Quotulatiousness

March 4, 2024

Japan’s Meiji Restoration, 1868-1912

Filed under: Government, History, Japan — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Lawrence W. Reed outlines the end of Japan’s Shogunate Period and the start of the reign of Emperor Mutsuhito, known as the Meiji Period:

The Imperial Household Agency chose Uchida Kuichi, one of the most renowned photographers in Japan at the time, as the only artist permitted to photograph the Meiji Emperor in 1872 and again in 1873. Up to this point, no emperor had ever been photographed. Uchida established his reputation making portraits of samurai loyal to the ruling Tokugawa shogunate.
Wikimedia Commons.

In the 15 years that followed [American Commodore Matthew] Perry’s venture, the grip of the military dictatorship in Tokyo declined. Civil war erupted. When the smoke cleared in the first few days of January 1868, the shogunate was gone and a coup d’etat ushered in a new era of dramatic change. We call it the Reform Period, or the era of the Meiji Restoration.

That seminal event brought 14-year-old Mutsuhito to the throne, known as Emperor Meiji (a term meaning “enlightened rule”). He reigned for the next 44 years. His tenure proved to be perhaps the most consequential of Japan’s 122 emperors to that time. The country transformed itself from feudal isolation to a freer economy: engaged with the world and more tolerant at home.

In 1867, Japan was a closed country with both feet firmly planted in the past. A half-century later, it was a major world power. This remarkable transition begins with the Meiji Restoration. Let’s look at its reforms that remade the nation.

For centuries, Japan’s emperor possessed little power. His was a largely ceremonial post, with real authority resting in the hands of a shogun or, before that, multiple warlords. The immediate effect of the Meiji Restoration was to put the emperor back on the throne as the nation’s supreme governor.

In April 1868, the new regime issued the “Charter Oath,” outlining the ways Japan’s political and economic life would be reformed. It called for representative assemblies, an end to “evil” practices of the past such as class discrimination and restrictions on choice of employment, and an openness to foreign cultures and technologies.

After mopping up the rebellious remnants of the old shogunate, Emperor Meiji settled into his role as supreme spiritual leader of the Japanese, leaving his ministers to govern the country in his name. One of them, Mori Arinori, played a key role in liberalizing Japan. I regard Arinori as “the Tocqueville of Japan” for his extensive travels and keen observations about America.

The Meiji administration inherited the immediate challenge of a raging price inflation brought on by the previous government’s debasement of coinage. The oval-shaped koban, once almost pure gold, was so debauched that merchants preferred to use old counterfeits of it instead of the newer, debased issues. In 1871, the New Currency Act was passed which introduced the yen as the country’s medium of exchange and tied it firmly to gold. Silver served as subsidiary coinage.

A sounder currency brought stability to the monetary system and helped build the foundation for remarkable economic progress. Other important reforms also boosted growth and confidence in a new Japan. Bureaucratic barriers to commerce were streamlined, and an independent judiciary established. Citizens were granted freedom of movement within the country.

The new openness to the world resulted in Japanese studying abroad and foreigners investing in Japan. British capital, for instance, helped the Japanese build important railway lines between Tokyo and Kyoto and from those cities to major ports in the 1870s. The new environment encouraged the Japanese people themselves to save and invest as well.

For centuries, the warrior class (the samurai) were renowned for their skill, discipline, and courage in battle. They could also be brutal and loyal to powerful, local landowners. Numbering nearly two million by the late 1860s, the samurai represented competing power centers to the Meiji government. To ensure that the country wouldn’t disintegrate into chaos or military rule, the emperor took the extraordinary step of abolishing the samurai by edict. Some were incorporated into the new national army, while others found employment in business and various professions. Carrying a samurai sword was officially banned in 1876.

In 1889, the Meiji Constitution took effect. It created a legislature called the Imperial Diet, consisting of a House of Representatives and a House of Peers (similar to Britain’s House of Lords). Political parties emerged, though the ultimate supremacy of the emperor, at least on paper, was not seriously questioned. This nonetheless was Japan’s first experience with popularly elected representatives. The Constitution lasted until 1947, when American occupation led to a new one devised under the supervision of General Douglas MacArthur.

April 30, 2019

Japan’s monarchy

Filed under: History, Japan, Religion, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh looks at the astonishingly successful Japanese monarchy over the last few centuries of change:

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko at the Tokyo Imperial Palace in Chiyoda Ward, Tōkyō Metropolis on April 24, 2014.
US State Department photo by William Ng, via Wikimedia Commons.

Most everybody knows how the office of the Japanese Emperor became “ceremonial” for the better part of 700 years, and how the archipelago was governed in isolation by what we call the shogunate. The first Westerners who established diplomatic relations with Japan in the 19th century did not think of the Emperor as analogous to Queen Victoria at all. For years they thought of the Mikado as primarily a religious functionary, a sort of pope performing funny, tedious rites in seclusion. (As anyone who has been watching Japanese news in the run-up to Golden Week knows, there is some truth to this.)

Even as reality dawned on those foreign barbarians, their presence in Japan led to social breakdown, civil war, and a sharp, sudden revival of the power of their monarchy — the Meiji Restoration. This is still an awe-inspiring event. Japan was confronted by a little-known and hated outer realm, and was able to adapt with inexplicable confidence. It did not descend into psychic and economic malaise, but almost immediately began to compete with obtrusive Western “powers.” After centuries in abeyance, their constitution somehow allowed them to conjure a enlightened despot of enormous ability, the Meiji Emperor, at the precise moment one was required.

This led in time to the war in the Pacific — and to a second miracle of the same kind. If matters had been left up to American public opinion in 1945, or to the allies of the United States, or even to the American executive branch, the Japanese monarchy would have been abolished and the Emperor given a humiliating trial and death. Such a procedure could have easily been justified then, and can be justified in retrospect now. U.S. foreign policy almost always, in practice, seems to follow the country’s republican instincts.

But while Japan was defeated, it had not been invaded. So Gen. Douglas MacArthur and a few foreign-policy brainiacs reached a magnificent, cynical modus vivendi: they would exploit and reshape the Japanese monarchy rather than smashing it. As a soldier, MacArthur, made Supreme Commander of occupied Japan, would have shot the Emperor with his own sidearm and never lost a minute’s sleep. But he and others somehow managed to overcome racial and political prejudices, and perform an act of American “nation-building” that was not a cruel joke.

March 19, 2018

The Katana

Filed under: History, Japan, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published on 4 Jun 2009

Revered object of sacred mystery and deadly beauty, or tool for hitting people – you decide. I’ll help.

For examples of pattern forging, see http://www.paul-binns-swords.co.uk/Pattern_welding.htm

May 17, 2015

The Yasukuni Shrine is part of the reason Japan can’t apologize for their historical aggressions

Filed under: Asia, History, Japan, Pacific, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

At The Diplomat, J. Kevin Baird looks at Japan’s continued resistance to examining their own military and diplomatic history after the First World War:

Japan faces the expectations of its friends and neighbors to express itself on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will formulate and express those words. In doing so, he faces a dilemma. The focus of that dilemma is Yasukuni Shrine and what it speaks to regarding Japan’s view of the Pacific War. Will Japan demonstrate contrition in seeking atonement, or does it aim for exoneration by rehabilitating its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere motivations for the Pacific War? Histories yet to be may hinge on that choice.

[…]

In 2014, Shinzo Abe rejected the idea of Japan emulating Germany’s actions, citing differing political contexts for postwar Europe versus Asia. He implied the quest for European unification somehow mandated the German approach. A divided and adversarial East Asia, it seems, made Japanese attempts at atonement futile or counterproductive. That argument may be made, but it skirts the core issue of Japan’s stance, more deeply dividing the region and entrenching adversarial national relationships. Abe and his advisors surely understand this. Japan’s ability to shape regional and world affairs, as it is fully capable of doing and aspires to do, hinges upon how it is perceived by the community of nations, especially those of East Asia. Abandoning the ideal of reconciliation over its wartime actions cannot be an option on the Japan table. What strategy for realizing their ambition is at work? It may not be contrition and atonement.

German artist Hans Haacke wrote, “Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how we view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.” A museum and shrine in Tokyo may bring Abe’s strategic posture on reconciliation into sharper focus. Yushukan Museum stands on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine. Therein is locomotive C5631, identified as the first to trundle down the Thai-Burma rail line, where more than 100,000 forced laborers and prisoners of war died in its construction.

A memorial to Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal also stands on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine – a member of the International War Tribunal for the Far East panel of judges, he wrote of the Class A war criminals, “I would hold that every one of the accused must be found not guilty of every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges.” Pal considered the Pacific War provoked by the Americans and the war tribunals a sham. He stood utterly alone in this dissent among his 11 peer judges, but Japanese nationalists hold his views as authoritative and see Pal as a heroic figure. In 1968, Japan secretly enshrined 1,068 executed war criminals at Yasukuni as divine martyrs. Like those who did not survive the war, the executed soldiers had nobly sacrificed their lives in defense of the Japanese motherland against European Imperialism. The museum explains this defensive nature of the Pacific War. Abe and many other prominent Japanese statesmen regularly pay homage to those men.

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