Meiji Restoration

An old College Paper I Wrote:

Revolutions are the labor pains of a nation in transition. A revolution merely meaning change; may be brought on by a nations secession from a higher governing body in a declaration of nationalism/independence or may be the slow process of political evolution. Revolutions need not always be violent wars with endless battles. As we see with Japan and the Meiji Restoration, a nation can change from within. Through the recent introduction of outside cultures, ideas, and neo modus-operands, Japan began to morph itself into the open and powerful nation we know it as today. After this period in Japans intricate history as a feudal society, the nation became accepted as a competitor in the modern industrial world. Japans’ Meiji period, spanning from the late 1860’s to the early twentieth century was a time where social orders were rearranged, traditions began to change. The samurai culture was disappearing, the people once again wished to worship their emperor, and Confucianism was slowly being forgotten. All these drastic changes occurred without the typical violence that manifests during a revolution.

The political spectrum of Japan was also in a state of flux. As ships from America sailed into the bay of Edo, Japan they brought with them the wishes of a nation across the Pacific. The most important event of modern Japanese history, it goes without saying, was the opening of the country after more than two hundred years of isolation. President Millard Fillmore had sent Matthew C. Perry to open up this secretive country, and with him an ultimatum. The Japanese saw these large black ships, spewing black smoke into the air floating in their own waters. They called these ships Kurobune which means black ships. The ships had expansive white sails. The decks and holds of these boats held white men, barbarians bleached by the sun. Perry conveyed the requests of the US asking Japan to stop killing whalers who landed on its northern lands, allow Japan to become a fuel stop for ships trading with China and to open up diplomatic relations with the US Government. Americas’ Manifest Destiny had now fallen into the waters of the Pacific from its California coast and was pressing into the eastern world. Perry left Japan stating simply put that either you open up your nation or we will open it for you through less diplomatic means (Hinting of aggressive means). Japan was insulted by Americas arrogance, thus causing friction between the two leading nations of the Pacific rim.

During this time of change however, Japan seemed to overlook perhaps its’ most important element as a nation; its own people. The entire nation was focusing on modernizing its economy, factories, food sources, importations, shipping, technologies, diplomacy, political modes and many other attributes of any given modern civilization. The Meiji leaders were aware that to meet the goal of becoming a “rich nation” required swift industrialization. Through all this upheaval, it seems as though the backbone of the nation, the peasant, had fallen through the cracks, been overlooked, ignored. People were divided into landlords and tenants, and there was a wide gulf between rich and poor. He had thought the people in the countryside had a clean, ideal life, and that they rested in the peaceful bosom of nature, but gradually he found out that this place, too, was an arena of struggle and a world of greed. This shows the reality of life and not the theory: loss of land and employment by farmers, people sick with incurable diseases, the elderly and children in agony, and most of all the disintegration of the “family”-the institution that was supposed to be ministering to all of these needs. It would appear to some that as the nation became consumed with westernizing it consumed its own people. The Japanese worker was the coal, shoveled by its’ leaders into the furnace of industry in order to power the machine of the nations economy. Being a player in the international scene left Japans working class in the cold. Neglected by their leaders, the peasants of Japan were left to fend for themselves in a world they knew little about. These people were forced to give up the fruit of their labors. Forced to turn over large portions of their crops to the state, many of the peasants were left without food enough to survive. Taxed, overworked, along with the refusal to modernize, caused the soul of the nation to shrivel and die falling to the wayside.

The face of the Japanese peasant, especially those found in the northern outreaches of the land, was turned into the gaunt, empty stare of a people suffering. What first surprised me in the course of this field work were two discoveries: that the impact of the Meiji Restoration had reached even such a remote mountain village. Hungrily pressing on through a bleak and meager existence they had little hope of a happy future. Posterity, their only hope, the children, had to be killed out of mercy by their own families or die by the horror of starvation. The casualties found in this revolution did not die by cannon or bullet, but merely by the robbing hand of a totalitarian regime bent on becoming a super power.

Attempting to assert itself in perhaps the only way it knew how as a rising power, Japan followed the lead of the many nations that came before it in history. Another surprise in this investigation was the empirical confirmation of the fact that the movement toward a modern consciousness and thought in Japan was advancing steadily. Throughout the past centuries it was an accepted theme of any powerful nation to conquer lands, pillage cities and slaughter the lives of any who happened to be in the way of a nations’ destiny. Like the Europeans had done to themselves so many times, now the Japanese would do in Asia. As if they were the new kid on the playground wanting to prove their tenacity, Japan began to war with surrounding neighbors. The belief of “Colonize or be colonized” became the school of thought for the Japanese leaders.

There came about at this time, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Sino-Japanese War, both conflicts proving Japans innate abilities on the modern battlefield. The emperor system suppressed the People’s Rights movement at the same time that it succeeded in co-opting its leaders as the government’s own rural base of support. Ten years later Japan, which had adopted this “civilization” and built up military strength, defeated the Ch’ing empire, the symbol of Asian “barbarism”. The gears of the Japanese war machine that would join up and help form the axis powers of the second World War were set into motion as the nation began to devote large portions of its GNP towards production of military forces: Up to 50% in 1907. Japan began to produce scores of ships to aide in expanding its borders to the lands it felt a right to in the Pacific.

Factories such as Mitsubishi, produced every facet of the ships, from the engines to the parts of the engines. To further cause friction with Japan, the United States and Britain held the Washington Naval Conference which came up with the 5-5-3 rule. This rule stated that for every 5 tons of ships Britain and the US manufactured Japan was allowed 3 tons. The west justified this by explaining that while they had to maintain naval forces in two seas Japan only had the one. Japan was insulted.

During this time peace treaties were negotiated and signed. President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States even obtained a Nobel Peace Prize while assisting in the negotiations for peace following the Russo-Japanese War. The die had been cast, Japan was in the Big Leagues now. Its role in global politics could no longer be ignored by other nations as just being a little island on the western rim of the Pacific. The first was the intent of the Japanese ruling class; the military, in particular, it had long hoped to establish a foothold in Korea as a basis for an advance into the continent. Japans intentions of asserting its power were clear and understood.
As a child enters adolescence, so Japan entered the Meiji period. The fleeting innocence of ancient traditions gave way to the new western ideologies of market economy, colonization, imperialism and mechanized warfare. Just as the knights of medieval Europe faded into the pages of history, so now the samurai of Japan had faded away. Japans simple life of feudal society had being replaced with complex new ideas of western government and politics. The Meiji period was Japans coming of age, or sowing her oats you could say. The nation had grown into the world she lived in.

Bibliography:

Keene, Donald. Modern Japanese Diaries: The Japanese at Home and Abroad as Revealed Through Their Diaries. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Daikichi, Irokawa. The Culture of the Meiji Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Hane, Mikiso. Japan: A short History. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000.