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$Unique_ID{bob00323}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Japan
Chapter 1B.   National Reunification}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rinn-Sup Shinn}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{samurai
government
tokugawa
daimyos
japanese
meiji
military
japan
political
imperial
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        Japan, A Country Study
Author:      Rinn-Sup Shinn
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 1B.   National Reunification

     In the latter half of the sixteenth century, a trend toward
centralization was gathering momentum as the more powerful of the daimyos
consolidated their gains by subjugating the weaker. Revolutionary changes in
warfare wrought by the use of firearms were largely responsible. The musket
and the cannon acquired from the Portuguese traders meant a revolution in
military strategy. The daimyos now based their military operations on large
fortified castles that commanded considerable expanses of territory and in
major campaigns used mass armies of foot soldiers armed with the new weapons.
Mounted samurai lost their advantages to the peasant recruits who, as
infantrymen, proved equally effective.

     Reunification was finally achieved by a celebrated military
triumvirate-Oda Nobunaga (1534-82), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), and Tokugawa
Ieyasu (1542-1616). Nobunaga, a leading daimyo in central Japan, gained
dominance over the imperial court and the shogunate itself by 1568. In 1573
the shogunate was abolished for all practical purposes. The first daimyo to
make effective use of the musket's firepower, Nobunaga also demolished the
most powerful of the great Buddhist monasteries around Kyoto and captured the
castle-monastery of Osaka held by the True Pure Land Buddhists. His success
broke the temporal power of the Buddhist sects; the Buddhists were never again
to regain their political influence in the country.

     After Nobunaga was assassinated in 1582, his vassal and ablest commander,
Hideyoshi, completed the unification of the country. Hideyoshi established an
efficient countrywide administration from the modern Osaka area and introduced
a monetary reform and a land survey. In 1592 he received the title of kampaku
(civil chancellor) from the emperor because his low social status as a
commoner did not qualify him for the rank of shogun. In an attempt to minimize
the possibility of plots against him, he assigned friendly and unfriendly
daimyos to domains adjacent to one another. This tactic was continued by the
succeeding Tokugawa shogun.

     Hideyoshi was not as friendly toward Christian missionaries as Nobunaga
had been. Nobunaga had welcomed the missionaries in part to offset the power
of Buddhist priesthood. Hideyoshi suspected the missionaries of being
political agents for foreign powers and was not unaware of their potential as
allies of unfriendly daimyos at home. In 1587 he issued an edict banning their
activities. This was not strictly enforced, however, until ten years later
when, annoyed by feuding between missionary groups, he ordered the execution
of several missionaries and Japanese converts.

     Hideyoshi had an obsession with China. In 1592 and 1598 he launched two
invasions of Korea as the first steps toward the conquest of China. Although
initially successful, his expedition was thwarted by the combined Chinese and
Korean forces-and later as a result of internal chaos following his own death
in 1598. Hideyoshi was succeeded by Ieyasu, the Kanto-based daimyo who had
been the most powerful and astute strategist among Hideyoshi's vassals. Ieyasu
was challenged by a coalition of daimyos but defeated it decisively at
Sekigahara in central Japan in 1600. Three years later he was appointed shogun
by the emperor and established the bakufu in Edo, modern Tokyo. The Tokugawa
dynasty remained supreme for the next 250 years until the coming of United
States warships in 1853 and 1854.

The Tokugawa Period (1603-1868)

The Shogunate and Internal Developments

     Ieyasu's first and most pressing step was to consolidate power over
daimyos. The measures he put into force were continued and elaborated on by
his immediate successors. For political control the daimyos were divided into
three categories: twenty-three lords who were natural allies because of their
kinship ties by birth to the Tokugawa line; 145 hereditary lords who had been
allies of Ieyasu before the battle of Sekigahara; and ninety-eight "outer"
daimyos who had submitted to Tokugawa power only after 1600. Ieyasu relied on
the first two to check the outer daimyos, among whom were some of the richest
and most powerful. Rewarded with high civil and military posts, the first two
loyalist daimyo groups were placed in control of strategic areas and cities on
the main route of communication (the Tokaido) and of those areas adjacent to
the potentially troublesome domains in Kyushu and northern Honshu. Of the
loyalist daimyo the branch families of the Tokugawa shogunate held strong
points in the three most strategic areas-the Kanto plain, the Nagoya region in
central Japan, and the Osaka region.

     To ensure Edo-centered political stability, the shogunate installed a
system of residence whereby daimyos were required to maintain residence
alternately in Edo and in their fiefs. During their absence from Edo, they had
to leave their families in Edo as hostages. As part of Tokugawa surveillance,
checkpoints were set up on all important routes, among other things, to look
for "women leaving Edo and firearms entering Edo." The requirement for double
residence was economically costly as it involved processions to and from Edo
usually every other year. According to historian Milton W. Meyer, as much as a
quarter of daimyos' annual income was spent on alternate residence. In
addition daimyos were obligated to make generous contributions to the
bakufu-sponsored public works projects. Moreover the possibility of an
anti-Tokugawa plot was minimized by edicts forbidding daimyos to enter into
alliance with one another, to build or repair castles, or to contact the
imperial court without prior authorization. In order to stabilize the social
base of the political order, the shogunate instituted a rigidly stratified and
hereditary occupational class structure, which was buttressed by hierarchical,
status-oriented Confucian concepts. At the top of the structure was the
samurai class, whose elite status was distinguished not only by its control of
administrative and military positions but also by the wearing of two swords.
The class boundary between the samurai, who with their families constituted 5
to 7 percent of the total 30 million people of Japan during the Tokugawa
period, and the other three group was on the whole strictly maintained.

     After the last decade of the sixteenth century, the samurai class
underwent some change. Until that time many of the samurai were landed
aristocrats, although some were former peasants having small landholdings. In
time of war they were called on by their lords to perform military duties and
were also joined by peasant recruits. After the turn of the seventeenth
century, however, the samurai class became frozen as a hereditary, privileged
warrior-bureaucrat group whose membership was determined by birth and who were
prohibited from intermarrying with other lower classes. This meant that the
peasants were excluded from military service. All members of the class were by
definition warriors, but not all were bureaucrats. Most of the samurai lived
in castle towns where the daimyos, who constituted the top layer of the class,
maintained their feudal authority. A small number of samurai lived on the land
as landed aristocrats, but most of them received stipends in the form of rice.
Stipends corresponded to their official ranks. Despite their collective
elitism, the samurai were by no means socially equal. There was great social
distance between upper samurai and lower samurai, depending on wealth, rank,
and income. Generally lower samurai performed duties as foot soldiers, guards,
and clerks.

     The peasantry had second-rank status because of its role as the primary
producing group and accounted for 80 percent of the population. Artisans and
merchants were placed third and fourth, respectively, because in Confucian
ethics they were thought of as economically unproductive. Left entirely
outside the social ranking system were those persons associated with
occupations considered contemptible, such as shoemakers, tanners, and
butchers.

     The shogunate developed an effective centralized bureaucracy under a
prime minister (a post, however, often left vacant), a council of state of
several senior councillors, a group of junior councillors, and numerous
administrative and judicial officers. A corps of inspectors or censors, acting
as secret police, informed the shogun of potential trouble spots, including
the bakufu bureaucracy, the daimyos, and the imperial court in Kyoto, where
the emperor and the court nobility-financially dependent on the
shogunate-continued their limited, ceremonial functions.

     Tokugawa edicts prescribed functions and standards of behavior for each
class and social relationship. These were strongly influenced by a national
orthodoxy compounded of samurai and Confucian ideas, stressing among other
things absolute loyalty to the ruler and filial piety to family heads.
Confucian ethics suited well the political needs of the shogunate, given their
emphasis on status distinction, paternalism, and the importance of lord-vassal
relationships. Social inequality was also sanctioned by the criminal
provisions for liability and punishment, which applied differently to each of
the four classes. There was no concept of equality of justice among classes.
The samurai class was, for all practical purposes, exempt from legal liability
to which other classes were subjected.

     Social and political stability was ensured also by a policy of national
seclusion instituted in the early seventh century. Beginning in 1600 British
and Dutch traders began to appear in Japan in competition with the already
well-established Portuguese and Spanish. The Protestant newcomers, principally
interested in trade, implied to the shogunate that their Roman Catholic
competitors intended to conquer the country. Ieyasu, who had been initially
well disposed toward Westerners, became distrustful, and his successor ordered
the expulsion or execution of foreign missionaries. More severe persecutions
followed, triggering a popular rebellion in a heavily Christian area near
Nagasaki in 1638. The bakufu's suppression of the revolt resulted in the
destruction of the Christian community of perhaps 300,000 which was centered
in the potentially unreliable Kyushu. Contacts with the world were forbidden
to the Japanese, and by 1640 all foreigners had been expelled. After that,
only a handful of Dutch and a few Chinese were allowed to trade at Nagasaki
under the most rigorous restrictions. This isolation completely halted the
flourishing foreign trade of the previous centuries and cut Japan off from the
rest of the world until the middle of the nineteenth century.

     Prolonged domestic tranquility during the Tokugawa era had predictable
results: the development of internal commerce, the growth of urban centers,
and the rise of a new merchant class. Extensive road-building projects were
undertaken, serving the triple objectives of the shogunate in draining the
financial resources of potentially dangerous daimyos, providing a road network
for speedy communications and effective surveillance, and promoting trade.
Rapid courier service was instituted. A large market for goods and services
developed in Edo, Osaka, in provincial fortified towns where the samurai were
concentrated, and on the heavily traveled Tokaido between Kyoto and Edo.
Coastwise shipping was extensively used; it was, for example, the chief means
of supplying rice to Edo. The merchant class prospered and expanded, as did
associations of craftsmen and tradesmen. Urban growth stimulated the gradual
change to a money economy, which developed with the appearance of credit
instruments. Rice exchanges were established in Osaka and Edo, the economic
and financial centers of the nation.

     The peasants, who had to bear the heaviest burden of supporting the
government and the samurai, suffered most from the economic change. Taxes
increased, often because of irregular exactions by the daimyos, and the value
of rice declined as the money economy expanded. Although agricultural
production increased as crops were diversified, fertilization and cultivation
were improved, and the cultivated area was expanded through reclamation, the
peasants' lot worsened to the point of impoverishment. Periodic crop failures
resulted in famine, and increase in tenancy, migration to the cities,
infanticide, and peasant rebellions.

     There was also a parallel decline in the income of the ruling class. The
money economy-with its revolutionary impact-tended to undermine the rigidly
compartmentalized social structure and the basis of the Tokugawa
sociopolitical stability. Deprived of military employment in the long Tokugawa
peace, some samurai became bureaucrats and scholars. Others were relegated to
the role of unproductive retainers on reduced incomes. As the early simplicity
of warrior life gave way to urban refinements, the economic wants of the
samurai increased, while their real income diminished. Many samurai became
masterless wanderers; others intermarried with the families of merchants or
prosperous peasants; not a few indigent samurai entered occupations formerly
limited to the lower classes. Gradually the indebtedness of the samurai and of
the daimyos and shoguns themselves increased, and the wealth of the country
passed into the hands of the merchant class.

     In fact by the early eighteenth century, the shogunate no longer
controlled the purse strings, and by 1850 it was virtually bankrupt. The
aristocracy of birth was still at the top of the social pyramid, but the
realities of its economic power no longer corresponded to its social status.
Moreover with economic stress there had come a decline in samurai observance
of the standard of behavior and code of loyalty that had been laid down for
them at the start of the Tokugawa shogunate.

     The growth of urban centers was accompanied by the development of a
distinctive popular urban culture. The arts, previously confined mainly to the
upper layer of the society, blossomed in the large cities of Osaka, Kyoto, and
Edo; they were now accessible to a broader urban population. People flocked to
the kabuki theater (traditional popular drama with singing and dancing
performed in a highly stylized manner) and puppet plays and read realistic
novels of city life and seventeen-syllable haiku poetry. Ukiyo ("floating
world") paintings and woodblock prints in color depicting scenes of daily
life, famous landscapes, and the erotic became widely popularized. The
traditional No drama and the art of tea ceremony and flower arrangement were
further refined. Geisha and houses of prostitution in segregated quarters such
as Yoshihara in Edo became established as a social institution catering to the
wealthy merchants and samurai who, though forbidden to do so by their code of
behavior, frequented the lively quarters in secret.

     The Tokugawa period was also marked by the surging of new intellectual
currents. Replacing the Buddhist clergy as intellectual leaders, educated
samurai contributed greatly, through their compilation of historical works, to
laying the foundation of historiography upon which, as noted by historian John
Whitney Hall, "modern historical research first depended." Tokugawa
scholarship was still based on Confucian doctrines as influenced by the
Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. This did not prevent the Japanese Confucianists,
however, from applying their learning to Japanese realities. The traditional
pattern of relying on ancient Confucian ideals and texts as the fountainhead
of learning was no longer satisfactory to a growing body of nationalistic
Japanese scholars.

     As a result two of the more notable aspects of intellectual ferment were
interest in Japan's historical origin and identity and awareness of the
Western world. In the eighteenth century there emerged a scholarly movement
aimed at discovering Japan's "ancient way" through "national learning."
Spearheaded by Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) the movement as elaborated by his
disciples led to the revival of Shinto beliefs and the cult of the emperor.
The concept of imperial supremacy was, of course, potentially subversive
because of the logical implication that the emperor, not the shogun, should be
the country's real sovereign and ruler.

     In 1720, perceiving the potential benefit to be derived from Western
science, the shogunate relaxed its restrictions on Western learning (yogaku)
or Dutch learning (ran'gaku)-terms interchangeably applied to the study of
Western science, medicine, and languages. Interest in Dutch learning was
perhaps strongest among the younger samurai of the southwestern fiefs, who
administered the great domains of outer daimyos there and who chafed at
Tokugawa restrictions as overly shortsighted. The immediate result was an
increase in knowledge of such applied sciences as medicine. Interest in
Western military science increased sharply later when Japan was confronted
with foreign threat. Throughout much of the Tokugawa period, however, the
political impact of Western learning was almost negligible if only because the
study of Western subjects was confined to a very small number of
government-appointed officials and scholars.

     Intellectual ferment and the growth of the commercial economy and urban
centers were also accompanied by rapid expansion of Confucian-based
educational facilities and by a rise in literacy. An early Tokugawa measure
was the establishment in 1630 of a Confucian college, later to be known as the
Shoheiko, a center of orthodox Confucian learning for members of the Tokugawa
clan. Many daimyos followed suit by establishing similar schools in their
respective fiefs. By the middle of the nineteenth century, some 270 domain
schools were established for the schooling of samurai, for whom there were
also 1,500 private academies set up in the larger cities and towns. Commoners
were educated in about 11,200 temple schools (terakoya), often attached to
local Buddhist temples, and also in 600 officially sponsored schools called
gogaku.

     Of the various schools the terakoya-the small private elementary
schools-occupied a central position in the development of mass education.
Teachers were mostly of common background, but some were of samurai origin.
The temple schools were supported mainly by wealthy patrons and by
contributions. Some of the schools, particularly in the cities, attained high
standards of elementary education. By the close of the Tokugawa period, Japan
had accumulated an impressive fund of education assets. Male literacy was
already 40 to 50 percent, female literacy about 15 percent. Over 17,000
schools of various kinds were in operation. An educated elite existed among
the rising merchant class and the samurai who were soon to lead in the
post-Tokugawa work of modernization.

Foreign Pressure and the Collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate

     In the early nineteenth century despite the outward appearance of
domestic stability, there were signs of a gathering crisis stemming from
diverse sources. Among these were frequent and widespread crop failures, the
expansion of commercial economy, inflationary pressures and their adverse
impact on real income, increasing poverty among the masses of peasants and
urbanites, and the rise of popular sociopolitical awareness through the spread
of mass education. These factors were potentially destabilizing in their
political consequences but did not pose any imminent threat to the Tokugawa
bakufu. As historian Hall noted, "Revolution was not in the air, nor can one
find more than the vaguest expression of subversion toward the existing
order." The conservative, Confucian-based Tokugawa society was not yet
prepared for a radical alternative to the status quo. The direct impetus for
change came not from within but from without.

     The successive appearance in the early nineteenth century of Russians,
the British, Americans, and Frenchmen demanding the opening of trade exerted
new pressures on the Tokugawa shogunate. The superiority of Western arms was
quickly recognized as a clear challenge to the policy of seclusion. The
anxiety of the bakufu was heightened by the shocking humiliation of China, the
Middle Kingdom having been decisively defeated by the British naval forces in
the Opium War (1839-42) and having been forced to relinquish certain sovereign
rights to the foreigners.

     In 1853 Japan's vulnerability was exposed by the arrival of United States
warships under Commodore Matthew C. Perry, whose demands included facilities
for trade. Unable to resist what the Japanese called the "black ships" by
force, the bakufu acquiesced after taking an unprecedented step of consulting
with both imperial court and leading daimyos. Their action was widely seen as
evidence of a split between the antiforeign and "open-the-country" cliques
within the bakufu leadership. In 1854 the first of Japan's modern-day treaties
was signed with the United States. The demands of other Western powers then
resulted in a series of treaties that marked the end of Tokugawa seclusion.
These treaties provided for extensive commercial concessions, giving a virtual
monopoly of external trade to foreigners and, like the treaties China had been
forced to conclude with Western powers, granted extraterritorial status to
foreign nationals in Japan, thus exempting them from Japanese legal
jurisdiction. These "unequal treaties" outraged most samurai, especially those
of the powerful southwestern domains including Satsuma and Choshu.

     The onus for yielding to the foreigners was put on the shogunate, whose
critics began to rally around the slogan of "Revere the emperor and expel the
barbarians." Political initiative was seized by the young, reformist samurai
bureaucrats of the outer fiefs of Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, and Hizen. Samurai
patriotism was stirred especially by the example of Yoshida Shoin, a Choshu
scholar committed to the cause of imperial rule; he called for national unity
under the emperor and for military preparedness not only to preserve Japan's
integrity but to bring Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan under Japanese hegemony.
Executed in 1859, he was to become the patron saint of Japanese
ultranationalistic chauvinism.

     The weapons of revolt were in the hands of the initially antiforeign and
later anti-Tokugawa samurai of the southwestern domains, for as Tokugawa
supervision relaxed, the outer daimyos had profited from clandestine contacts
with the Dutch by learning some Western industrial and military technology.
They had established iron foundries, shipyards, and smelters; and Choshu, the
rallying point for many discontented young samurai from other fiefs, had
started to organize a peasant conscript army.

     Two retaliatory attacks by Western naval forces for anti-Western acts
convinced some samurai of the futility of attempting to expel the foreigners
by force. The British bombarded Kagoshima in 1863, and a joint United States,
British, French, and Dutch force attacked the Choshu forts along the Straits
of Shimonoseki in 1864. As a result the influential samurai of these fiefs
abandoned the idea of isolation in favor of strengthening Japan. They started
building their own military forces, which soon proved superior to those of the
shogunate; their ultimate aim was to establish a new, centralized national
government under an emperor restored to rule. Choshu troops, allied secretly
with those of the powerful fief of Satsuma in 1866, defeated forces of the
shogun in 1867. The fifteenth and last Tokugawa shogun readily relinquished
his power. Imperial rule was officially restored on January 3, 1868, to the
Emperor Mutsuhito, who took the reign title Meiji ("enlightened rule"). In
1869 the imperial government was moved to Tokyo ("Eastern Capital"), renamed
as such in 1868. The dual system of government in place since the twelfth
century was finally terminated.

The Meiji Period (1868-1912)

     Under the basic philosophy of the new order proclaimed by the emperor in
April 1868, the Meiji government promised to seek Western knowledge for
Japan's modernization, to jettison the "evil customs of the past," to bring
about the unity of "all classes, high and low," to give commoners freedom of
choice in occupation, and to establish deliberative assemblies. The process of
breaking with the centuries-old feudal patterns was not without difficulties,
but in the ensuing two decades there evolved the essential framework for an
effective centralized government and for a powerful military establishment and
the foundations of a modern economy.

     The nucleus of the new power structure was a narrowly based group of
young samurai leaders, for the most part from the southwestern fiefs. Along
with a few court nobles, they had engineered the restoration of the emperor to
the center of government. Confucian in intellectual training and moral outlook
as well, these leaders distinguished themselves in the military and
administrative fields. Their goal was to transform Japan into a prosperous,
militarily strong country by absorbing Western technology and practices.

     Centralization of power and modernization were set in motion under the
direction of the highly authoritarian Council of State, top organ of the
government for both executive and legislative functions. In 1869 the daimyos
were persuaded to surrender their lands to the throne and were allowed to stay
on as governors of their respective domains. Two years later the fiefs were
legally abolished and for administrative purposes were reconstituted into
seventy-two prefectures and three municipalities (the prefectures were reduced
to forty-three in 1890). As a result most daimyos-turned-governors were
replaced by political appointees.

     The daimyos received generous compensation for their lands. This enabled
them to venture into commerce and industry. Most samurai, who were pensioned
off, did not fare well, however. In 1873 a universal conscription law deprived
the samurai of their feudal military prerogatives; this measure in effect
removed the social boundary between the samurai and commoner classes. Although
some were channeled into the bureaucracy, the police, the armed forces,
education, and business, discontent was widespread-especially after 1876 when
the samurai lost their special privilege of wearing two swords, the last
tangible symbol of their elite status. The Tokugawa's four-class social
structure was phased out. Except for a small peerage into which many
ex-daimyos were inducted, all Japanese became in theory if not in fact
socially equal. Samurai dissatisfaction erupted sporadically into locally
confined revolts. The development of remote Hokkaido was pushed in earnest by
the government partly as a means of absorbing the dispossessed samurai, whose
rehabilitation was a major problem in the 1870s.

     The ruling oligarchy during the early part of the Meiji period was
composed of some 100 men united in their desire to modernize the social,
economic, political, and military fields. Tactically, however, differences
arose and were compounded by personal, regional, and factional rivalries.
Divisive issues were generally centered on the question of priority between
domestic reform and military expansion abroad and also on the issue affecting
the pace of transition from feudalism to modernity. The most serious
opposition to the Meiji reform measures came from a group of conservative
ex-samurai rallying around and led by Saigo Takamori (1827-77), an ex-samurai
and one of the oligarchs from Satsuma. Saigo advocated a tougher and
expansionist policy toward Korea and also sought to modify reform measures
that he believed were injurious to samurai interests. He was opposed by the
controlling oligarchy on the ground that his proposed invasion of Korea would
detract from the primary task of strengthening Japan's economic and military
power. In 1877 Saigo led a major uprising against the government but was
defeated by the new conscript army of some 40,000 men using modern weapons.

     After the Satsuma rebellion the dissidents, many of whom had supported
the imperial restoration, turned their attention to domestic political issues.
Notable in their effort was the establishment of the first political parties,
the Liberal Party in 1881 and the Progressive Party in the following year,
both in opposition to the Satsuma-Choshu controlled government. The government
countered by organizing its own Imperial Rule Party (Teiseito) in 1882. The
opposition parties attracted some support from ex-samurai and intellectuals
but failed to evoke popular support. Given the nascency of such concepts as
popular rights, equality, parliamentary politics, and political participation,
the opposition effort to broaden the base of the power structure produced no
result. Moreover the parties themselves had no effective organizations.
Narrowly based in both social and regional terms and dominated by the few who
were politically ambitious, they were in effect political clubs established
for continuation of factional struggles. Financial scandals involving party
leaders and political opportunism shown by some of these leaders did much to
discredit the character of partisan opposition. Moreover the government did
little to encourage partisan politics through its thinly veiled campaign of
harassment against opposition politicians.

     Nevertheless partly as a result of the pressures of the opposition and
partly because of the government's own promise to create a constitutional
government by stages, the Meiji Constitution was promulgated in 1889,
officially as an imperial gift to the people. Patterned after the Prussian
model and drafted in secrecy, this charter vested sovereignty in the "divine
emperor," whose person was declared sacred and inviolable. The constitution
was framed to buttress imperial absolutism based on a centralized,
authoritarian executive authority. Despite the divine aura given him, however,
the emperor remained a figurehead. The real effect of the constitution was to
give legal sanction to the power already exercised by the bureaucracy, which
with the passage of time was increasingly influenced by the military. Behind
the new members of the bureaucracy, the surviving original leaders of the
Meiji restoration retained a large measure of power in their role as elder
statesmen. The newly adopted codes of civil, commercial, and criminal law were
based on Prussian and French models.

     The civil liberties granted under the constitution were subject to
abrogation by law. The provisions for a bicameral legislature, called the
Imperial Diet, gave more or less equal powers to the appointive House of Peers
and the elective, lower House of Representatives. The legislature was not
given any effective power to curb executive excesses, however. Suffrage was
limited to male property owners. This qualification originally gave the
franchise to about 1 percent of the population. Political parties, which had
become virtually defunct by 1885, revived to take part in elections to the
Imperial Diet in 1890.

     On the economic front the Meiji leaders laid the foundations of modern
industry and finance by direct and indirect means. The initial capital
investment for the Japanese merchant marine, for example, was provided by the
government, which bought foreign-built vessels and gave them, free of charge,
to shipping companies. In the 1880s infant government industries were sold on
favorable terms to private entrepreneurs. The new industrialists, together
with such already established commercial-financial houses as the Mitsui of
Osaka, founded family conglomerates known as zaibatsu (see Glossary), which
came to dominate Japanese economic life until the end of World War II.

     After a period of financial disorganization in the 1870s, the nation's
finances were stabilized in the 1880s. Various specialized banks were created,
and the Bank of Japan was established in 1882 as the country's central bank.
The development of finance and industry nurtured the growth of a powerful
middle class of merchants, financiers, and businessmen, who began to play a
greater role in politics.

     There was no parallel improvement in the position of peasant cultivators.
Agriculture was by far the main occupation in early Meiji Japan, employing
over three-quarters of the population. Production increased owing to
government programs of land reclamation, crop diversification, and improved
methods of cultivation. Production of rice, the staple food crop, was,
however, insufficient for Japan's burgeoning population. A 10 percent growth
in population between 1880 and 1890 intensified pressure on the limited area
of arable land. Peasant distress mounted; farm tenancy doubled to 40 percent
between 1873 and 1887, in part owing to the requirement of paying taxes in
cash. At the time taxes on agriculture were the main source of government
finance for industrialization.

     Although some handicraft industries were adversely affected by the
imports of foreign goods that entered Japan under favorable terms, other
artisan crafts were adapted to production of new commodities from Japanese raw
materials. The government made successful efforts to increase the production
of tea and raw silk and to break the foreign monopoly on silk exporting. The
process of industrialization was aided by the contribution of the craft
industries and by the cheap labor attracted to the new centers from the
distressed countryside.

     Imports essential to the modernization program increased at a rate faster
than that of Japan's exports; both elements of foreign trade increased
dramatically after 1894, but with the exception of the decade of 1884-94 Japan
consistently had an unfavorable balance of trade until World War I. Foreign
control of shipping was broken in the 1880s, and Japan attained control of its
own intercoastal trade. The composition of foreign trade changed as
industrialization progressed, showing increasing proportions of manufactured
goods exported and of raw materials imported.

     Culturally the Japanese were preoccupied with borrowing from the West in
the first two decades of the Meiji period. The government and an expanding
literate portion of society were eager both to master the secrets of Western
strength and win acceptance of Japan as a civilized and enlightened nation.
They looked on science and its application, especially in the military sphere,
as the sources of Western strength.

     At the Meiji Restoration in 1868, a handful of Japanese pioneers in the
study and translation of Western scientific works already existed. Even with
their followers included, however, they were not sufficient, nor could they be
expected to build a scientific tradition in Japan where, at the time, if a
scientific tradition existed at all, it was largely one of science as magic.
Thus the new Meiji government began in earnest in the early 1870s to provide
opportunities for the best of Japan's youth to master Western science and
technology. Primary emphasis was placed on whatever was needed to make the
nation prosperous and strong. As a result by 1912 more than 65 percent of all
the students who had gone abroad for study under government sponsorship had
specialized in the practical areas of the basic and applied sciences,
especially in the latter. Where sending large numbers of students abroad for
foreign study did not prove practical or financially feasible, foreign
instructors were brought to Japan. In addition to technology, patents and
publications were imported, and licensing agreements were also made.

     The first significant step toward the development of science and
technology was the establishment in 1870 of the Ministry of Engineering; under
its aegis railroads and lighthouses were built, telegraphic services provided,
and modern techniques in mine and factory management developed. It was during
this early period that foreign advisers were most important. Some 100
foreigners were engaged to teach in the sciences, and about 560 foreign
experts were employed in the ministry. By 1893, however, when the lecture
system was started in the national universities, almost all foreign teachers
had been replaced by Japanese instructors, a fact that testified to the rapid
advance of indigenous scholars. The high cost of foreign instructors also was
a factor in their replacement.

     Research institutes were established through government sponsorship;
significantly the first so established was a military agency, the Naval
Hydrographic Division, in 1871. By 1900 the government had established twelve
other research institutes. Also indicative of the government's attitude toward
modern science was enforcement in 1883 of a nationwide examination system for
practioners of Western medicine; this dealt the prestige of Chinese medicine a
heavy blow. In addition, in 1877 the Tokyo Mathematical Society was founded,
and two years later the Ministry of Education established the Tokyo Academy as
the first government-sponsored academic society. As scientific societies
increased in number (there were about twenty by 1900) and scientific
principles were increasingly discussed openly, the old practice of keeping all
techniques secret was relaxed somewhat.

     The most important institution for training indigenous scientists was the
Tokyo Imperial University, established in 1887 through the merger of the
University of Tokyo and the College of Technology. The government ordinance
defined the purpose of the university as follows: "The aim of the Imperial
University shall be to teach and study such sciences and practical arts as
meet the demands of the State." Other imperial universities were soon set up
also in Kyoto, Sendai, and Fukuoka.

     Aside from science there was considerable intellectual interest in
European political thought. The writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the English
utilitarians, and the German statists were expounded by leading intellectuals.
Liberal British thought appealed to members of the Progressive Party. The more
conservative Political Friends Association (Seiyukai), established in 1900,
found French theory more congenial. The ideas of the German statist school
were espoused by apologists for the authoritarian government. Around 1900
Marxist socialist thought made its appearance in radical intellectual circles
and nascent labor unions.

     The Meiji reformers were quick to appreciate the potential of education
as a force in modernization and an instrument of political tutelage as well. A
number of private schools were founded by Japanese who had studied abroad;
several evolved into the great private universities of modern Japan, such as
Keio and Waseda (both in Tokyo) and Doshisha (in Kyoto). The government's
universal education system was instituted in 1872 under the Ministry of
Education; it was organized for the first time into progressive steps from
elementary school to university, a sharp break with the existing system of
unrelated schools. The system bore strong foreign influences. Its
administrative features were a virtual copy of the French centralized
education system. Higher education was influenced by the German universities.
At the top of the educational hierarchy was Tokyo Imperial University, which
became the most prestigious and important of the state-supported universities.
Because the private universities were not allowed to grant degrees, only
graduates of the imperial institutions could qualify for government service.

     The initial enthusiasm for Western-centered civilization and
enlightenment moderated in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The Meiji oligarchs
had successfully laid the foundations of the new Japan. Interest in Japanese
history and literature and Confucian ethics revived in Japanese intellectual
circles, but not so much as a hostile reaction against alien influences as a
reassertion of Japanese identity. The changed attitude was marked by the
proclamation in 1890 of an imperial rescript on education. The rescript
emphasized traditional Japanese values as the foundation of education,
declared that moral teachings handed down by the emperors from ancient times
were the sources of the Japanese national spirit, and invoked Confucian
concepts of filial piety and social harmony as well as samurai ethics of
absolute loyalty and obedience. This document, which on important national
days was read with great reverence by students and teachers in assembly,
underlay Japanese morals and ethics for the next half century. Formal worship
of the emperor was made obligatory in schools.

     The process of modernization, which requires a literate and informed
population, was aided by the appearance of newspapers and periodicals and also
the rapid development of publishing in the first two decades of the Meiji
period. Initially the Meiji oligarchs were apprehensive about the potential of
the printed media as a vehicle for popularizing radical or antigovernment
ideas. They soon concluded, however, that the media could be harnessed as an
educational tool in support of various government programs. The country's
first daily newspaper, the Yokohama Mainichi shimbun, appeared in 1870. The
number of daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers rose to over 500 by 1890.
Japan's three leading newspapers, the Asahi shimbun, the Mainichi shimbun, and
the Yomiuri shimbun, as well as its most influential intellectual monthly,
Chuo koron, had their beginnings in the first two decades of the Meiji era.
Unemployed ex-samurai had an important part in the evolution of the press by
taking up journalistic careers. Editorial policies tended to be generally
critical of the government; this tendency, except during the years of
militarist control before and during World War II, continued unchanged in the
1980s.

     Not surprisingly, military modernization was given top priority by the
government. In the 1880s defense expenditures accounted for one-third of the
national budget annually. Under Yamagata Aritomo, a leading oligarch and
father of the modern Japanese army, military forces increased in size and in
sophistication of equipment and organization. Yamagata was responsible for the
adoption of a German style of army organization, having a general staff and a
staff college and divisional structure. The Meiji army had an effective
strength of 73,000 in the 1880s. Bushido and Shinto became an indispensable
part of training, indoctrination, and military service.