Part 3

These clans, you will remember, were ruled by so-called “outer lords,” who were denied a part in the Tokugawa administration. The fact that they were so far from the center of government at Tokyo encouraged them to be independent. Moreover, they were in many respects the strongest and most progressive of the leading Japanese clans. In developing manufacture and trade as a means of boosting clan revenue, Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa and Hizen were far ahead of other clans. They fostered not only handicrafts, porcelain manufacture, sugar-refining and textile mills, but mining, iron foundries, gun-making, shipbuilding and allied military industries. Choshu also made a revolutionary change in its army, by including commoners as well as the _samurai_ in its ranks.

In these western clans, the anti-foreign spirit was at first intense. For some years, in defiance of the Shogunate, the clans carried on what was practically an independent war against the Western powers and the new treaty rights of Westerners in Japan. They frequently attacked foreigners and their employees. Things came to a head in 1863-64, when they tried to expel the foreigners. In August 1863, in retaliation for the murder of an Englishman by Satsuma clansmen, a British squadron bombarded the Satsuma port of Kagoshima. And in September 1864 an Allied fleet (British, Dutch, French, American) destroyed Choshu forts at Shimonoseki which had been firing on Western vessels passing through the narrow straits.

These decisive proofs of Western military and naval superiority gave Satsuma and Choshu pause. Both clans stopped their anti-foreign activities. They had long seen the need of acquiring modern armaments. This determination was now made doubly strong. Many other leaders came to see that Japan could not keep her door shut forever, and that her salvation lay in mastering Western techniques. Once having grasped this principle, they acted on it boldly and unhesitatingly.

THE RESTORATION

The Emperor’s prestige--and, indeed, actual authority--had grown steadily throughout this transition period. As early as 1858, recognizing the Emperor’s new importance, the Shogun sought his approval of greater intercourse with the West. In 1863 the Shogun even obeyed an Imperial summons to Kyoto. The advent of a new Shogun and a new Emperor in 1867 made the transfer of authority all the easier. In November 1867 the new Shogun resigned, and on January 3, 1868 the Emperor Meiji, backed by the western clans, formally assumed control of the nation. Six months later the Tokugawa forces, taking the field in opposition to the seizure of power by the western clans, were defeated in pitched battle. A new Empire had been founded.

VI. Catching up with the West

Great difficulties faced the early Meiji reformers. Their essential task was to catch up with the West. For two centuries Japan had kept to herself. During this period the Western world had made gigantic technical advances, greater than man had achieved in all preceding history. Japan had been left far behind. She was forced to do in decades what the West had done in centuries.

How could Japan accomplish such a task? In both economy and government she was still largely feudal and decentralized. There was no real national state, as we understand that term today. Instead, there were a hundred competing clans, each with its own territorial lord. And over all lay the shadow of Western aggression, dictating speed and more speed.

TACKLING THE PROBLEM

From the outset of the Meiji era, anti-foreignism was dropped. Emperor Meiji’s famous Charter Oath (April 6, 1868) contained this statement: “Knowledge and learning shall be sought for throughout the world in order to establish the foundations of the Empire.”

A period of borrowing from the West, comparable only to the earlier imitation of China, set in. One after another, Japanese official missions were sent abroad. Foreign advisers--British, French, Dutch, German, American--were employed in many different fields. Large numbers of Japanese students entered the universities of Western countries. For a short time imitation of the West went to extremes; in many externals, Western ways became a fad. On the whole, however, there was strict control over the process of borrowing, and careful adaptation to Japanese needs.

In keeping with Japan’s traditions, a limited group maintained firm and despotic power at all times. The Meiji political reforms clothed old ideas of government in new garments. Emperor Meiji (1868-1912) reigned again, and with some degree of authority. But actual power during his long reign lay in the hands of the small group of men who surrounded him. There was no thoroughgoing mass upheaval, forcing recognition of popular rights. Reforms were dictated from the top down.

THREE NEW TRENDS

The great changes which occurred during the Meiji era may be grouped under three main headings. There were, in the first place, the economic reforms which merged the old feudal lords and _samurai_ into a new society, and laid the foundations of Japan’s modern industries. Then, there was a political movement which led finally to the Emperor’s proclamation of a written constitution. Finally, there was a cautious development of foreign policy by which Japan, at first on the defensive, later embarked on an expansionist program and fought its wars with China and Russia. In this chapter we shall look at the first of these trends.

ABOLITION OF FEUDAL RIGHTS

Between 1868 and 1877 a series of basic reforms gave centralized control to the Imperial government. The four western clans returned their lands to the Emperor, thus enabling him to order the other clans to do the same. In this way the government took over the land taxes, the main source of revenue. But the lords, though they no longer held the land registers, were still political rulers in their feudal domains. So, in 1871, an Imperial decree established prefectures, with Imperial governors, in place of the old clan divisions. Finally, the feudal lords lost their private armies. At first, the Imperial government’s army consisted mainly of the military forces of the western clans. By 1873, however, the government was able to enforce a system of universal military service, and thus build up a national conscript army under its own absolute control.

Why, you ask, did the feudal lords accept so easily this rapid loss of their former powers? In large part, it was a result of the lead taken by the western clans, whose _samurai_ statesmen held the reins in the Imperial government. For they were prepared to back the new measures with military action, if necessary. But a second factor was equally important. The clan lords, especially the great _daimyo_, were well paid for the surrender of their old privileges. Their lands were not confiscated outright. Large annual grants of money were allotted them out of central revenues. But the payments originally promised in this huge pension scheme turned out to be too heavy for the central treasury to meet. The government therefore first reduced the pensions and then, in 1876, compulsorily ended them by means of lump-sum payments, in cash or short-term bonds. Though this drastic scaling down of the original pension scheme amounted to repudiating its earlier promises, the government had no other way of avoiding bankruptcy. As it was, the total cost of commuting the pensions came to nearly 211 million yen--a large sum for that period. In many respects, this way of dealing with the pensions laid the basis of the new Japanese society which has since developed.

LORDS INTO CAPITALISTS

The _daimyo_, or great feudal lords, did not fare so badly in the financial settlement of 1876. They were relieved of all their debts, and of their previous obligations to support their military retainers, the _samurai_. They retained great slices of their former lands, which they now held as private owners--that is, with fewer responsibilities. Moreover, they acquired large sums of money when the pensions were commuted. These sums they invested in banks, stocks and industries, as well as in landed estates. The _daimyo_ were thus merged into the new society, no longer as territorial rulers but as wealthy financial magnates, controlling the economic life of the countryside.

So, from their own point of view, commutation of the pensions was a master-stroke by Japan’s new rulers. It helped to throw caste distinctions of the old feudal type into the melting pot. It won the allegiance of the clan lords to the new order simply by making allegiance worth their while.

THE LOT OF THE _SAMURAI_

But in other respects this bold reform created a number of serious difficulties. The _samurai_ class as a whole was plunged into great distress. A few of them, especially those from the western clans, immediately won high positions in the new government. But most of them were left to sink or swim in a strange new world. Their small pension payments soon dribbled away, and it was hard for them to find means of support. They had other grievances. A law of 1877 forbade them to wear their two swords--traditional mark of honor of the _samurai_ class. 1877, too, was the year when the _samurai_ were replaced by the new conscript army. During this critical year a serious military revolt, centering in Satsuma but joined by all the forces opposed to the new order, broke out. It was crushed by the Imperial government’s new army, made up largely of commoners and partly modernized. Thus the last challenge to the new order was defeated.

HARD TIMES FOR THE PEASANTS

The peasants had an even harder time than the _samurai_. Many local peasant revolts took place in the years up to 1877. Imperial forces suppressed them, and so prevented the peasants from indulging in mass confiscations of lands.

Yet great changes were taking place. For the peasants were no longer feudal serfs. They became landholders, and they could serve in the army. But the individual peasant secured only a very small plot of land. As a private owner, his situation was most precarious. He had to face the risks of drought or flood, pay taxes in money instead of rice, and cope with price changes in the market. His land soon had to be mortgaged, and could then be taken away by foreclosure. Indeed, many peasants quickly lost their lands in the early years of the new order. By 1892 nearly 40 per cent of the total cultivated area was worked by tenants. This proportion has persisted, while the number of part-tenants has increased.

Japanese agriculture, moreover, remained backward in technique and social organization. The landlords became parasites. Instead of working the land as a capitalist enterprise for profit, they were intent only on drawing high rents--often as much as 60 per cent. This system had far-reaching effects on Japan.

As the number of tenants grew, and the land became divided into smaller and smaller plots, the farm areas in Japan became overpopulated. Only a part of the unneeded farm workers could find a place in industry. Competing for jobs, they kept wages low. Low wages, of course, were a boon to industrial development. But what industry gained in one way it lost in another. For the farmers and the workers were too poor to buy much. The country’s purchasing power grew only very slowly. Thus the home market for factory products was limited, and industry did not develop as fast as it might otherwise have done. Very early Japan’s new factory industries had to turn to the foreign market. As the limitations on Japan’s home market have persisted down to the present time, the pressure for foreign trade expansion has grown steadily more urgent. Here is one underlying cause for Japan’s current policy of military expansion.

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

But changes in agriculture, as we have seen, did help to make possible the growth of a modern Japanese industry. Peasants who lost their lands, or artisans thrown out of work, became available as factory workers. Here was industry’s labor force.

Many other changes helped industry along. Foreign trade, long prohibited, had begun to grow rapidly in the ’sixties. Clan barriers to internal trade were leveled. Hundreds of different kinds of money, issued by the various clans, had circulated. These were now abolished, and a single national currency instituted. Railways were built, and telephone and telegraph systems laid down. These improvements made a freer sale and exchange of goods throughout the country possible. Thus a home market--even if a very limited one--was established.

For the introduction of modern, large-scale industry, however, two further things were needed--technique and capital. Foreign experts, acting both as direct advisers in industry and as instructors in the new technical schools, provided the first of these requirements. The second was harder to fill. The banking-trader houses and the pensioned-off lords had some capital. But it was not enough to finance the big factory projects, especially where quick profits seemed unlikely. So the Imperial government had to step in and supply the capital in most of the larger enterprises. It paid special attention to the armament industries--mining, metallurgy, shipbuilding.

NURSING INFANT INDUSTRIES

The clan bureaucrats in the government nursed the construction of this new industrial plant with extreme care and pride. Many of them fell in love with machinery and engineering technique. They worked closely with the great business houses, grafting industry on to firms that had been mainly concerned with trade or banking. The budding capitalists were not financially strong enough to develop industry by themselves. So the clan statesmen took them into partnership. It was the clan statesmen, however, who headed the combination--an important factor in Japan’s political growth, then and later.

But the clansmen did not wish to keep all industry under government control. They only wanted to see that it developed quickly. Then the businessmen could handle it, or at least all but the strategic industries. The government kept control of railways, telephones, telegraphs, arsenals and naval shipyards. But in the case of many other industries, it supplied the capital and started their development, then turned them back to the great business houses, often at very low prices. In this way the capitalists were spoon-fed by the government. Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and other houses obtained ready-made facilities in many fields--cotton-spinning mills, glass and cement factories, mining enterprises, shipyards. The giant Mitsubishi monopoly in commercial shipping, for example, got its start through the gift and cheap purchase of government vessels.

By 1890 some 200 steam factories were in operation in Japan. The development of a machine industry was making good headway.

VII. Who Rules Modern Japan?

We are now able to distinguish the main groups which were to rule the modern Japanese Empire. Within the quarter century from 1853 to 1877 a new leadership had emerged.

True to Japan’s history and tradition, control was concentrated in a few hands. The ruling group was composed of the clan leaders, dominating the government bureaucracy (since grown to nearly 500,000 office holders); the old feudal lords with great landed estates; and the business group--bankers, traders and industrialists.

HAND IN GLOVE

At the head of this partnership were the clan leaders, and a few representatives of the old court nobility. The clan bureaucrats, as they came to be called, held the influential posts in the new Imperial government. To a large extent, their dictatorial powers carried on the old feudal tradition. Many of them were civilians, but they also controlled the army (Choshu) and the navy (Satsuma). The business people, on the other hand, especially in the beginning, were definitely in a subordinate position. It was the government which controlled most of the early industrial enterprises, as we have seen. Not until much later, after the World War of 1914-18, did trade and industry reach a size which enabled the capitalists to make themselves felt politically.

It was the existence of the “upper crust” and the inferior status of business that largely determined the character of the new political institutions established during the Meiji era. They were designed, it is true, to serve the purposes of the whole combination of ruling groups. But at the same time the clan bureaucrats took good care to set up the machinery they needed to perpetuate their own supremacy.

CONSERVATIVES VS. LIBERALS

For a decade after the Restoration of 1868, an outright dictatorship functioned in Japan. The powers of the clansmen were almost unlimited. Within the ruling group itself, however, there were wide differences of opinion on some points. One important question was what institutional forms the new government should adopt. Headed by Itagaki (a Tosa _samurai_), the more liberal reformers wanted to set up a fully representative government modeled on the advanced Western democracies. But most of the clansmen opposed such a radical step. In the end, however, the conservatives accepted the necessity of a _written_ constitution--which they drew up themselves.

Even this concession was made grudgingly, and only after it had become absolutely necessary. But several factors worked in favor of the liberals. The prestige of Western institutions was high at this period. An article in the Emperor’s Charter Oath, moreover, was interpreted as a pledge to inaugurate a “deliberative assembly.” Quoting this pledge, the liberals started a political campaign which won considerable support. Finally, the rising capitalists needed a representative system in order to secure a real voice in the government. Despite all these advantages, in the end the liberals were outmaneuvered in the political arena. They obtained a constitution, it is true, but one which was written and imposed by the conservative clansmen. The result was not a democratic Bill of Rights but a highly autocratic document. With but few exceptions, the liberals’ failure at this time was characteristic of Japan’s later history.

THE LIBERALS LOSE

The political struggle reached its climax in the second decade after the Restoration. In the press and on the public platform, the liberals waged their campaign. In 1878 they succeeded in getting provincial assemblies with limited powers, and in 1880 local (town, city and village) assemblies. In 1881, riots followed the exposure of graft in the central administration. To save their position, the conservatives had the Emperor issue a declaration promising a National Assembly in 1890--nine years ahead.

But the political struggle did not abate. It now turned on what should be the terms of the constitution which was to establish the elective assembly. The conservatives meanwhile took strong measures against the opposition. They strictly enforced laws curbing the press. They suppressed Itagaki’s political party in 1884. In 1887 martial law was proclaimed in Tokyo, and the opposition leaders were driven from the capital. In this way the conservative bureaucrats got a free hand in drafting the new constitution and putting it over.

Hirobumi Ito, its main architect, had gone abroad in 1882 to study Western constitutional practices. He was greatly impressed by Bismarck, and took the Prussian Constitution as his model. First, certain preparatory changes were made. A nobility of five orders was established in 1884, and a Cabinet in 1885. A civil service was started, and in 1887 a Supreme War Council was set up to advise the Emperor on military and naval affairs. In 1888 Ito became president of the Privy Council, which was given authority to revise the draft constitution he had prepared. Ito’s work of framing the document was carried out “in absolute secrecy.” After it had been read in private to a small group of officials, the Emperor promulgated the new constitution on February 11, 1889. The first elections to the Imperial Diet were held in 1890.

A GIFT OF THE EMPEROR

The Constitution was a “gift” of the Emperor. It was not intended to establish popular government. Its preamble emphasized the old theocratic (priest-king) traditions of Japan. The Emperor “inherited” the right to rule “from Our Ancestors,” and ruled “in lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal.” Ito and his colleagues not only incorporated these traditional ideas into the Constitution. They made them the cornerstone of the new system of universal education, and thus instilled them in the mass of the Japanese people. Reverence for the Emperor as a divine ruler helped enormously to keep the new regime solidly in place.

Practically all the government’s powers, both civil and military, were vested in the Emperor. Vast economic power bolstered his political authority. No longer, as on occasion in feudal times, could the Emperor become penniless. For court expenses, the Imperial Family receives an annual grant of 4,500,000 yen (more than a million dollars). Its holdings in lands and blocks of shares, estimated at over one billion yen, provide a large additional income. So it is one of the wealthiest families in Japan.

THE EMPEROR MUST BE “CONSTITUTIONAL”

The Emperor’s powers are exercised on the advice of his ministers, in accordance with constitutional practice. He is not supposed to act on his own authority. Real power, therefore, resides not in the Emperor but in his advisers, acting through the agencies set up by the Constitution. On the surface, these agencies _seem_ to establish a system of representative government. There is a Cabinet, and a Diet with two houses--the House of Peers and the House of Representatives. And political parties like those of the Western democracies soon formed to contest elections in Japan.

But there the resemblance ends. There is not only the supposedly divine power of the Emperor. The democratic forms themselves are a shell, empty of the real meat of popular government. In all effective representative systems, as we well know, the legislature--particularly its lower house--has real authority. Not so under Ito’s Constitution. Ito ranged an overwhelming battery of aristocratic, bureaucratic and militarist influence in five powerful agencies of government. You can see from our chart on page 49 what these agencies were. They completely eclipsed the House of Representatives. Moreover, they often dominated the Cabinet, or disputed its authority. And through them, as much as through the Cabinet, the clansmen ruled Japan with a tight rein. Let us see how each worked out in practice.

NON-POPULAR AGENCIES OF GOVERNMENT

First, there were the Elder Statesmen (or _Genro_). They were a body completely outside the Constitution. Survivors of the early Meiji clansmen, they had prestige and experience. For several decades after 1900 they held the government in the hollow of their hands. They made and unmade Cabinets, shuffled the Premiership among themselves, decided on war and peace. Their last representative, Prince Saionji, died in November 1940 at the age of 92. So from now on there will be no more _Genro_ to be reckoned with.

Next comes the Imperial Household Ministry. Two officials here occupy key positions. The Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal holds the seals which must be affixed to state documents. And the Minister of the Imperial Household has charge of matters connected with the Imperial Family. These men are not only themselves powerful advisers of the Emperor. But appointments to see the Emperor must be made through them. So at times they have been able to bar their political opponents from reaching the Imperial ear. Usually they hold office for life or until they wish to resign.