed a series of reforms throughout 1880s to prove itself a civilized power.

Along with the need to build a military force capable to counter Western military

aggression, it was of vital importance to adopt a constitution in the sense of fulfilling

the requirements of the nation state. The new political leaders of Meiji confronted

serious political problems regarding the coalition that toppled down the Shogunate.

1
There were wide differences of opinion regarding the structure of new regime within

the samurai coalition and it did not take too long to disintegrate. A struggle for power

continued thus the governing oligarchy was in desperate need of a political system to

avoid disorder and to prevent acute political crises. A constitutional political structure

needed for Japanese government to concentrate upon domestic reform and to

facilitate Japan’s development as a modern nation. During the 1880s and 1890s

Japanese statesmen accomplished several legal and administrative reforms based on

the Western model including drafting a constitution, formation of parliamentary

government, cabinet and political parties. Following a series of military victories of

Japanese army over China and Russia, these reforms particularly 1890 Constitution

and Civil Code of 1895 supported Japan to gain legitimacy with Western nations and

to revise successfully the unequal treaties by the end of the 19th century.

The primary aim of this essay is to examine how Meiji Constitution led to a change in

Japan’s international standing. Attention will be given to the preparation process of

the Meiji Constitution and Prussian influence in determining the character of

constitutional system. Here it will be argued that Meiji Constitution was a result of

adaptation of Western political thinking to domestic circumstances. Along with other

legal reforms and promulgation of a written constitution, Japanese state was

considered to complete its legal Westernization. However, whereas administrative

reforms were successful in many regards, Constitution was eventually to fail in

practice due to the vague wording regarding the relationship between the executive

2
and the legislature. (Swale 2002, p.132) Nonetheless the constitution which paved

the way to the “Japan’s transition from the rule of persons to the rule of law” was a

major achievement for the country which eventually made it a world power with an

alliance with Britain and a possessor of colonies.

After the Meiji Restoration of 1968 the new regime came to power had an immediate

task of bolstering its legitimacy and capacities. The feudal Tokugawa state had

controlled foreign affairs and trade but had no central bureaucracy, treasury or tax

codes, in other words, it lacked a means for direct control over the population.

(Indergaard and Indergaard 2008, p. 354) Armed revolts by samurai class and

peasantry intensified during the 1870s for various reasons whereas internationally it

faced the disadvantages of unequal treaties signed between 1858 and 1869. The

effects of Western influence were profound in this period. Unlike China which deeply

resented the Westernization wave, Japan chose to follow Western models and

practices voluntarily.

Civil liberties were at the core of intellectual debate within the Meiji elite. Some of

the samurai who toppled the Shogunate had joined the ranks of Meiji government

however others remained outside formed a “Liberty and Civil Rights Movement”

which called for radical changes to form a stronger nation state. Their main aim was

the speedy introduction of a Western modeled constitution and parliament. French

Revolution and American Revolution and thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau were

their source of inspiration. (Aida 2003, p. 68) However the conservative leaders of the

3
government argued that Japan was not ready for a constitutional government and

favored a gradualist approach.

The government did not initially intend to enact a constitution. However after

experiencing a series of political crises discussion on constitutional government was

accelerated among oligarchs. In 1872 – 1873 some samurai factions’ demand for war

on Korea initiated a political crisis. Later in 1874 a reactionary armed resistance to

modernization of country broke out and the ruling oligarchs in need of popular

support were forced to promise that a constitution would be established. Following

the cabinet crisis of 1881, the emperor issued a rescript and promised a written

constitution and further government set a date for the inauguration of parliamentary

government by the year 1890. (Beckmann 1954, p. 259)

Meiji statesmen had a keen interest in Western political theories. Kido Koin was one

of the first statesmen who expressed a need for a constitution to provide a legal

foundation for the powers and structure of the government upon his return home

from the Iwakura mission to USA in 1871-1872. (Beckmann 1954, p. 260) Kido’s views

had a broad repercussion within the advocates of modernization and in November

1873 the government appointed Ito Hirobumi and Terashima Munemori to begin a

general study of constitutional government. (Beckmann 1954, p. 261) Ito and

Terashima sought the opinions of various intellectuals including Kido, Okubo, Goto,

Okuma and Itagaki. Initially leading figures such as Itagaki and Okuma argued for the

adoption of a constitution and representative government on English model, based

4
on the theories of individual freedom derived from Western political theorists such as

Spencer, Mill, Rousseau, Montesquieu and others. (Farley 1950, p. 79) However in the

political struggle they were defeated and left out by conservative and state centralist

statesmen. Model constitutions were presented and debated in the meetings and

newspapers. In the discussions the constitutions of Prussia and other German states

providing a highly centralized administration came to the fore and in 1881 the Meiji

government formally announced its intention to open a national assembly in 1890.

(Aruga 1999, p. 1418) In 1882 Ito Hirobumi led to another overseas mission to

America and several European capitals including London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin to

study constitutional theories and practices which were most appropriate to adapt

Japan’s needs. The members of the mission spent greater time in Prussia. The

delegation met with Rudolf von Gneist in Berlin and then with Lorenz Von Stein in

Vienna. Further, as the drafting proceeded the advice of foreign scholars and

statesmen was sought from time to time. Dr. Carl Friedrich Hermann Roessler a

member of the faculty of law in the Imperial University of Tokyo was one of important

figures who advised to shape the constitution on a Prussian model. (Colegrove 1937,

p. 1043)

After spending nearly 18 months away from Japan Ito and his aides Inouye Ki, Ito

Miyoji and Kaneko Kentaro began to work on drafting the constitution on December

1885. Although Declaration of Independence was a major inspiration for many

modernization advocates, US constitution was regarded as too liberal. Furthermore,

5
British model with an unwritten constitution as granting too much power to the

parliament leaving the King as merely a figurehead. Yet Prussian system whereby the

king rather than the parliament actually selects the cabinet and wields actual power

seemed more appropriate to follow without breaking Japanese tradition of centuries.

(Colegrove 1937, p. 1041) In his own words, Ito “felt at home in German atmosphere

because the relevant circumstances of Germany resembled those of Japan at the

same time… German sentiment about monarchy and armies was like Japanese

sentiment on those matters.” (Farley 1950, p.79) Thus the commission came to a

conclusion that rather than Britain, US or any other country, Prussian model was best

suited to the Japanese needs.

The work of drafting constitution continued till March 1888 when the first draft was

finally completed. (Spencer 1920, p. 501) Considering the power struggle within the

oligarchy the leaders of Meiji government kept constitution making exclusively in their

own hands. (Aruga 1999, p. 1418) All the work was performed behind closed doors.

(Spencer 1920, p. 499) The final draft of the constitution was presented to the Privy

Council recently created by imperial ordinance to debate the constitutional text. The

discussion of the draft in the Privy Council began on February 1988 and lasted till

February 1889. The Emperor was said to have been present during the sessions of the

Council. In Ito’s words, “The Sovereign himself presided over these deliberations (in

the Privy Council) and he had full opportunities of hearing and giving due

consideration to all conflicting opinions.” (Malcolm 1920, p. 64) The Constitution was

6
thus prepared by a commission assigned by the government, was then submitted to a

council consisted of specially organized officials and enacted by imperial ordinance

and was always kept secret from the public. (Malcolm 1920, p. 64)

The Meiji Constitution, the Kempo, which promulgated on February 11, 1889 by the

Emperor Mutsuhito and came into effect after the formal opening of the bicameral

parliament on November 1890 as a whole was based on the provision that accorded a

position to the Emperor above the law and made him the very source of the law.

(Spencer 1920, p. 507) He was sacred and inviolable (Article 3), was the head of

Empire and had the right of sovereignty (Article 4) due to the unbroken lineage of

Emperors for ages (Article 1). He had the right to exercise the legislative power with

the consent of the bicameral parliament and he might issue law or ordinances (Article

8). He had the supreme command of the army and navy (Article 11) and had the

authority to declare war, make peace and conclude treaties. (Article 13) The

document, though nominally democratic, placed most of the power in the hands of

the emperor, the nobles and those appointed by the emperor. The executive power

was the government and the legislative and judicial merely existed to enable the

executive branch. (Malcolm 1920, p. 66) A bicameral parliament composed of, an

upper chamber, the House of Peers and, a lower chamber, the House of

Representatives was created. The House of Peers was mostly made up from the

members of the imperial family, nobility and largest tax payers whereas the members

of the House of Representatives were chosen by limited electorate of 5% of the adult

7
male population. The Cabinet and armed forces were made responsible to the

emperor, not to the parliament or Japanese people. The second chapter of the

constitution was devoted to the rights and duties of the citizens. According to the

constitution the right of property of every Japanese subject was to be protected and

remain inviolate. (Article 27) An important point to be made here is to what extent

Emperor exercised a personal rule. While the absolute authority of the emperor was

emphasized in several articles of the constitution, he never attempted a personal

reign and remained ceremonial head of the Japanese state. Avoiding from the active

sphere of the government this placed him beyond censure and criticism. In this

respect Japanese practice differs from German practice in which Kaiser exercises a

personal rule and the Chancellor is only his Secretary. (Malcolm 1920, p. 67)

The promulgation of Meiji constitution served to demonstrate the launch of the

modern state of Japan and enhanced its position in the international sphere. By this

document Japan became a “legal state” and sought to place herself before the

civilized world as a nation governed by law and not by a single human will. (Spencer

1920, p. 499, 506) Moreover, following the completion of the constitution in 1890 and

Civil Code in 1895 Japan had the upper hand to renegotiate disadvantageous treaties

with Western powers. By 1894, since all nations were on equal legal terms,

negotiations over matters regarding tariff autonomy and extraterritorial jurisdiction

began. In 1899 Britain agreed to make a final settlement on consular jurisdiction and

three years later Anglo Japanese Alliance was signed in London. The successful

8
negotiations on redemption of judicial and fiscal authority of Japan were a major

national aspiration for Japanese people and marked a turning point for both domestic

and foreign policies. (Perren 1992, p. 32)

9
Q. WHAT LED TO THE GROWTH OF MILITARISM IN JAPAN?

Japan's march toward militarism started soon after the overthrow of the Tokugawa
shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, with the Meiji oligarchs'
adoption of a policy of fukoku kyôhei (rich country, strong military). Although the Meiji
oligarchs showed restraint in outward expressions of militarism and imperialism in the first half
of the Meiji period from 1868 to 1890, this does not mean they disagreed with the goals of
foreign expansion and military build-up, but rather they first focused more on modernization
and economic growth to catch up with Western industrial powers before they took significant
steps to expand Japan's influence in foreign matters.

The Meiji oligarchs' early leanings toward militarism and imperialism can be seen by the
Conscription Law of 1873, which required all males to serve active duty in the military for
three years and reserve duty for an additional four years, and by several small territorial
acquisitions in the 1870s, such as the Ryûkyû Islands, Bonin Islands, and Kurile Islands.

The rise of militarism in Japan can be traced back in the century-old military tradition of the
samurai. Hundreds of years of rule by men-of-sword had made the people ready to accept the
claims of militarists to national leadership. Fundamentally, Japan had a strong tradition of
unquestioned obedience to authority. The spirit of Bushido had existed in the hearts of the
Japanese and it permeated into all social strata through the nation-wide conscription army.

Furthermore, foreign threats emphasized the importance of militarism. Japan in the 1850s
had been forced to sign unequal treaties, and her independence was threatened in an age of
imperialism. These facts taught the Japanese the realities of power politics — that “Might is
Right.” As such, the Meiji leaders, mostly ex-samurai, learnt the necessity of a strong military
force. In time, they carried out important military reforms and created an army second only
to Germany in the world. Inevitably, the military services were to have decisive influence in the
nation’s affairs.

Institutional loopholes helped to increase the influence of the militarists. The Meiji
Constitution 1889 gave autonomy to the armed services. It stated that the services had the
right of direct access to the emperor, and thus bypassing the government should it become
necessary to do so. A second loophole was the 1900 decree. In that decree, it established the
rule that only serving generals and admirals could become Ministers of War and of the Navy.
As such, the army and navy could wreck a government which was against their interests by
refusing to supply it with army or navy ministers. These institutional loopholes, no doubt,
encouraged the growth of military influence and autonomy.
Another factor that strengthened the tradition of militarism was Japan’s victories in the
Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. These two victories brought great benefits to Japan -
in terms of money and territorial gains as well as international status. These gave great
prestige to the militarists and taught the Japanese a lesson that war was the best instrument
to further national interest and it paid high dividends. In short, victories justified the advocates
of militarism and expansion.

Japan’s overseas expansion became necessary with the successful Meiji modernization.
Significant economic advances were made, especially in industrialization and population
growth. These developments pointed to the search for living space, raw materials, markets
and the like from abroad. The Asian mainland, in particular, China and Korea, became Japan’s
primary target for expansion.

Meiji leaders, for the sake of national unity, ardently cultivated an emperor-centered
nationalism among Japanese minds. It placed the Emperor in an unchallenged position. Thus,
whoever acted in the name of the emperor could control the destiny of Japan. In theory, the
armed forces were the personal army and navy of the emperor, and therefore were qualified to
speak for the emperor.

By making use of this absolute obedience to the emperor and the nation, the army started to
carry out aggression in the 1930s, believing that this served the will of the emperor and the
nation’s interest. A side-effect of this fanatical devotion to the emperor was the growth of
ultra-nationalism. A number of extremist societies such as the Black Dragon Society fanned up
the sentiment of Japan’s superiority in the world by virtue of its divine origins. They strongly
advocated militarism and imperialism.

All the above were underlying factors that enabled the rise of militarism in the 1930s. For the
time being, the Meiji oligarchs as a group could hold the militarists at bay. With the fading out
of the oligarchs, however, no political group was strong enough to play a similar role. As a
matter of fact, party politicians failed disastrously to stop the rise of militarist influence by the
early 1930s.

Failure of Party Government:

Despite its achievements in the earlier years, the failure of party government became apparent
by the late 1920s. This failure of the parties to provide national leadership gave the militarists
their chance to rise to power. As we have seen in earlier section, the failure of party
governments derived partly from its own weaknesses: internal disunity, corruption, no mass
support, and economic failures.

There was another side of the story. In foreign affairs, there was strong reaction among the
army officers against the “weak-kneed” diplomacy of the party governments. The military
men resented the reduction in size of the armed forces and regarded Foreign Minister
Shidehara’s policy of improving relations with China as a sign of weakness. They were
especially unhappy with the 1930 London Naval Disarmament Conference in which Japan
agreed to a naval inferiority relative to Britain and the United States. On this account, the
Prime Minister was assassinated by an extremist.

One of the most influential nationalist extremists was Kita Ikki who advocated an economic
and social revolution led by the militarists. He also advocated the conquest of such areas as
Manchuria and Siberia because Japan lacked natural resources and living space. His ideas
provided a program of action for the militarists. The influence of Kita was acknowledged in the
Showa Restoration movement in the early 1930s. The concept of Showa Restoration envisaged
the return of power from the parties and zaibatsu to the emperor and militarists who served
better the nation’s interests.

Independence of the Military:

Also forming part of the basis for the growth of militarism was the freedom from civilian
control enjoyed by the Japanese armed forces. In 1878, the Imperial Japanese Army
established the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff office, modeled after the Prussian
General Staff. This office was independent of, and equal to (and later superior) to the Ministry
of War of Japan in terms of authority.

The Imperial Japanese Navy soon followed with the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff.
These General Staff offices were responsible for the planning and execution of military
operations, and reported directly to the emperor. As the Chiefs of the General Staff were not
cabinet ministers, they did not report to the Prime Minister, and were thus completely
independent of any civilian oversight or control.

The Army and the Navy also had decisive say on the formation (and survival) of any civilian
government. Since the law required that the posts of Army Minister and Navy Minister be
filled by active-duty officers nominated by their respective services, and since the law also
required that a prime minister resign if he could not fill all of his cabinet posts, both the Army
and the Navy had final say on the formation of a cabinet, and could bring down the cabinet at
any time by withdrawing their minister and refusing to nominate a successor.

Growth of Ultra Nationalism:

During the Taisho period, Japan saw a short period of democratic rule (the so-called "Taisho
democracy"), and several diplomatic attempts were made to encourage peace, such as the
Washington Naval Treaty and participation in the League of Nations.
However, with the beginning of the Showa era, the apparent collapse of the world economic
order with the Great Depression starting in 1929, coupled with the imposition of trade
barriers by western nations and an increasing radicalism in Japanese politics including issues
of domestic terrorist violence (including an assassination attempt on the emperor in 1932 and
a number of attempted coups d'etat by ultra-nationalist secret societies) led to a resurgence of
jingoistic patriotism, a weakening of democratic forces and a belief that the military could
solve all threats both domestic and foreign. Patriotic education also strengthened the sense of
a hakko ichiu , or a divine mission to unify Asia under Japanese rule.

A turning point came with the ratification of the London Naval Treaty of 1930. Prime Minister
Osachi Hamaguchi and his Minseito party agreed to a treaty which would severely limit
Japanese naval power. This treaty was strongly opposed by the military, who claimed that it
would endanger national defense, and was portrayed by the opposition Rikken Seiyukai party
as having been forced upon Japan by a hostile United States, which further inflamed growing
anti-foreign sentiment.

The Japanese system of party government finally met its demise with the May 15th Incident
in 1932, when a group of junior naval officers and army cadets assassinated Prime Minister
Inukai Tsuyoshi.

Circumstances Favourable in the Present Situation:

Meanwhile, China by 1928 was on the verge of being unified by Chiang Kai-shek. A unified and
strong China could threaten Japan’s position in Manchuria where the Kwangtung Army was
stationed. Apparently, the Nanking government was trying to bring Manchuria back into
China’s control. The Manchurian warlord, Chang Hsueh-liang defied Japan by associating
himself with the Nanking government. In the eye of the militarists, Japan had to act fast in
order to safeguard her vested interests. Consequently, in September 1931, the Kwangtung
Army took independent action and seized control of Manchuria.

Another significant factor was the effects of the Great Depression on Japan’s economy. This
world-wide depression led to a collapse of international trade because each country raised
protective tariffs to protect her own interests. This development was fatal to Japan’s economy
which depended heavily on export trade. Thus, between 1929 and 1931, Japan’s exports
dropped 50%, unemployment reached 3 million, and peasants’ real income dropped one-third
as a result of falling prices for silk.

Then, there was a failure of rice crop in 1932. Such rural distresses intensified the discontents
of the army officers, many of whom had connections with the rural population. They blamed
the party governments in power and believed that parliamentary policies were ruining Japan.
Consequently, there was a popular support for military adventures. Many Japanese believed
that overseas expansion was an effective solution to economic problems.
Aspiration for Western-style Imperialism:
The Meiji leaders sought to make Japan a first-rate nation (ittô koku), which included the
prestige and power associated with foreign territorial possessions. During the 19th century,
the Western powers of Britain, Germany, America, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia,
and Italy made various overseas territorial acquisitions, many times through military means.

Knowing very well the long history of Western imperialism, which began in the 16th century,
the Meiji oligarchs desired to join the Western powers in demands for rights and privileges in
other Asian countries. However, the oligarchs realized that the country needed to modernize
and strengthen its military before it attempted to assert its demands to the Western powers.

Even after Japan had been building its military for several years, Japanese leaders realized in
1895 that the country still had not reached the same level as the imperialist Western powers.
Although Japan won the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 and as a result acquired Formosa and
forced China to pay a large indemnity, Japan could not stand up to the other Western powers
when Russia, Germany, and France forced Japan in the Triple Intervention to give up the
Liaotung Peninsula. This led Japan to a rapid increase in military expenditures between 1895
and 1904.

Security Concerns:
Japan's militaristic attitude intensified as government leaders recognized the need to ensure
the defense of the country against Russia and other Western powers. Observing the advanced
technological achievements and superior military and naval power of the West, Japan had fears
of being invaded by a Western country such as Russia. Also, with China being so weak militarily
and economically in the late 19th century, Japanese leaders feared the rivalries of the
Western powers could bring China to collapse, which would have profound implications on
the security of Japan. Yamagata Aritomo, known as the father of the modern Japanese army,
advocated expansionism more for security reasons rather than for conquest as an end in itself
or for other reasons.

Yamagata Aritomo recommended that Japan not only protect its line of sovereignty
(shukensen) but also strive toward its line of advantage (riekisen), which meant that Japan
should extend its influence and control beyond its national borders in order to ensure its
security. Control over Korea represented an essential element in the protection of Japan against
Western countries due to the two countries' geographical propinquity and due to Korea's
having borders with both China and Russia.

Japan soon recognized that it needed control over the Liaotung Peninsula in southern
Manchuria to ensure the defense of Korea.
Belief in Asian Leadership Role:
In the late 19th century, many Japanese leaders came to believe that their country had a
"manifest destiny" to free other Asian countries from Western imperialist powers and to lead
these countries to collective strength and prosperity. Fukuzawa Yukichi and other late 19th
century writers supported foreign expansionism and Social Darwinism, which promoted survival
of the strongest cultures by a process of natural selection.

In 1905, Japan became the first Asian country to defeat a Western power, namely Russia in the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, which bolstered Japan's belief in its destiny to lead Asia and
encouraged leaders in other Asian countries that they had a chance to stand against Western
imperialist designs.

Several ultranationalist groups and writers, such as the Black Dragon Society and Kita Ikki,
gained increasing popularity with their views that Japan should take leadership in Asia to
expel foreign powers by means of a righteous war if necessary. Many of these ultranationalist
groups believed that the moral purity of the Yamato race and Japan's unique ancestry as
descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu entitled the Japanese to such a leadership role in
Asia.

Provocation by Western Powers:

A series of coercive acts, insults, and provocations by Western imperialist countries from the
1850s to the 1930s caused great anger to fester among the Japanese people. Japan's signing of
unequal treaties with America, France, Holland, and Russia in 1858 placed restrictions on
Japan's national sovereignty, such as extraterritoriality, which meant that foreigners in Japan
had immunity from the jurisdiction of the Japanese legal system. The 1921-22 Washington
Conference naval treaties forced on Japan an unfavorable battleship ratio of 5:5:3 for the US,
Britain, and Japan respectively, and the Western powers at the London Naval Conference of
1930 coerced Japan to accept the same ratio for its heavy cruisers.

Strong racial prejudice by Westerners toward Japanese, in addition to Chinese and other
Asians, led to several severely insulting incidents for the Japanese people. In 1919 at the Paris
Peace Conference, Western countries rejected the simple Japanese request to have a racial
equality clause included in the League of Nations Covenant. In 1905, California passed
anti-Japanese legislation. In the following year, the school board in San Francisco ordered
Japanese and other Asian children to attend segregated schools. In 1924, America passed the
Japanese Exclusion Act to shut off Japanese immigration into the US. This series of
international affronts to Japanese pride and status provided fuel to the militaristic and
imperialist sentiments of Japanese government leaders and ultranationalists.
The end of Japanese Militarism:
Despite efforts to totally militarize Japanese society during the war, including such measures
as the National Service Draft Ordinance and the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement,
Japanese militarism was completely discredited during the American occupation by the utter
failure of Japan's military in World War II.

After the surrender of Japan, many of its former military leaders were tried for war crimes
before the Tokyo tribunal, its government, educational system revised and had pacifism
written into the post-war Constitution of Japan as one of its key tenets.

Bibliography:
Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945: William Beasley
Japanese Militarism, Past and Present: John M Maki
A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present: Andrew Gordon
Japan in War & Peace: John W Dower
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Japanese Women’s Rights at the Meiji Era

Ⅰ．Introduction

The Meiji era is an age when the large reforms were carried out one after another to catch up with
Western Europe such as Haihan chiken, “Dissolution of the domains and establishment of
prefectures”, Fukoku kyōhei, “Rich country, strong army”, Chiso kaisei, “the land tax revision”, and
Shokusan Kōgyō, “the encouragement of new industry”.

Ⅱ．Coming of Modern Western European Thoughts

１．Fukuzawa Yukichi, Ueki Emori, and Mori Arinori

The coming of modern western European thoughts like the equality of sexes and the monogamy
system in Japan in the Meiji era is considered as ‘THE ENLIGHTENMENT’. The thoughts with respect
to human freedom and right were introduced from the United States and other European countries
at Meiji era. The thoughts of the equality of sexes and the monogamy system were brought in Japan
as that part. It has been known as “the enlightenment movement”.

Fukuzawa Yukichi(1835-1901), the prominent educator and social critic, is often given the credit for
being one of the first to speak out on women and their position in society. Fukuzawa had very early
advocated the importance of education for women and also the improvement of their position in
society. He insisted the equality of sexes and the monogamy system in a book Gakumon no Susume
“An Encouragement of Leatnin. In addition, Fukuzawa edited the scholarly journals as “Meiroku
Zashi”. In the journal Fukuzawa criticized pre-modern patriarchy and the exclusion of foreigners.
Fukuzawa met the thought of John Stuart Mill after writing those books. A translation of work by
John Stuart Mill “The Subjection of Women” was published in 1877. Then Fukuzawa insisted on the
woman’s independence and their liberation based on Mill’s thoughts.

Likewise, later in the 1870’s, the books by Mill and Herbert Spencer inspired Doi Kōka and Ueki
Emori (1847-1892) to start a campaign for the equality between men and women. On the other
hand, Mori Arinori (1847-1889) wrote a report “Saishō Ron” (The Mistress Theory), on a scholarly
journal as “Meiroku Zashi”. In the report, Mori also insisted the equality between men and women.
In 1875, Mori got into a contract marriage with Hirose Otsune. Fukuzawa served as witness to the
contract marriage between them. This contract marriage was a brave statement made by men and
women who believed in a marriage on equal terms.

２．Opposition to mistress by the foreigner missionaries and the Christians

American missionaries and the Christians tried to abolish the mistress law and custom. They also
made an effort to abolish the patriarchy. The publication of “Jogaku Zasshi”(Women Magazine),
Japanese first women’s magazine, in 1885 by Iwamoto Yoshiharu, who was Christian and believed in
monogamy, the abolition of prostitution, education for women, and equality of men and women in
the home, was the occasion for yet another campaign for women.

The year after “Jogaku Zasshi” began publication, Tokyo Fujin Kyōfukai(Tokyo Women’s Temperance
Society) was founded by Christian women. This society aimed to achieve monogamy based on the
equality between men and women, and abolish the prostitution abroad.

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3．The Participation at the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement by Nakajima Toshiko and
Fukuda Hideko――Preparation of women education

Nakajima Toshiko (before having gotten marriage, her family name was Kishida, 1863-1901) and
Fukuda Hideko (before having gotten marriage, her family name was Kageyama, 1865-1927)
contributed at the equality of sexes and the monogamy system with the participation at the Freedom
and People’s Rights Movement.

Women’s private school “Jōkō Gakusya” was established by women’s power in Kageyama’s house in
1883. These activities prepared the creation of the woman education. But the school was suddenly
closed by Takasaki prefecture’s order in 1884. After that, Fukuda Hideko was imprisoned for
participating at the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement. She talked about the desire to the
equality of sexes in the book “Prison recollection”.

Ⅲ．The Beginning of Women’s School Education

１．On school education

School education was started by the Meiji government’s order while the equality of sexes and the
monogamy system had been spread by the intellectuals gradually. The Meiji leaders thought that
they had to educate people actively in order to promote the modernization in Japan. Therefore, the
government enacted a Fundamental Code of Education in 1872 and more than 20,000 elementary
schools were established in the whole country based on this code. Although the enrolment rate of
the boy had reached 56% 5 years later, the girl’s rate was 23% or less. The difference was great. The
educational policy was based on the educational principle to make woman a good wife and a wise
mother supporting “Ie”. “Ie” is a Japanese family system.

２．The Fundamental Code of Education in 1872

The Meiji government declared “The Fundamental Code of Education” in 1872 which carried the
enthusiasm of early Meiji reform in language that combined the respect for education of homilies
used in commoner schools in Tokugawa years with denunciation of the old society:

In this code, inequality on the class in education is denied. Moreover, it ordered making the women
use the school education whatever class she is. The important point is to be described “Women” as
the targets of school education clearly here.

３．Establishment of school for women

Schools for women were established one after another based on this order. For example Tokyo Joshi
Shihan Gakkō (Tokyo Women's Normal School), the antecedent of present Ochanomizu University,
was opened in 1875 and Meiji Jyogakkō (Meiji Women's College), that had generated many
competent talents such as Motoko Hanii, was established in 1885.

According to Shibukawa Hisako’s study, the Meiji government founded a national woman school
called Tokyo Jyogakkō “Tokyo Woman School” in 1872 before enacting the Fundamental Code of
Education. The students were from eight years old to fifteen years old. The educational term was six
years, but in case of preparatory course it was only two years. They learned Japanese, sewing,
English, and craft.

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４．Educational principle to make women “Good wife and wise mother”

An educational policy of girl’s schools was the principle of Ryōsai Kenbo “Good wife and wise
mother”. The principle of “Good wife and wise mother” had been the essence of Japanese women
education until the end of World War Ⅱ in 1945. This education for “Good wife and wise mother”
aimed to train girls to have the thoughts of regarding nation state as family and to do their best for
the family members. The premise was not an equal couple but a patriarchal family in which a wife
was in a lower position than her husband.

５．Appearance of the institutions for woman private school education as place of study

The institutions for woman private school education as the place of study also appeared. Shimoda
Utako founded Jissen Jogakkō “Practice Women College” in 1899. Furthermore Nihon Joshi
Daigakkō “The Japan Women’s College school” opened by the founder Naruse Jinzō in 1901.

In these schools, the education of great individuality which didn’t necessarily follow the policy of
woman high school law promulgated in 1899 was done. The woman high school law had a principle
of “Good wife and wise mother”. However, after the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, we can
see the change from the Europeanization to the nationalism in Japan. So woman high school law was
changed about the education of “Good wife and wise mother” more thorough in 1910. And the
practical woman school only of the subjects concerning housekeeping was set up.

Ⅳ．Work and Women

１．Women supporting Shokusan Kōgyō

However most of women were not able to go to school. They had to work in the cotton factories. The
most important industry at the Meiji era was cotton industry. There were 60％ women in workers,
especially 80％ single women. They supported Japanese economy.

First, Samurai class women began to work in the national factories. The Meiji Restoration changed
samurai’s life greatly. For saving samurai class people, the Meiji government made samurai class
women learn how to weave cloth and work in cotton industry.

Kanei Maebashi Seishijō (National Maebashi Cotton Factory, 1870), Tomioka Seishijō (Tomioka Cotton
Factory, 1872), and Aichi Bōsekijo (Aichi Spinning Factory, 1880) were founded. Cotton industry
developed as Japanese important export industry after the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-
Japanese.

Second, poor farmer’s girls were collected in factories, since demand for women labor increased.

Female workers had worked until midnight and supported Fukoku Kyōhei “Rich country, strong army”
and Shokusan Kōgyō, “the encouragement of new industry”. But by the reason of the hard labor
conditions, tuberculosis, escape and prostitution didn’t disappear. A Factory law enacted in 1911,
and set safety standards for factories that employed twelve or more workers. Under its provisions
workers were to be least twelve years old, and the workday for women and boys under fifteen was
not to exceed twelve hours. However midnight work hours were not prohibited until 1929.19

２．Appearance of Shokugyō Fujin

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On the other hand, Shokugyō Fujin “Lady worker”, who occupied intellectual or skill occupation,
increased from the Middle of Meiji. First, woman teachers appeared. And then, the midwives, the
nurses appeared in answer to diversification people’s interests. In 1900’s, Nippon Bank, the
telephone office and so on employed women as an assistant clerk and a telephone operator. But the
majority of women worked in cotton industry.

Ⅴ．Intensification of patriarchy

１．Towards the establishment of the family system as patriarchy

The intensification of the patriarchy on a nationalism scale was done at the Meiji era. The
government aimed at the establishment of the family system that became the foundation of the
policy for Fukoku kyōhei, “Rich country, strong army”.

The education of “Good wife and wise mother” led to the development of patriarchy. The Meiji
government aimed to get the same power as Europe with the slogan of Fukoku kyōhei, “Rich country,
strong army”. The government thought that the patriarchy was very important to the foundation of
this policy.

The abortion penalty was set up in 1882. Moreover, the polygamy system and father’s only parental
authority was also permitted in the law. In addition, the householder right as “Ie” and the patrimony
inheritance right were provided in the 1898 Civil Code. Then it was also provided that the person
who succeeded a house was an agnate eldest child and that the husband was able to demand the
divorce and punish the wife as the punishment of two years or less. However, the wife was not able
to appeal for husband’s adultery crime. The code is unequal between male and female.

Ⅵ．Literature and Consciousness of Woman’s Identity

１．The first creation activity by woman after the Meiji era began

The consciousness of identity among women developed not by political campaign but by literary
movement at the Meiji era.

At the Meiji era the creation activity by woman developed for the first time. The novel Yabu no
Uguisu “Bush warbler” written by Tanabe Kaho in 1888 is typical. This novel came up not as
literature but as means that woman could be independent economically even when there was no
freedom of the woman’s occupation.

２．Higuchi Ichiyō――The best female writer at the Meiji era

Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896) had studied in the “Haginoya” tanka poetry school established by
Nakajima Utako as well as Tanabe Kaho. Higuchi came from lower class samurai. She wrote novels
as means of subsistence. She wrote many novels for example Takekurabe “The Stature Comparison”,
Nigorie, and Jusany “13 nights”. The feature of Higuchi’s writings is resignation.

３．Yosano Akiko ――Two characters of respect to virginity like Western European and Japanese
sentimentalism

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Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) expressed up the consciousness of individuality and the liberating
sensuality from a feudal and patriarchal system and morality in Midaregami “Untidy hair” in 1901.

Yosano criticized the Russo-Japanese war in Otōto yo, Kimi Shini tamou koto nakare “My younger
brother, please not die” in 1904. She pointed out the irrationality of the death for the nation and
wished her younger brother would come back without dying. This work portrayed the Japanese
sentimentalism.

We can see Western Europe virgin worship in her other poems for example Shiratama Otome “The
girl like a white gem”. In “Shiratama Otome”, woman’s virginity is compared to a crystal gem without
any dirt. Feelings of the woman who make a boast of virginity are symbolized in a crystal gem.

４．“Seitō” and new women

In 1911, the bluestocking magazine “Seitō” (1911.9-1916.2) was published by Hiratsuka Raichō for
the first time. It was said to be the “appearance of modern woman”. Unification of written and
spoken language was used in it. Hiratsuka tried to recover female’s potential by females raising her
consciousness. Hiratsuka more respected inside change in woman’s spirit than the political or social
liberations.

５．Seitō’s Significance for Today――From a feminism perspective

Feminism movement consisted of two waves; first, Woman Suffrage Movement between the
middle of 19’s and the beginning of 20’s, secondly, Women’s Liberation Movement from 1960’s. Two
waves broke out all over the world. It has been said that the first feminism were women’s activities
over “Seitō” at the Meiji era, Woman Suffrage Movement and Woman Labor Movement happened at
the Taishō era in Japan.

Seitō was a great opportunity toward Woman Suffrage Movement. When Seitō was published at the
first time, Hiratsuka Raichō hoped that women raise their consciousness with literature. It seems that
Hiratsuka would like women’s freedom and liberty by these activities. Hiratsuka’s activity has been
criticized frequently because of disregard for the social problems. However Hiratsuka’s activity is very
important when we consider Taigyaku affair in the same 1911 and the historical background that
women were not able to do of their own free will easily.

In addition, it also seems quite important that Hiratsuka and others had offered space to women for
free expression. It is quite significant that women heightened their thoughts through discussion on
Seitō. The problems propounded to Seitō are even today for example free love, question to marriage
system, chastity, abortion, and protection of motherhood.

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Meiji Constitution

Jobial Alex

❖ The Meiji Constitution was a unique blend of authoritarianism and constitutionalism. Discuss. (2016)
❖ In what ways did the Meiji Constitution confirm the powers of the Meiji oligarchy? (2015)
❖ Outline the main features of the constitution of 1889 with special reference to the role of the emperor. Was the
constitution democratic in its form and context? (2014)
❖ Examine the salient features of the Meiji Constitution of 1889. In what ways did the central position of the emperor in
the constitution legitimize authoritarianism of the Meiji oligarchy?
❖ Ito Hirobumi (Short note, 2017)

The Meiji leaders realized that their early political reforms were largely makeshift. Once they had established their
unchallengeable control over the whole nation through the suppression of the Satsuma Rebellion, they turned their attention
towards devising some more permanent form of government. Coming from a society which had enjoyed for more than 2
centuries a clearly defined, fully accepted and almost unchanging political order, they longed for an equally clear,
unchanging and unchallengeable political system. Influenced by Western ideas they thought of it as embodying some form
of representative institutions. They assumed that since the most advanced and powerful nations had constitutions embodying
representative government, there must be something in constitutions and representative institutions that produced progress
and strength. It was also clear to the Japanese leaders that a constitution and parliament would greatly enhance Western
respect for Japan and bring nearer the day when it would be accepted by them as an equal.

In the 1880s while the liberal factions led by Itagaki and Okuma were intriguing for some share in the rewards of office, the
government was busy strengthening its defenses against the party movement which swept the country from 1880-1884,
opines E. H. Norman. It also undertook much needed administrative reforms which gave it greater flexibility and efficiency.
The most energetic spirit in this government activity was Ito Hirobumi, who had been sent to Europe in 1882 to study
constitutions of western nations preparatory to drafting the Japanese constitution. He was determined that while the
constitution should not slavishly reproduce any Western system and would be adapted to Japan’s special needs, it should at
the same time be based on the best constitutional theory and practice of the west, so that it would stand the double test of
Western judgment and Japanese use points out J. K. Fairbank.

Ito returned to Japan in August 1883 and the next spring was made chairman of a special commission to draft the
constitution. But before setting about this task, he started creating the organs of the government he felt would be needed
before the risky experiment in elective institutions was inaugurated. First he created in 1884 a new peerage to populate a
projected House of Peers, designed to serve as a brake on an elected House of Representatives as well as to assure a strong
support from the aristocratic and official classes. The new peerage, divided into the 5 ranks of prince, marquis, count,
viscount and baron, was made up largely of the former daimyo graded according to the size of their former domains and the
latters’ services in the “imperial restoration”. Ito’s most important innovation was the introduction in December 1885 of a
cabinet (Naikaku) based on the most up-to-date European models. Replacing the Council of State (Dajokan) in which court
nobles had lingered on as official intermediaries between the emperor and the oligarchs, the cabinet was made up of the
heads of the various ministries, who were mostly the chief oligarchs themselves. Thus Fairbank infers that at one stroke the
leaders were consolidated into a more effective executive body. Ito himself took the post of Prime Minister. In the new
cabinet unlike the old Council of State, there would be a clear division of departmental work coordinated by the Minister
President, who in his powers closely resembles the chancellor of former imperial Germany. The Civil Service was now
based on an examination system, in this way removing official appointments from political favoritism. Norman claims that
this reform helped to strengthen the bureaucratic system composed of efficient and usually disinterested civil servants whose
loyalty was not attached to any political party or patron but to the bureaucracy as a whole.

The greatest single innovation of this period was the drafting of the Constitution which was written and presented in a way
that sought to maximize the power of the state and minimize that of the people. The constitution was drafted secretly in 1886
and 1887 by a talented group under the direction of Ito Hirobumi and Inoue Kowashi. Ito brought first-rate foreign legal
advisors back to Japan, most prominently a German professor of law, Hermann Roessler. The document was discussed by
top government officials in 1888 in a body newly created for this purpose, the Privy Council. After the promulgation of the
Constitution in 1889 the Council remained as the watchdog of autocratic rule. R. K. Reischauer observes that its own
composition and its power to decide any conflict of opinion which may arise between the different organs of the government

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regarding the interpretation of the constitution have made it the last stronghold of conservation. This small group of leaders
came to be known as the Meiji “oligarchs” (genro in Japanese), a term coined by the press in 1892. The original oligarchs
were the key men, such as Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo, who had come to dominate the cabinet and the bureaucracy
in the 1880s. The genro was an informal body, in the sense that there was no constitutional provision for them. But informal
did not mean ambiguous or unclear. The identity of the oligarchs was well known. For the rest of their lives, they continued
to pull the strings of politics, but as they grew older they stepped back from the front lines of political battle to positions
such as leadership of the Privy Council.

The Constitution was promulgated on February 11, 1889, the official anniversary of the supposed founding of the Japanese
state in 660 BCE. It provided for a bicameral Parliament – the Diet – composed of the House of Peers and an elected House
of Representatives. The House of Peers was to be made up largely of the higher ranks of the nobility, elected representatives
of the lower ranks, and some imperial appointees, who turned out to be usually men of scholarly distinction. The lower
house – the House of Representatives was to be chosen by an electorate limited to adult males paying taxes of 15 yen or
more, only about 5 % of the adult male population. The definition of eligible voters was to be set by law, and the Diet had
power to write and pass laws. The Diet was given a real share in power in that the budget and all permanent laws required
favorable action by both houses. The constitution also guaranteed a whole series of popular rights such as freedom of
religion and of “speech, publication, public meetings and association” and rights to property and due process of law,
although these were all hedged by phrases such as “except in cases provided for in the law” or “within limits not prejudicial
to peace and order”.

These were daring innovations in Japan, but the leaders felt that they had adequately safeguarded the imperial prerogatives
and in this way their own power. The constitution was presented as the gift of the emperor, who reserved the exclusive
right to initiate amendments – none in fact were ever made. It declared the emperor to be “sacred and inviolable” and the
locus of sovereignty as the descendent of a dynasty “which has reigned in an unbroken line of descent for ages past.” It
made clear that the emperor exercised all executive authority and also the “legislative power with the consent of the imperial
Diet.” It specifically stated that “the emperor has the supreme command of the army and the navy.” It made the individual
ministers directly responsible to him, rather than collectively responsible as the cabinet, which was not even mentioned in
the constitution. The budget of the imperial household remained entirely free of the Diet control. The emperor could at any
time prorogue the Diet or dissolve the lower house, necessitating new elections. When the Diet was not in session he could
issue imperial ordinances which temporarily took the place of laws. However, as Andrew Gordon has rightly pointed out,
the prospect of direct imperial despotism was checked in a general way in the preamble, which went on to state that “neither
we nor [our descendants] shall in the future fail to wield the [rights of sovereignty], in accordance with the provisions of the
present Constitution and of the law.” In the constitution itself, the power of the bureaucracy in relation to the throne was
bolstered by the requirement that cabinet ministers cosign all imperial orders. The oligarchs also reserved what they felt was
the trump card to prevent undue Diet control over the purse strings: if the Diet failed to pass the new budget, the previous
years’ budget would remain in effect.

Hence Ito and his colleagues saw the authority of the emperor as central to the whole system of government they were
designing. After all, their own revolutionary seizure of power had been justified as an “imperial restoration,” and they seem
to have been to a considerable extent believers in the myth that they had themselves helped create opines Fairbank. They
also probably realized that imperial prerogatives were the best bulwarks behind which the oligarchs could take refuge from
the rising popular demands for a share in political power. Ito therefore did his best to enhance imperial prestige and protect
the throne from popular pressures even before the promulgation of the constitution. In 1885 he revived the ancient title of
Naidajin or inner minister, commonly translated “lord keeper of the privy seal.” He also placed the imperial household
ministry outside of the cabinet. In April 1888 he created a Privy Council to pass judgment in the emperor’s name on the
constitution being drafted and he characteristically took the presidency of this body himself, so that he could ensure the
approval of his own handiwork.

The constitution was a blend of many conflicting ideas but it turned out to be a reasonably successful balance among the
various political forces of the time. It has often been condemned in recent years for having provided too little democracy, but
this is the perspective of a later age. At that time most western countries themselves had limitations on the electorate and
parliamentary power, and advice to the Japanese of most Occidentals including such disparate figures as President Grant and
Herbert Spencer was to go slow on democratic experimentation. Considering the feudal background and authoritarian
experience of the men in control of the government and the unfamiliarity of the Japanese public with democratic ideas and
institutions, remarks Fairbank, the constitution defined perhaps as liberal a system of government as could have operated

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successfully at the time. While disappointing to the opposition groups, it met their minimum demands, without at the same
time completely alienating more conservative forces. Because of this balance and the sanctity of its supposed imperial
origin, the constitution was never seriously challenged from either side.

Nature of the Constitution

❖ E. H. Norman – Some historians assert that it was quite a liberal constitution- while others assert that it was quite
conservative and a gift from the emperor to his subjects. The second view is endorsed by E. H. Norman. For him,
this constitution, which was emanating from the emperor, was an inflexible instrument of absolutism. Only the
emperor could initiate amendments to the constitution. The Constitution also stated that the Emperor alone had
direct control over the army and the navy. The emperor could even suspend or dissolve the Diet at any time and
call for fresh elections. He elaborates that the constitution was conceived in a spirit of benevolent autocracy.
❖ Nathaniel Peffer – Nathaniel Peffer argues along similar lines. According to him the constitution was only a
slight transformation from the Tokugawa period where feudal lords ruled to now where militarists who were from
the top families with imperial ties ruled. Therefore it may have had all the features of a modern constitution, yet
this was only a veil as Japan still remained an oligarchy and embodied the spirit of the emperor at the top.
❖ Marius Jansen – M. Jansen presents a different view and highlights the role of the emperor as a legitimizer and
temporal head. He asserts that there was an element of ‘mystical absolutism’, that is to say that even though the
constitution vested the emperor with executive, judicial and legislative powers, they were just temporal in nature
and were exercised by the PM, Cabinet, Judiciary and Diet. He was an aloof personality who didn’t participate in
parliamentary discussions and was only a ceremonial head. According to Jansen, it was the ministers who enjoyed
authoritarian power.
❖ E. O. Reischauer – In this context, E. O. Reischauer throws light on the fact that even though everything was
done in the name of the emperor, he never actually ruled. There was an ambiguity regarding the powers of the
emperor in the constitution. He asserts that there was a contradiction of sorts. The Japanese leaders who framed
the constitution combined extreme reverence for the emperor with a complete willingness to force decisions on
him regardless of his own wishes. This curious dual attitude - a ‘combination of awesome respect for the emperor
and callous manipulation of his person’ is embodied in the constitution of 1889. He further elaborates and states
that on the surface it seems like the emperor had enjoyed all powers of the government.
❖ George Akita – According to Akita, the parliamentary form of government and the deliberative assemblies were
not forced upon the government by public sentiment or the Popular Rights Movement. The government’s oligarchs
were often more liberal than the political parties and had always wanted liberalism. In 1889, the Popular Rights
Movement was over and thus the Constitution was not to placate the Minken men.

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Japan Home Assignment

Question: Analyse the Meiji program for industrialization of Japan in the

nineteenth century. How far was it state directed capitalism?

Answer: The modernization of Japan was an extensive and expansive

campaign that covered every possible aspect of the Japanese lifestyle. Their
thirst for modernization and being treated as equal or even above the West
was unquenchable. In fact in 1873, the Japanese even gave away their
traditional lunar calendar and adopted the Gregorian calendar of Western
Europe. This depicted a transition in the motive behind government and the
general public, to move away from the traditional to modern, especially for
creating a strong, independent country with its own international standing.

For understanding the industrialization of Japan, we will have to dig out its
roots and study it from the beginning. We will have to not only look at the
policies introduced by the Meiji government, but the attitude of the people
and role of the public sector to fully grasp the situation in Japan. Only then can
we see Japan’s rise to capitalism, for which we will also study the rise of a few
industries in Japan. The role of the state and the people will be debated as to
who played a greater role and finally the conclusion will be drawn if it was
indeed capitalism from above or from within, as Peter Duus puts it.

First beginning with the Meiji regime, needless to say they did bring about a
revolution in Japan by bringing about extraordinary measures like legal
equality of all classes, abolition of feudal dress, establishment of state
schools, formal emancipation of the forebears of the Burakumin (considered
a pariah caste because they dealt with dead animals and leather tanning).
Japan imported the most modern industry and technology. One important
thing to note here is that though Japan adopted Western technology, it never
bought any of it. In the 1870s, more than 2,000 experts—mathematicians,
scientists, engineers—were recruited to teach the basic sciences that made
modern industry possible. For training in engineering, government technical
schools were established with foreign instructors, while the best Japanese
students were sent abroad to master the most up-to-date techniques.

Gail Honda focuses on the Constitution of 1889 that emphasised on industry

by importing technology and scientific knowledge from the West. The

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government introduced a nationalized banking system and a national

standard currency. It worked to ensure real wage differentials and public
sector factories were created and sold. This set a rapid course towards
industrialization and economic expansion in a quest to build a “rich country
and strong army” (Fukkoku kyohei) and maintain national independence. We
also note that As Japan imported foreign technology and expertise in its
effort to modernize, it needed to export something in return. The Japanese
state turned to its craft industries, and through participation in a number of
international expos it promoted the crafts while paying close attention to
which items were popular with foreigners, pushing production into those
areas.

W.G Beasley also talks about the various measures undertaken by the
government. Education plays a unifying element which is fundamental for
economic development. It’s interesting to note how foreign trade continued
but it was checked and home industries were given priority. He talks about
how modernization in Japan began with the farms, all initiated with the
government sometimes with more fervour than understanding.
Commercialization of agriculture took place on a very large scale and at the
same time, colleges of agriculture were also opened. The government also
directly supported the prospering of businesses and industries, especially the
large and powerful family businesses called zaibatsu. Government also
abolished feudalism leading to breakdown of local separatism resulting in the
emergence of a mobile labour force and creating a national market.

To truly understand what happened in Japan during this period, let us look at
three industries of Japan, their growth and rise. The first industry that comes
under our scanner is the fishery industry. Though the fishing industry is
definitely not considered a heavy industry, making use of simple machinery,
it was very large processing several million tonnes of fish every single
year.David L. Howell, who has worked majorly on the fishing industry in Japan,
primarily focusing on herring fishery talks about its origins and nature. We
note how in the Tokugawa period, fishing use to be conducted either by the
entire family or labourers were hired on a contractual basis ((basho ukeoi).
However, after the Meiji restoration, the contract fishery operators lost their
privileges and the entire fishery was opened to anyone for exploitation. While
the impetus for capitalist foundation definitely came from within, all the
developments were defined by the political and institutional frame of the
state. The state implemented policies that affirmed the predominance of the
capitalist fishery in Hokkaido. Fishing in Hokkaido was of supreme importance

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as the area couldn’t support much agriculture and it was the rural
population’s lifeline. But by 1900, there was a huge demand in the markets of
Honshu not only for the herring fish but also their by-products like fertilizer.
Property and fishing rights were realized. In 1876, the herring fisheries were
opened to the market. Capitalism emerged slowly and small farmers began to
be immiserated by new and upcoming entrepreneurs who quickly established
a capitalist mode of production in the fishery due to high demand. Though not
every fisherman welcomed capitalism, it was imposed and and bolstered by
the Meiji state so that everyone would adhere to it, albeit willing or not.
Capitalism emerged through a process of change in the organization of
production within the fishery and of course, the response of the people
towards it.

If we look at the history of modern transport in Japan, we see that coastal

shipping was developed first due to obvious reasons, Japan being an island
nation. Plus it was the means for the bulk transport, important for trade
during Tokugawa period, hence it had priority. During the Meiji era, the main
need was for better ships, and this need was met combinedly by the
government and entrepreneurs. For example, the firm Mitsubishi, owned by
Iwasaki Yataro began with acquiring a few ships soon taking over government
owned vessels and even establishing a foreign service. But the government
also played an important role by providing dividends at low rates upto 8
percent per year for a period of fifteen year, subsidies, mail contracts in
return for supervision of the sea routes and operations. When the Meiji
government came to power, the Japan shipbuilding industry was technically
way backward so undoubtedly required much support to compete with the
foreign rivals. The government tried controlling the industry itself, but due to
Mitsubishi’s entry into the picture the government entrusted the company
with it’s responsibility supporting it by waiving off its taxes and other fees.

In railway building the role of government was much greater. The government
of Japan decided to build a railway line using British financing and 300 British
and European technical advisors: civil engineers, general managers,
locomotive builders and drivers. In 1872, the first railway line was opened
from Shimbashi to Yokohoma. From the 1880s onward, investment in
domestic infrastructure of roads, railways, harbors, and the telegraph system
grew at the rate of ten percent per annum. Controlling all the railway
construction up till 1877, it later on started giving stakes to private
companies after which the work sped up. Many politicians wanted to keep
major control over the railways under the government however, the Satsuma

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rebellion had left the government financially strained, making the expansion
process extremely slow. This is when the entrepreneurs and companies
stepped in to invest. Nippon Railways was one of the largest ventures,
adversely effecting the Government’s projects but ultimately helping the
development process of the country. Soon, the private industries owned more
mileage than the government. The government rewarded the former samurai
and feudal lords who invested in the railway construction. Here we observe
the government and the public sector formed a close nexus to ensure proper
progess, depending and competing with each other.

Peter Duus talks about the development of manufacturing industry which also
followed a similar pattern with state initiative playing a major role in the first
and then giving way to private investment. The entire period can be divided
into two phases, the first where the government took the form of establishing
and operating factories and second where the private industries took over,
buying the previously government owned factories and giving impetus to
capitalist nature of the industries. Its heavy industries of iron and steel, non-
existent in the mid-nineteenth century, were producing 243,000 tons and
255,000 tons, respectively, for domestic consumption by 1913. The cost of
such industries was massive and obviously, it would have been impossible to
pay for it for individuals, consequently the government did raise taxes, cut off
the samurai class from their income and took other stringent measures.

For all of the industries one thing that we cannot overlook is the existence of
a domestic economy prior to the phase of industrialization. In the Edo period,
conditions were already ripe for Industrial Revolution. Japan was peaceful and
politically stable. Education was widely spread and the economy was
nationally integrated. Commodity production was increased, local markets
established and agricultural growth was promoted.

The large governmental expenditures also led to a financial crisis in the

middle of the 1880's which was followed by a reform of the currency system
and the establishment of the Bank of Japan. But without the help of private
investors, it would have been highly difficult for the government to come out
of this crisis. The textile industry, which surprisingly grew rapidly without any
aid from the government, grew the fastest and remained the largest Japanese
industry until World War II. Work conditions in the early factories were very
bad, miners lived in barracks and worked 12 hours a day for little pay and in
the presence of guards who did not allow them to slacken their pace of work –
at temperatures that might reach as high as 130 degrees Fahrenheit. For the

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sake of industrial growth the Meiji government supported the industrialists

and was opposed to strikes. But strikes occurred, such as that of 100 female
workers at a cotton mill. And strikes continued to grow to the end of the
century, while the government made strike organizing a crime and developing
socialist and liberal movements were soon suppressed by the ruling clique.

Now the question arises was it only government measures that led to Japan’s
transition to a capitalist state? We must remember that even though it is
clear that the Government did have a major role to play, the response of the
urban and rural population willing to respond to the measures is more
crucial. Kenneth Pyle talks about how the state is credited with a larger role
than it actually played in Japan’s industrialization. The private individual and
enterprise was an equal force in the industrialization. However, the
government did provide the setting for industrialization, destroyed old
institutions that were obstacles, and provided communication and financial
infrastructure. Pyle stresses on the singlerly most important step of the
government policies which was the Land Tax Reform. It changed the fixed
percentage tax system to a fixed amount based on land assessment. It was
no longer subject to rice prices which stabilized tax revenue sources of the
government. Land titles were issued and it was now legal to buy and sell
land. What the government did was basically replaced the Tokugawa system
without raising taxes and shocking the economy and also eliminated class
distinctions. Another important step of the government could be the
stablization of the national currency. Mastsukata Masayoshi, the then finance
minister, managed to stop galloping inflation and spearheaded several years
of severe deflation that allowed stabilization of currency.

We note that in Japan the entrepreneurs came from all classes, not just
restricted to wealthy merchants or the samurai class. Dynamism of the
private sector can be seen as highly influential where innovations were
carried out with great enthusiasm and risk factor was not really an important
factor for the entrepreneurs. The existence of people like Euchi Shibuwana
who established nearly 500 companies, headed the first National Bank of
Japan and was also part of the government for four years cannot be ignored.
Such people were the makers of the modern capitalist Japan but then again,
without the aid of the government I personally do not see them succeeding at
all.

The Journal of Asian Studies also mentions how Japanese Confucianism was
also a catalyst for the country’s step towards Industrialization. The Japanese

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Confucianism supported the values of self-sacrifice and loyalty to the emperor

which were further venerated as loyalty to the daimyos (subjects of the
emperor) and late on through the business firm.

So, as far as the question of state directed capitalism is concerned, for Japan
I would say the State definitely played a major role in the same and due
credit should be provided. But keeping aside this fact, it would be wrong to
undermine the role of the people. It’s an extraordinary fact that Japan threw
off over seven centuries of feudal role as quickly as it did and emerged as a
power to reckon with by the Western states. This would have been impossible
had the government and the people would be at crossroads with each other.
In the end, according to me it was the people who brought about the
successful transition of Japan from feudalism to capitalism, their desire for the
same that ensured the same but the entire transition moved on the direction
provided by the Government. Hence, the Meiji period and the people, both
together are to be seen as the major makers of modern Japan, not one or the
other.

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