How the Meiji Restoration Changed the Class Structure of Japanese Society
From 1600 to the year1868 when the Meiji came to power, Japan had existed as a feudal state which had been founded by the warrior ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu. The Tokugawa ruled over 200 domains or sometimes more, which he maintained through military autonomy and an authoritarian form of government based in Edo. Even European intrusion was strictly checked during this era and most Europeans had been barred from Japan except the Dutch who enjoyed limited trading relation with the Island of Nagasaki located approximately 1,000 miles from the capital centre Edo (Huffman 2). Yet, the Tokugawa political system has been hailed for its efficiency in bringing together over 30 million people under one ruler as well as encouraging its subjects to adopt an active national life. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect about the Tokugawa regime was the Sankin Kotai, a system through which majority of the 250 domain lords were required to alternately serve the Shogun in Edo. Such a system of government did not only encourage a high level of national consciousness but also led to extensive physical and economic development as roads to the capital had to be well laid out for the frequent travelling of the lords and their followers towns were established where these lords and their entourages would lodge and cultural diffusion and trade flourished (Tipton 2). Education also flourished in Japan during the Tokugawa as literacy levels for both males and females improved making Japan one of the most literate societies in the world. Culture grew alongside trade and industry and as early as the 1800s, Japans development covered nearly every sphere of society. The Tokugawa regime enjoyed exemplary educational and political elegance and though critics have often described it as inefficient and highly inflexible, its stability can be credited for the peaceful transition of Japanese society that took place after the Restoration (Huffman 4). Yet, in the midst of all these developments, many Japanese nationals were displeased with the state of affairs because the class system gave privileges to some people over others and worse still, it was hereditary. The heredity factor meant that once born in a certain class, no amount of improvement would raise the social status of a person. Rulers remained rulers peasants as peasants and commoners were always commoners (Norman Woods 13-28). To compete with other nations, some young leaders realized that the system had to change and opportunity given to every able bodied Japanese national to advance in life (Theodore, Gluck Tiedemann 10). This created a lot of opposition towards the Tokugawa leadership and such opposition culminated in the January 3, 1868 Meiji Coup which ushered to power some young and visionary leaders from the regional domains. They disbanded the traditional feudal system and also did away with the status and class systems that had been characteristic of Japanese society for a long time (Huffman 6).
Prior to the Meiji Restoration, Japanese society existed under certain class restrictions namely the warriors or samurai, the farmers, craftsmen, merchants as well as the commoners or underclass (Robertson 104). Peasant uprisings had become very common during the Tokugawa regime and by 1866, these disturbances numbered 106 in total reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with the system of government. Contrary to popular belief that these were mere peasant uprisings, most of the participants were the small landholders or independent cultivators who were out to defend their status in society. These are said to have made the most contribution towards the downfall of Tokugawa (Tipton 31). But it was the lower samurai who are said to have ushered in the Meiji Restoration. By the beginning of the Restoration, the Samurai made up 5-6 percent of the total Japanese population or roughly 2 million of the 30 million people living in Japan at that time. The samurai however differed in rank and so did their stipends, a factor that created inequality within the same social class. This created a lot of dissatisfaction among the lower Samurai and they are said to have actually started the uprising that brought the Meiji leadership into power. Lower Samurai consisted of a diverse population including clerks, messengers, foot -soldiers, rural Samurai or goshi and rear escorts of senior families. Although social mobility within this social class was possible, moving up the rank was difficult. As a result, the hereditary rank system became quite unpopular with many middle level samurai and they sought to push for change (Tipton 16-17). Through the Meiji Restoration, these class distinctions were gradually dropped and Japanese society was transformed from the old class system into a new system where a modern education system created room for social mobility to those who were able to fully utilize it. Education became a universal provision for all Japanese nationals offered on equal basis and it replaced the class structure as a tool for defining the various roles that different people played in this society (Robertson 60).
The change in class system went alongside a change in government. In place of the old feudal units, the new Meiji government also established modern as well as highly centralized administrative institutions. The emperor became the central ruler and directly administered the rest of the country through a social centralized and unified bureaucracy (Sorensen 47). A new constitution was drawn in 1889 under the Meiji system of government in which the emperor was established not as an authoritarian ruler but as the head of government whose work was to legalize what his ministers had decided (Reischauer Jansen 88). National status of all Japanese citizens was equalized through national enlistment abolition of the former class system and the establishment of uniform rights (Sorensen 47). The new government was highly centralized. Individual domains that had encouraged the class system no longer had any control over each other and each acquired a high degree of independence that had their influence concentrated at the local level. Local governments created under the Meiji regime became arms of the central government at local level while domains were replaced by prefectures. Government functions at the local level were limited and most essential government functions were controlled by the imperial government. Any functions assigned to local governments were administered through established laws (Sorensen 53-56). But the process of change was not easy and as Reischauer Jansen state, The new leaders, however, faced a herculean task in attempting to replace the old feudal system with a more effective centralized rule .. (81). Although wiping out the special privileges enjoyed by the samurai and daimyo as well as dissolving the various class divisions proved a bit difficult, the feudal domains gradually disappeared and the samurai also lost their hereditary position as a bureaucratic class. In 1873, the Meiji government replaced the traditional class based military service with a new universal military conscription. Three years, the new government banned the wearing of traditional swords by the samurai which had been their distinction badge for a long time. This kind of centralization of the government greatly reduced the powers of the former class system and gave a completely new direction to Japanese society (Reischauer Jansen 81-82).
Various land reforms were also established under the Meiji Restoration. In 1871 for example, restrictions on the type of crops that a certain class could grow were lifted and in 1872, the government issued land certificates. Also extinguished were the former feudal bans on land purchase and sale. A new tax system was put in place based on the new land certificates rather than the old class system of land ownership. According to Sorensen, In 1873, the Land Tax Act was passed which eliminated the old rice taxes and replaced them with a 3 per cent tax on the assessed value of land, payable by the holder of the land certificates (57). Revenues that previously went to the feudal non-farming class were now collected by the Meiji state. As a result of these developments, the daimyo and samurai classes lost their former taxation rights. Land titles were given to the taxpayers as a result a new class of small-scale owner-farmers was established (Sorensen 57). Land became a sellable and purchasable commodity for all and peasants therefore enjoyed a new kind of freedom in that they were no longer confined to land but were free to sell it out and shift to other ways of earning their livelihood (Sorensen 58). The old Samurai class was abolished by the government as a way of reducing operational costs. This class had been barred from land ownership and for personal maintenance every member of the Samurai was entitled to annual stipend from the government (Huffman 11). The daimyo on the other hand lost their lands and castles to the central government which used them for various functions such as the establishment of military barracks, local government offices and other facilities dedicated to public use (Sorensen 59).
Under the new Meiji government, the old class system that defined Japanese leadership structure was abolished and all citizens were guaranteed the freedom of residence, religion as well as occupation (Sorensen 47). New ideas and practices were embraced by every sector of Japanese society and through the Meiji Restoration Japanese Society adopted various values, attitudes and beliefs from outside. Former Samurai neglected Buddhist practices and started eating meat public schools and language institutes were established modern postal networks hospitals and fire-resistant buildings were constructed railroads spread and cities became highly modernized. The new class of young leaders highly feared that any form of weakness in the new government would invite external invasion. As a result, they engaged in a zealous cross-cultural program with Westerners (Huffman 14). Many young people were sponsored to study in American and European education facilities and a program referred to as the yatoi, was developed through which westerners would be invited to Japan every year to develop the educational system, teach English and science, construct buildings and railroads as well as write newspapers for foreign markets (Huffman 8). All these developments gave Japanese society a new direction and a craze for western style of life developed making city life very attractive to many Japanese people. A desire towards international recognition and respect transformed many Japanese cities although the countryside would take several more decades to catch up with this developmental trend. Japanese arts and literature also changed whereby people adopted Western painting styles, and fiction and novels became very popular with the masses. Newspapers became a favorite for literate Japanese people (Huffman 14). On the political arena, former Samurai and the commoners initiated the jiyu minke undo, a movement that pressed for freedom and rights and also made demands for a constitution, national assembly as well as better representation in the government (Huffman 15).
Every avenue of change is bound to experience certain kinds of challenges and the Meiji Restoration was no exception. To supporters and critics alike, the Meiji Restoration has been viewed as Japans departure point to modernism. The early Restoration leaders were however uncertain about the direction they wanted the new nation to take and a lot of class influence was exerted in defining the new direction that Japanese society would take (Tipton 38). As a result, the first years of Meiji rule were shaky largely due to the lack of an established system of governance and for some time, the style of leadership operated under a trial and error basis. Widespread opposition to the government emanated from dissatisfied samurai all over the nation the peasants regional domains established imperialist nations as well as the lack of an established structure of governance as was required by the modern era. Consequently, government leadership underwent frequent reorganization in the first Meiji years and the leadership kept changing. Government policies also underwent constant revision although all efforts were directed towards a solid, centralized and international type of society (Huffman 7).
The abolition of government stipends to the samurai class resulted in a civil rebellion that started at Saigo in the southwest. A very expensive war was fought to control the rebellion and Saigo was drastically defeated leaving the country more unified than it had ever been since the Meiji Restoration began. Another rebellion at Satsuma in 1877 was quelled using a commoner army and this displeased the samurai even more (Huffman 11). Besides the samurai, vast numbers of the common Japanese populace also experienced some devastating effects. Those who worked hardest such as miners, construction workers, fishermen, prostitutes and rickshaw pullers also received the lowest income and they still felt bound by the class system. The restoration especially placed the cost of government modernization and expansion on the 28 million farmers who were highly oppressed through land taxes. Farmers were either taxed directly by the government or paid rent to various landlords (Huffman 13). Peasants were unhappy with the new regimes inability to lessen their tax burdens and renewed the old revolts which climaxed in 1873 but decreased towards 1877-8. Between 1868 and 1878, over 190 peasant revolts took place during the Meiji era. All these and other forms of dissatisfaction among the populace led to a lot of resistance against the Meiji Restoration which to many had not done much to alleviate the kind of oppression they had been going through under the class system (Reischauer Jansen 84).
Although the class system was abolished, most of the new Meiji leaders descended from the warrior samurai class and they went ahead to establish the ie, a system that required every Japanese citizen to register as a member of an ie. The ie bore resemblance to the old feudal system because it was headed by a patriarchal leader who also held legal authority over other members belonging to his social unit (Robertson 204). Long years of political stability had changed the warrior samurai class into administrators and bureaucrats a role they continued to impose on the new government. According to Norman Woods, Just as in the case of clan reforms, the Meiji Restoration was carried out from above by a body of keen-witted samurai who as an enlightened bureaucracy carried through these changes largely on the material foundation of the land tax.(77). The civil code also instituted a system of inheritance through which the eldest son in a family acted as the successor. While the girls married, the brothers to the family successor had to seek employment in the fast growing cities and towns leaving the management of family property to their elder brother. In one way or the other, the new Meiji leaders exercised tremendous influence over the general life of the public by imposing their own conventions and ideals (Robertson 204).
Ever since the Meiji Restoration, Japanese society has continued to enjoy a high degree of social mobility similar to that of the U.S.A or Western European countries (Reischauer Jansen 153). The Japanese system of government has also experienced tremendous improvements and the country has since established foreign relations with other nations of the world based upon international law. Japanese people have been educated about the meaning of independence and such restrictions as horse riding and use of family names that were previously forbidden to the commoners have been removed (Theodore, Gluck Tiedemann 93-94). The modern Japanese state has embraced the principle of social equality for all and hereditary class rank no longer holds for Japanese people. Social rank is now assessed on the basis of individual accomplishments, talents and virtues and as stated by Theodore, Gluck Tiedemann, It can be said that the state is now grounded on the principle that all people are socially equal (94).
Editors Note This article was originally written for Japan Societys previous site for educators, Journey through Japan, in 2003. Change was the currency of the Meiji era (18681912). From the day the teen-aged Mutsuhito claimed power on January 3, 1868 in a relatively tranquil coup called the Meiji Restoration (after his reign name) until his death forty-five years later, Japan experienced an evolution so rapid that one Tokyo expatriate said he felt as if he had been alive for 400 years. An isolated, feudalistic island state in 1850, Japan had become a powerful colonial power with the most modern of institutions when Meijis son, the Taisho emperor, took the throne in 1912. Both the sources of these changes and the way in which they made Japan modern provide the material for one of human historys more dramatic stories. They also laid the groundwork for the turbulence of Japans twentieth century.
Sources of the Meiji Restoration
To understand the dynamism of the Meiji years, one must begin with the factors in the Tokugawa era (16001868) that made Japan a unique and sophisticated nation. The first thing about which historians often comment is the periods stability. Founded by the warrior Tokugawa Ieyasu at the conclusion of centuries of samurai warfare, the Tokugawa bakufu (tent or military government) ruled for more than 250 years in the city of Edo (todays Tokyo), during which time the most serious fighting consisted of localized peasant riots. The Tokugawa created a centralized feudal system in which more than 200 domains or han maintained fiscal and military autonomy, while their lords served an authoritarian government in Edo. Even the Europeans, who had participated in some of the sixteenth century conflicts, were tightly controlled in these years, with most of them excluded from Japan altogether and the Dutch alone allowed to maintain a limited trading presence at Nagasaki, nearly 1,000 miles away from the capital. It is hardly surprising that observers refer to this period as the pax Tokugawa.Undergirding this political stability were unusually high levels of political and educational sophistication that would make rapid, peaceful change possible in the decades after the Restoration. Though critics talk about the inflexibility and inefficiency of the Tokugawa government, the political system nonetheless ranked among the worlds most effective in tying more than 30 million people together and stimulating an energetic national life. Perhaps the most effective feature of that government was the alternate attendance (sankin kotai) system that required most of the 250 domain lords to spend every other year in Edo, serving the shogun, and thus stimulated not only national consciousness but an extensive system of roads (for the travel of the lords large retinues), towns (for their lodging), trade, and cultural diffusion.The system also encouraged the growth of important national institutions. Thousands of schools tied to temples, government offices, and private scholars gave Japan a literacy rate of perhaps 40 percent for boys and 10 percent for girls in the early 1800s, ranking it near the top of the world. They also provided a leadership class committed to the Confucian ideal of public service. Industry and trade flourished, even as the samurai class and the Tokugawa government languished economically, giving Japan high levels of capital accumulation. And the culture of the cities was among the most innovative in the world, producing a combination of woodblock prints, kabuki theater, novels, haiku poetry, fashion fads, and lending librariesmuch of it tied to the geisha or female entertainers who presided over each citys entertainment quarters. Scholars have noted that Japan in the early 1800s ranked near the worlds forefront in almost every quantifiable level of development.At the same time, a set of specific developments (historians would call them contingencies) made late-Tokugawa Japan ripe for change. Many of the countrys leaders grew quite interested in the ways of the West, as they began learning about the industrial revolution and the imperialist adventures that were bringing countries from China to the Philippines under the European sway. At the same time, American and European seaman began visiting Japans ports after the early 1800s, seeking an end to the countrys isolation policy. And perhaps most important, the balance between Tokugawa and domain governments began shifting, with large and distant domains such as Satsuma (in southern Kyushu) and Choshu (on western Honshu) experiencing political and economic growth even as the shogunate sunk ever more deeply into a kind of inflexibility caused in part by old age. Thus, while many regions of the country were full of energy and increasing self-confidence in 1850, the Edo government was in decline, staffed by cautious bureaucrats described by one young official as wooden monkeys.In this mix, the Tokugawa decision to open Japan to foreigners in 1854, in compliance with American demands, touched off one of Japans most tumultuous periods. With newly arrived Westerners demanding trade, showing off new customs (including the scandalous tendency of women to accompany men to public events), practicing the forbidden Christian religion, and taking sides in Japans political disputes, the countrys political life changed irrevocably. Opposition to the Tokugawa arose from several quarters. At one level, lower-ranked samurai called shishi or men of spirit began agitating for the ouster of the Westerners almost as soon as Matthew Perry and his followers had been admitted. They were too much on the outside to topple the government, but their terrorist acts disrupted the tranquility of political centers in ways that had not been seen for centuries. More directly threatening to the Tokugawa were the growing challenges after the late 1850s from establishment scholars and political leaders of major domains. The shogunate reacted as aggressively as any regime-under-attack might be expected to, but by the mid-1860s, Choshu was in the hands of an anti-Tokugawa administration, and by late 1868, Shogun Tokugawa Keiki concluded that the best way to preserve order was to resign as shogun and create a system in which he likely would share power as the chief among a council of leaders. His scheme failed, however, and on January 3, 1868, a coup dtat in Meijis name brought to power a group of young, visionary samurai from the regional domains.
The Transition to Meiji
The government that came into being in 1868 had three overriding characteristics its leaders were young its policies were pragmatic and its hold on power was tenuous. The emperor in whose name the new governors ruled was just seventeen years old the major samurai power-holders from Satsuma and Choshu domains ranged in age from the upper 20s to the senior HYPERLINK httpaboutjapan.japansociety.orgcontent.cfmsaigo_takamori_statue Saigo Takamori, who was just 41 and Iwakura Tomomi, the most important nobleman in the leadership clique, was 43. By Japanese leadership standards, these men were mere juvenilesunbound by the networks and mores of traditional leadership. This, perhaps, is what made them so pragmatic they developed policies without the restraints of ideology or customor of any overriding vision of where Japan should go. Confucian tradition discouraged commerce, but they moved Japan as forcefully and quickly as possible into the world of international commerce. Whereas they once had supported the idea of national seclusion, sometimes fanatically so, now they made the West their model and pursued internationalization with a vengeance. Samurai and nobles all, they abolished the class and status systems and disbanded the feudal domains. One of their central slogans, kuni no tame (for the sake of the country) said it all their overriding commitment was simply to national strength, regardless of what customs or ideologies had to be violated in the pursuit of that goal.The tenuousness of their power was illustrated by the Boshin War, a violent conflict between the new regime and the Tokugawa followers, which raged for a year and a half after the Restoration. Though the coup often has been called bloodless, and though the carnage was indeed lessened by Keikis surrender in February 1868, thousands of his supporters resisted in a civil war that left more than 8,000 dead by the time the fighting ended in Hokkaido in June 1869. It was little wonder that journalists predicted the imminent collapse of the Meiji government well into the 1870s.All of this meant that the first Meiji years were characterized by a seat-of-the-pants, try-this-try-that style of governing. A charter oath, issued in April 1868 promised to unify the classes and seek knowledge from around the world in order to strengthen the emperors rule. No one seemed, however, to know just what that meant initially, as the government grappled with inadequate revenues, challenges from imperialist nations, threats from the regional domains, conspiracies by disgruntled samurai across the nation, and a complete lack of precedents for the organizational structures the modern era demanded. One result was that the government structure was reorganized repeatedly in the first years. Another was that membership in the leadership faction kept shifting. Still a third was that policies were revised often. At the same time there was a single, clear direction toward centralization, solidarity, and involvement in the broader world. And always there was a commitment to making Japan a modern nation, accepted as an equal by the world powers.Internationalization showed up in two ways. First, the new leaders studied Western models with a zeal born of deep fear that weakness might invite invasion. They sent missions to the West, including a 50-member group headed by head of state Iwakura Tomomi in 18711873, to negotiate and to study institutions such as banking, schools, political systems, and treaty structures. They also dispatched young people to study in European and American educational institutions. And they brought hundreds of Westerners, called yatoi (or, in some scholars telling, live machines) to Japan every year until the late 1870s, to teach English, build railroads and buildings, create an educational system, edit newspapers (for foreign consumption), and teach science. The result was an urban craze for things Westerneverything from mens haircuts to drinking milk, from the solar calendar to ballroom dancingthat made city life heady.Second, the movement onto the international scene made treaty revision one of the governments central goals. The treaties of the 1850s had limited the tariffs Japan could charge on imports to an average of about five percent and had required that foreigners who committed crimes in Japan be tried in the courts of the foreign consulates (a system called extraterritoriality). Beside being humiliating, the restrictions deprived Japan of both sovereignty and tariff revenues, money desperately needed for modernization programs. As a result the government sought endlessly to secure fairer treaties during the 1870s. The British consistently blocked reform, however, and extraterritoriality was not ended until 1894, tariff limits until 1911. The treaties thus served as a constant reminder of just how important modernity and power were to Japans success in the international arena. Without being regarded as modern, Japan would not be taken seriously by Britain and the other imperialist powers without strength, it could not challenge the foreign gunboats.The movement toward centralization was illustrated partly by a raft of new regulations the 1871 decision to replace the semi-feudal domains with modern prefectures, the issuance in 18721873 of laws to create a military draft and to require three years of school for all boys and girls, and the standardization of a land tax. It was illustrated more dramatically by two major crises, both centering on the role of the old samurai class. In the first, the Crisis of 1873, the leadership faction was rent asunder by a bitter foreign policy dispute. After Japanese diplomats in Korea had been spoken to rudely by Korean officials, the state council decided to send Saigo Takamori as an emissary to demand an apology, realizing fully that such a mission could precipitate war. When progressive officials, who had been abroad with Iwakura, heard about the plans, they were aghastnot so much at the idea of war as at the potential cost. They managed through intensive maneuvering to get the decision reversed, and the popular Saigo quit office in a rage, taking a number of followers with him. The result was a leaner government, and a less popular one.The second crisis, the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, was even more serious. After the government had abolished the samurai class in order to save the huge cost of paying annual stipends to every member of the class, a civil rebellion broke out in the southwestheaded by Saigo. The results were devastating, on every level. Word that Saigo was leading the rebellion sent shudders through the country. Former samurai everywhere questioned the governments policy of using a commoner army to fight the rebels. And the cost was staggering eight months of bloody fighting, millions of yen, 10,000 men injured, more than 6,000 deaths, and a powerful sense of national loss. Historically, however, the Satsuma Rebellion marked a positive watershed for the Meiji government. With Saigos defeat, the country was unified as it had not been since the Restoration the governments legitimacy was established the transitional decade was over.
Creating a Modern System
Few would have considered the Restoration era complete, however, until a new political system was in place, a system approved as modern by the international powers. Only after creating the new structures noted above and defeating the recalcitrant samurai could the rulers focus their energies in that direction.Before looking at that process, however, a word must be said about the impact of the many changes on the countrys broader populace. If the new system was hard on the traditional samurai class, it was devastating for vast numbers of people the fishermen, the rickshaw pullers, the construction workers, miners, prostitutes, and newspaper sellers who made the rapid changes possible by doing the hardest work and receiving the least remuneration. The largest such group lived in more than 60,000 villages, where some 28 million farmers (out of a population of 35 million in the late 1870s) provided the country not only with its food but with the bulk of its taxes. The cost of modernizing and expanding the government was placed overwhelmingly on land taxes, which meant that farmers had to bear the brunt, either through direct taxation or in the rents they paid to landlords. When the governments fiscal retrenchment led to depression in the early 1880s, rice and silk prices plummeted, and bankruptcies soared, pushing many into destitution and thousands into local uprisings against the system. Another group hurt by modernizing policies were Japans factory workers, particularly the tens of thousands of girls and women who were forced by poverty into working in the expanding silk and cotton factories. Their willingness to work under inhuman conditions for pittance pay helped Japan compete on the world market it also produced surprising amounts of resistance, with workers absconding, engaging in work stoppages, and even striking.A more positive result for the general populace was the diffusion of new ideas and practices into every nook of society. The 1870s saw former samurai in the northeast offend the Buddhist spirits by beginning to eat meat they saw the rise of barbering and dairy-farming in the Tokyo region they saw the spread of railroads, modern postal networks, fire-resistant brick buildings, a banking system, public schools, language institutes, modern hospitalsin short, every modern institution known in the worlds most progressive cities. The arts also changed, as Western style painting took root. Novels and fiction became increasingly popular, though complex characterization would have to wait until late in the century to become the norm. And literate Japanese by the tens of thousands began reading newspapers. While it would take several more decades for modernity to penetrate the countryside, cities were literally transformed by the drive toward international respect and domestic centralization in this first Meiji decade.The driving force in all of this lay with the government during the early Meiji years, but one of that forces most exceptional features was the role of private, popular groups in shaping the political evolution. Indeed the drive toward creating a constitutional systemwhich everyone agreed was the essential characteristic of a modern statewas fueled by a constant, fierce struggle between popular and official forces. In the mid-1870s, for example, a vigorous movement for freedom and rights (jiyu minken undo), led by both former samurai and commoners, stirred the national political life mightily with rallies and petition drives demanding a national assembly, a constitution, and broader participation in the government. When a financial scandal prompted massive protests against the government in 1881, the officials responded in part by promising that a constitution would be granted within a decade. And when Japans first political parties were created in response to that promise, the government seriously set about the task of drafting that constitution.The political intensity quieted in the mid-1880s, but not the drive toward constitutional government. Ito Hirobumi, one of the youngest Restoration leaders and now a dominating force in official circles, led a group to Europe to study political systems, then headed a task force that created several new institutions (including a peerage, so there would be a pool for selecting a House of Lords) and drafted Asias first national constitution. His models and chief advisors were German statists, and when the constitution was promulgated on February 11, 1889, it placed sovereignty solely in the emperor and gave Japan a relatively weak legislature and a strong, transcendent cabinet, with the prime minister appointed by the emperor. But the impact of the freedom and rights forces was apparent in the constitution too, because it also assured limited freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, gave the legislature veto power over the budget, and created an independent judiciary. It was, in short, a middle-of-the-road document that placed Japan in the mainstream of the world powers politically. Papers from London to Shanghai hailed the arrival of constitutional government in Asia, while commoners across the nation celebrated with fireworks and speeches this evidence that the Meiji Restorations promise had been fulfilled.
The Restoration Legacy
Though dramatically changed, Japan would not have been called modern yet in 1889 by most observers. The two post-Restoration decades had, however, planted all of those seeds that would mature into full-fledged modernity and imperialistic vigor at the beginning of the twentieth century. At least three legacies of the Restoration decades merit discussion.The first is nationalism. The rise of nationalismoften called the most important feature of the late 1880s and early 1890sshowed up in many ways in the widely-heralded pride over the constitution, in the issuance in 1890 of the Imperial Rescript on Education, a stirring document in which school students regularly recited their loyalty to country and emperor, in the increasing public discussions by young writers of Japans greatness. One of the most articulate vehicles for the new nationalism was a journal named simply Nihon (Japan), launched the day the constitution was promulgated, for the express purpose of reviving the unique spirit of the Japanese people. The seeds of the new national pride lay in the early-Meiji soil, when the government had worked so hard to make the entire populace aware of their Japaneseness, creating national holidays, making the emperor both sovereign and high priest, sending Tokyo newspapers to every part of the country, instituting compulsory education and military service. By the twentieth century, the nationalism would become worrisome, as it propelled Japan into aggressive actions abroad. At the end of the Restoration period, however, people saw it merely as an effective means of getting people to support the states drive to modernity and power.The second departure of the 1890s was the rising importance of military affairs in national life. In 1894, Japan launched its first major foreign war since the 1500s (and its second foreign war ever), thrashing China in the Sino-Japanese War and beginning its experience with empire by securing Taiwan as a colony. A decade after that, it defeated Russia, one of the European powers, setting the stage for colonies in Korea and Manchuria. And with those wars, the army and navy became central actors in nearly every national decision, major factors in the countrys political and economic life. Again, the early Meiji years had set the stage. One of the earliest slogans of the Restoration era was fukoku kyohei (rich country, strong army) in 1872 Japan had begun drafting men into the army and in 1874, it had sent 3,000 troops to Taiwan, for a short, victorious engagement with aboriginal groups who had killed some 54 shipwrecked Okinawans. The nation also had begun the acquisition of territory in these years, taking over the Ryukyu Islands to the south in 1879, three years after negotiating with Russia to gain control of the Kuril Islands to the north. All of these were relatively minor episodes, but they confirmed a fundamental approach. Convinced that military strength alone would assure respect and security in an imperialist world, the early-Meiji leaders had set the nation on a course toward military might, a course that would make war and empire central facets of national policy by the turn of the century.The third legacy of the Restoration years was the march to modernity. Most students agree that the period between the Sino- and Russo-Japanese Wars saw a genuine mass society emerge in Japans cities. These were the years that gave Japan its first major industrial takeoff, the period that produced mass-circulation newspapers, department stores, publicly treated water systems, social and class divisions, moving pictures, wristwatches, safety razors, increasingly popular public intellectual debates, and beer hallsall the trappings of modern, urban society. And they were the years in which commoners, called minshu, began to take an active part in the nations public and political life. To say that this development represented a mere speed-up of the early Meiji programs is to state the obvious. When the Charter Oath promised in 1868 to seek knowledge from around the world, it set Japan on a course of studying, emulating, adaptingand finally surpassingpeoples everywhere, a path that would bring the Restoration era to fulfillment, even as it launched Japan into the more troubling arena of colonialism and empire.
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