Time to return to the 19th Century and Japan. So without further ado, we proceed right to the Meiji Restoration.
Emperor is Divine — Shoguns are no longer fine!
The Japanese people were a bit upset with their shogun for giving away their honour and refusing to die bravely before the foreign invader. Thus a movement began to oust the shogun, and restore power to the Emperor, who was going to teach these foreign powers a real lesson!
You would expect the shoguns to be a bit irritated and refuse to budge. But no, these shogun were smarter than that! They said, “OK. We admit it. We screwed up. Let us bow down to the emperor, and regard him as our rightful overlord”
Of course, things were not quite so straightforward as that. On November 9th 1867, Takigawa Yoshinobo, premier shogun dude resigned from his position and gave back his power to the emperor Meiji, the new emperor. Of course, Takigawa was no fool…He gave his power up voluntarily so that he could still wield it behind the scenes. He knew very well that the emperor would have to toe the Western line as well, and hence saw no real issues with retaining his privilege, at the cost of losing a tiny bit of face.
But what he did not reckon with was Saigō Takamori, and Kido Takayoshi, both of whom were big powerful dudes. They decided that enough was enough, and in January 1868, these two chaps led their armies against the former head shogun. In a series of battles, they pretty much ended the power of the Takogawa’s ending their 240 year long rule.
The Shinto Religion — High Priest Meiji
The Shinto religion was revived..mainly because it insisted that the emperor was a god. While Buddhism and Christianity were not persecuted, Shinto was well….encouraged. A consequence of this of course was the need for a high priest for the religion. In steps in young Meiji, who as resident descendent of God, acted as high priest. What a job, emperor, and priest too!
Of course, this led to a few problems. There are only this many hours in a day, and you can’t do both jobs perfectly. And since a high priest can’t delegate his duties, most of the governing duties got delegated to regents and advisers…who co-incidentally happened to be the chaps who got young Meiji his new power as well.
The Japanese way– Equality for all and LOOK West
The restoration documents and ideas did not just talk about the emperor being a god. They had many provisions, but they basically boiled down to 5 major points.
1. Involvement of all classes in governence
2. Revocations of class restrictions in employment
3. Establishment of government based on provincial Assemblies
4. Replacement of “Arbitrary laws” with “laws of Nature” (don’t ask me what that means!)
5) An international search for knowledge to strengthen imperial rule.
The last one is the key that ensured that the emperor would not go back to the isolationist Japan policy. Soon, foreign teachers in everything from Engineering to Ball-room dancing started turning up.
Change was in the air, and by jove, things were moving fast
Cliques and Concerns
The emperor was reduced to figurehead, while all authority now flowed from his advisers. While in theory, all men were equal before law, some were made more equal. The clique of advisers began the changes that would transform Japan forever. First and most laudably, they decided in 1871 to set up an education ministry, and in 1873 made 6 years of education compulsory. They also set up factories, railroads, telegraphs and all the other accoutrements of modern society. Of course, all this took up money, and the peasants and commoners were incredibly taxed, with taxes on everything from property to education fees.
At the same time, the factories were controlled by cliques and firms, which gained huge power and resources. Mitsubishi is an example of a firm that gained power then…and still retains a heck of a bit of it!
What about the Samurai? Takamori commits sepukku (of a sort)
In all this, we would be wise to wonder what happened to the traditional military arm of Japan- The Samurai. They were a privileged class, entitled to chop off the heads of all those that disrespected them. Suddenly, the new constitution stripped away most of their authority. For one thing…no more chopping heads off with the old family sword!
But this was only the beginning. Soon, the emperor ruled that carrying of swords by non-army members was illegal. So your basic samurai could not even carry his sword around any more. As a sweetener, the government promised to pay Samurai a fixed pension.
Most samurai saw the giving up of a sword for a pension as a no brainer. Money in the bank was the general consensus. But the government was not completely dumb. Consider that there were 1.9 million Samurai, which is a whole lot of people with pensions. Soon, the government said, “forget the monthly pensions, we will offer you a one time settlement, and the settlement will be in government bonds!”
At the same time, conscription became the norm, and every male was supposed to serve in the military. From being a privileged militay class, the Samurai were now the average Joe Nakamura on the street.
Of course, this was not exactly appreciated by the Samurai. Chief amongst them was Saigō Takamori, who had led the original change over. He was fine with reforms, but gradually as he felt his own samurai powers disappear, he rebelled. In 1877, he led a rebellion where 25000 Samurai tried to hold on to the past.
Against 300000 Japanese troops, now armed with the latest American guns and tactics, he did not stand a chance. His rebellion was crushed, and perhaps most gallingly, the Japanese army was mainly composed of former Samurai who chose the winning side! Poor Takamori got one of his lieutenants to chop his head off rather than be captured and “apologize” to the emperor.
There were other samurai rebellions…but they were half hearted things, after seeing the fate of the most powerful of the, most decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
But Takamori’s death was not completely in vain. The cost of raising the army to defeat him almost beggared the government. Land prices crashed, inflation set in, and the government was forced to lower taxes in order to stay in power.
Calls began to grow for greater representation as well. It was all very good to proclaim all men were equal, but those provincial assemblies promised in the agreement were not really up to scratch. The Satsuma rebellion led to the protests on the style of governance and the drawing up of the constitution in 1889.
The Japanese Constitution — Prussia revisited.
The Japanese looked at various options. The Americans were first looked at, and hastily abandoned by the Japanese for being “too liberal”. The British system was claimed to be too unwieldy and made the emperor too much of a rubber stamp. Finally, the writers settled upon the Prussian way, which seemed to emphasise structure, while retaining the emperor at the top of the pecking order. The posts of chancellor, and ministers for left and right (no clue whose left and right) were abolished, and a privy council took its place. In addition, there was a Council for War, which had extraordinary powers, and reported directly to the emperor, bypassing almost all protocol.
This constitution had many weaknesses, and was regarded by many observers as one of the reasons for Japan’s extraordinary military aggression till the second world war
Japan — World Power
Emboldened by its constitution, and technology, the Japanese began to wage a series of battles to prove their world power status. Korea and Taiwan soon fell. And China practically became a protectorate of Japan before Western powers wised up and ganged on Japan to give way and let the others have their share as well.
Russia was the worst, making Japan give up a key claim to north China, and then invading it themselves! The Japanese were a bit ticked off by this underhand tactic, and handed the Russians a real whipping1904, which led to Japan controlling vast swathes of frozen Northern Asia.
At its heart, the military expansion of Japan was its desire to make up for lost time and claim its place on the world stage. Well…it finally would, but that would be far later, and to disastrous consequences.
Conclusion
In 1912, emperor Meiji went back to his ancestors, and the era officially ended. But it was one heck of an era. In five decades, Japan was transformed from an agrarian and backward state into a world power. Even today, the speed of transformation and the scale are unprecedented. The cost–Japanese culture changed from wildly xenophobic to wildly xenophilic. Western values were embraced, frequently at the cost of Japanese values, and an era was lost forever. The Samurai vanished, to reappear only in poetry and song. But a new World Power had arisen, and the world would never be the same again.