Meiji Ishin (1868 1912)

Meiji Ishin stemmed from the backlash of “samurai” in a few rural areas in Japan against not only Western imperialist forces, but also the Shogunate regime that had failed to guarantee Japan’s territorial and economic security. Its initial motivation was thus nativist, though it led to a comprehensive embrace of, and inclusive learning from, Western forces for practical reasons. Also, as seen in the first of its three slogans (i.e., “Enrich the state; strengthen the military”),27 _{Meiji Ishin was inextricably tied to military purposes. Japan’s military inferiority}

to Western imperialist states implied its industrial inferiority too. For this reason, the industrialization that the imperial government initiated was aimed at manufacturing new weaponry such as warships and rifles. This implies that Japan sought import-substituting heavy-chemical industrialisation from the outset. Based on it, and copying the British Naval and German Army organisations and tactics, Japan could win the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-5), thereby weakening China’s political influences on Korea and, further, colonising Taiwan in 1895. The substantial indemnity acquired from China was also used to strengthen the Japanese military and this contributed in turn to Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). As a result, Japan could advance on Southern Manchuria by obtaining a right to build a railway in the region and, conversely, it could weaken Russia’s political influences on Korea, which it went on to annex in 1910. In these regards, Meiji Ishin was militaristic and colonialist from the outset (for Japan’s early industrialisation, see Barnhart 1987, 17, 22; cf. Sassada 2013, 23-5).

27 _{The other two slogans were, respectively, “encourage production; flourish industry” and “effloresce} civilisation”.

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Meiji Ishin was also a political project for building a modern nation- and national state. It was thus inseparable from the emergence of Japanese nationalism as well. For instance, as soon as the imperial government was established, state managers sought to forge the Japanese population into a nation and to form Japan as a national polity. This had two preconditions. On the one hand, they needed to incorporate not only the lowest class of people in a feudal order, but also natives in islands, who were previously uncontrolled by the shogunate authorities, into a Japanese nation; and, on the other, they were needed to get the newly created nation to pledge allegiance to the emperor-centred national polity. The geographical range of the national polity abruptly went far beyond the local boundaries that feudal lords had de facto governed. The symbolic centre, that is, the emperor, was hardly recognised by laypeople. For these reasons, the imperial government created a distinctive politico-religious system. For instance, based on Shinto (the indigenous religion of Japan), the government manufactured a nominally unreligious ritual system of “State Shinto”—which was abolished by the US immediately after the end of the Second World War. Based on the State Shinto, it fabricated the image of “Tennō” (literally, emperor from/in heaven, i.e., emperor of Japan) as the highest priest and a demigod who takes charge of ancestral rites and other national rituals in line with State Shinto. For this reason, soon after the end of the Second World War, emperor Shōwa was forced by the US to declare publicly that, indeed, he was not a god. In doing so, the imperial government used a few Confucian concepts such as ‘kingly way’ (i.e., rule based on monarch’s generosity as opposed to a ‘hegemonic way’ based on military apparatus), ‘loyalty’ and ‘filial piety’. Thus the emperor now became a traditionally ideal monarch, which fitted laypeople’s normative sense and thereby guaranteed fealty. In addition, it drew the enthusiastic commitment of the Buddhist circles to the creation and spread of the new politico-religious system (for the making of the emperor, see Fujitani 1996;

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for the relation between the Buddhist circles and Japan’s military expansion, see Doak 1995, 177-82; Sharf 1993; Victoria 1996).

The emergence of Japanese nationalism was also associated with Japan’s international relations. First, Japan had to re-define its national status in the modern world, which was construed through the framework of ‘civilisation vs. barbarism’. Japanese intellectuals suggested a distinctive self-construal by introducing a third category between ‘civilised’ Europe and ‘less-civilised’ Asia and, then, inserting Japan into it. The discourse of ‘escape Asia; enter Europe’ that obtained in Japan at the time shows this. In the framework, Japan was close to, or, at least, oriented toward, Europe regarding civilisation, whereas it was geographically located in Asia. Second, the emergent nationalism of Japan also explains why the Meiji government gave attention to, particularly, Prussia among Western states. Simply speaking, the large number of emissaries that the imperial government dispatched to the US and Europe from 1871 was inspired by Prussia’s victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, its subsequent unification of the German nation, and the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. For this reason, the Meiji government renovated the Japanese Army based on the German Army and, further, came to enact the Meiji Constitution of 1889 based on the German Constitution with the help of German scholars.