Under the Hōjō and the Ashikaga shōguns the holders of the great estates changed frequently according to the vicissitudes of those troublesome times, but under the Tokugawa no change took place, and there thusDaimyōs.grew up a landed nobility of the most permanent character. Every one of these estates was a feudal kingdom, large or small, with its own usages and its own laws, based on the general principles above indicated and liable to be judged according to those principles by the shōgun’s government (baku-fu) in Yedo. A daimyō or feudal chief drew from the peasants on his estate the means of subsistence for himself and his retainers. For this purpose the produce of his estate was assessed by the shōgun’s officials inkoku(onekoku= 180.39 litres, worth about £1), and about one-half of the assessed amount went to the feudatory, the other half to the tillers of the soil. The richest daimyō was Mayeda of Kaga, whose fief was assessed at a little over a millionkoku, his revenue thus being about half a million sterling. Just as an empress had to be taken from one of five families designated to that distinction for all time, so a successor to the shōgunate, failing direct heir, had to be selected from three families (sanke), namely, those of the daimyōs of Owari, Kii and Mito, whose first representatives were three sons of Iyeyasu. Out of the total body of 255 daimyōs existing in the year 1862, 141 were specially distinguished asfudai, or hereditary vassals of the Tokugawa house, and to 18 of these was strictly limited the perpetual privilege of filling all the high offices in the Yedo administration, while to 4 of them was reserved the special honour of supplying a regent (go-tairō) during the minority of the shōgun. Moreover, afudaidaimyō was of necessity appointed to the command of the fortress of Nijō in Kiōto as well as of the great castles of Osaka and Fushimi, which Iyeyasu designated the keys of the country. No intermarriage might take place between members of the court nobility and the feudal houses without the consent of Yedo; no daimyō might apply direct to the emperor for an official title, or might put foot within the imperial district of Kiōto without the shōgun’s permit, and at all entrances to the region known as the Kwantō there were established guardhouses, where every one, of whatever rank, must submit to be examined, in order to prevent the wives and children of the daimyōs from secretly leaving Yedo for their own provinces. In their journeys to and from Yedo every second year the feudal chiefs had to travel by one of two great highways, the Tōkaidō or the Nakasendō, and as they moved with great retinues, these roads were provided with a number of inns and tea-houses equipped in a sumptuous manner, and having an abundance of female servants. A puissant daimyō’s procession often numbered as many as 1000 retainers, and nothing illustrates more forcibly the wide interval that separated the soldier and the plebeian than the fact that at the appearance of the heralds who preceded these progresses all commoners who happened to be abroad had to kneel on the ground with bowed and uncovered heads; all wayside houses had to close the shutters of windows giving on the road, and none might venture to look down from a height on the passing magnate. Any violation of these rules of etiquette exposed the violator to instant death at the hands of the daimyō’s retinue. Moreover, the samurai and the heimin lived strictly apart. A feudal chief had a castle which generally occupied a commanding position. It was surrounded by from one to three broad moats, the innermost crowned with a high wall of huge cut stones, its trace arranged so as to give flank defence, which was further provided by pagoda-like towers placed at the salient angles. Inside this wall stood the houses of the high officials on the outskirts of a park surrounding the residence of the daimyō himself, and from the scarps of the moats or in the intervals between them rose houses for the military retainers, barrack-like structures, provided, whenever possible, with small but artistically arranged and carefully tended gardens. All this domain of the military was calledyashikiin distinction to themachi(streets) where the despised commoners had their habitat.
The general body of the samurai received stipends and lived frugally. Their pay was not reckoned in money: it took the form of so many rations of rice delivered from their chief’s granaries. A few had landed estates,Samurai.usually bestowed in recognition of conspicuous merit. They were probably the finest type of hereditary soldiers the world ever produced. Money and all devices for earning it they profoundly despised. The right of wearing a sword was to them the highest conceivable privilege. They counted themselves the guardians of their fiefs’ honour and of their country’s welfare. At any moment they were prepared cheerfully to sacrifice their lives on the altar of loyalty. Their word, once given, must never be violated. The slightest insult to their honour might not be condoned. Stoicism was a quality which they esteemed next to courage: all outward display of emotion must be suppressed. The sword might never be drawn for a petty cause, but, if once drawn, must never be returned to its scabbard until it had done its duty. Martial exercises occupied much of their attention, but book learning also they esteemed highly. They were profoundly courteous towards each other, profoundly contemptuous towards the commoner, whatever his wealth. Filial piety ranked next to loyalty in their code of ethics. Thus the Confucian maxim, endorsed explicitly in theTestament of Iyeyasu, that a man must not live under the same sky with his father’s murderer or his brother’s slayer, received most literal obedience, and many instances occurred of vendettas pursued in the face of apparently insuperable difficulties and consummated after years of effort. By the standard of modern morality the Japanese samurai would be counted cruel. Holding that death was the natural sequel of defeat and the only certain way of avoiding disgrace, he did not seek quarter himself or think of extending it to an enemy. Yet in his treatment of the latter he loved to display courtesy until the supreme moment when all considerations of mercy were laid aside. It cannot be doubted that the practice of employing torture judicially tended to educate a mood of callousness towards suffering, or that the many idle hours of a military man’s life in time of peace encouraged a measure of dissipation. But there does not seem to be any valid ground for concluding that either of these defects was conspicuous in the character of the Japanese samurai. Faithlessness towards women was the greatest fault that can be laid to his door. Thesamurai lady claimed no privilege of timidity on account of her sex. She knew how to die in the cause of honour just as readily as her husband, her father or her brother died, and conjugal fidelity did not rank as a virtue in her eyes, being regarded as a simple duty. But her husband held marital faith in small esteem and ranked his wife far below his sword. It has to be remembered that when we speak of a samurai’s suicide, there is no question of poison, the bullet, drowning or any comparatively painless manner of exit from the world. The invariable method was to cut open the abdomen (hara-kiriorseppuku) and afterwards, if strength remained, the sword was turned against the throat. To such endurance had the samurai trained himself that he went through this cruel ordeal without flinching in the smallest degree.
The heimin or commoners were divided into three classes—husbandmen, artisans and traders. The farmer, as the nation lived by his labour, was counted the most respectable among the bread-winners, and a cultivatorHeimin.of his own estate might even carry one sword but never two, that privilege being strictly reserved to a samurai. The artisan, too, received much consideration, as is easily understood when we remember that included in his ranks were artists, sword-smiths, armourers, sculptors of sacred images or sword-furniture, ceramists and lacquerers. Many artisans were in the permanent service of feudal chiefs from whom they received fixed salaries. Tradesmen, however, were regarded with disdain and stood lowest of all in the social organization. Too much despised to be even included in that organization were theeta(defiled folks) and thehinin(outcasts). The exact origin of these latter pariahs is uncertain, but the ancestors of the eta would seem to have been prisoners of war or the enslaved families of criminals. To such people were assigned the defiling duties of tending tombs, disposing of the bodies of the dead, slaughtering animals or tanning hides. The hinin were mendicants. On them devolved the task of removing and burying the corpses of executed criminals. Living in segregated hamlets, forbidden to marry with heimin, still less with samurai, not allowed to eat, drink or associate with persons above their own class, the eta remained under the ban of ostracism from generation to generation, though many of them contrived to amass much wealth. They were governed by their own headmen, and they had three chiefs, one residing in each of the cities of Yedo, Osaka and Kiōto. All these members of the submerged classes were relieved from proscription and admitted to the ranks of the commoners under the enlightened system of Meiji. The 12th of October 1871 saw their enfranchisement, and at that date the census showed 287,111 eta and 695,689 hinin.
Naturally, as the unbroken peace of the Tokugawa régime became habitual, the mood of the nation underwent a change. The samurai, no longer required to lead the frugal life of camp or barracks, began to live beyond theirDecline and Fall of the Shōgunate.incomes. “They found difficulty in meeting the pecuniary engagements of everyday existence, so that money acquired new importance in their eyes, and they gradually forfeited the respect which their traditional disinterestedness had won for them in the past.” At the same time the abuses of feudalism were thrown into increased salience. A large body of hereditary soldiers become an anomaly when fighting has passed even out of memory. On the other hand, the agricultural and commercial classes acquired new importance. The enormous sums disbursed every year in Yedo, for the maintenance of the great establishments which the feudal chiefs vied with each other in keeping there, enriched the merchants and traders so greatly that their scale of living underwent radical change. Buddhism was a potent influence, but its ethical restraints were weakened by the conduct of its priests, who themselves often yielded to the temptation of the time. The aristocracy adhered to its refined pastimes—performances of theNo; tea reunions; poem composing; polo; football; equestrian archery; fencing and gambling—but the commoner, being excluded from all this realm and, at the same time, emerging rapidly from his old position of penury and degradation, began to develop luxurious proclivities and to demand corresponding amusements. Thus the theatre came into existence; the dancing girl and the jester found lucrative employment; a popular school of art was founded and quickly carried to perfection; thelupanarassumed unprecedented dimensions; rich and costly costumes acquired wide vogue in despite of sumptuary laws enacted from time to time; wrestling became an important institution, and plutocracy asserted itself in the face of caste distinctions.
Simultaneously with the change of social conditions thus taking place, history repeated itself at the shōgun’s court. The substance of administrative power passed into the hands of a minister, its shadow alone remaining to the shōgun. During only two generations were the successors of Iyeyasu able to resist this traditional tendency. The representative of the third—Iyetsuna (1661-1680)—succumbed to the machinations of an ambitious minister, Sakai Takakiyo, and it may be said that from that time the nominal repository of administrative authority in Yedo was generally a species of magnificent recluse, secluded from contact with the outer world and seeing and hearing only through the eyes and ears of the ladies of his household. In this respect the descendants of the great Tokugawa statesman found themselves reduced to a position precisely analogous to that of the emperor in Kiōto. Sovereign and shōgun were alike mere abstractions so far as the practical work of government was concerned. With the great mass of the feudal chiefs things fared similarly. These men who, in the days of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, had directed the policies of their fiefs and led their armies in the field, were gradually transformed, during the long peace of the Tokugawa era, into voluptuousfainéantsor, at best, thoughtless dilettanti, willing to abandon the direction of their affairs to seneschals and mayors, who, while on the whole their administration was able and loyal, found their account in contriving and perpetuating the effacement of their chiefs. Thus, in effect, the government of the country, taken out of the hands of the shōgun and the feudatories, fell into those of their vassals. There were exceptions, of course, but so rare as to be merely accidental.
Another important factor has to be noted. It has been shown above that Iyeyasu bestowed upon his three sons the rich fiefs of Owari, Kii (Kishū) and Mito, and that these three families exclusively enjoyed the privilege of furnishing an heir to the shōgun should the latter be without direct issue. Mito ought therefore to have been a most unlikely place for the conception and propagation of principles subversive of the shōgun’s administrative autocracy. Nevertheless, in the days of the second of the Mito chiefs at the close of the 17th century, there arose in that province a school of thinkers who, revolting against the ascendancy of Chinese literature and of Buddhism, devoted themselves to compiling a history such as should recall the attention of the nation to its own annals and revive its allegiance to Shintō. It would seem that in patronizing the compilation of this great work the Mito chief was swayed by the spirit of pure patriotism and studentship, and that he discerned nothing of the goal to which the new researches must lead the litterati of his fief. “He and they, for the sake of history and without any thought of politics, undertook a retrospect of their country’s annals, and their frank analysis furnished conclusive proof that the emperor was the prime source of administrative authority and that its independent exercise by a shōgun must be regarded as a usurpation. They did not attempt to give practical effect to their discoveries; the era was essentially academical. But this galaxy of scholars projected into the future a light which burned with growing force in each succeeding generation and ultimately burst into a flame which consumed feudalism and the shōgunate,” fused the nation into one, and restored the governing authority to the emperor. Of course the Mito men were not alone in this matter: many students subsequently trod in their footsteps and many others sought to stem the tendency; but the net result was fatal to faith in the dual system of government. Possibly had nothing occurred to furnish signal proof of the system’s practical defects,it might have long survived this theoretical disapproval. But the crisis caused by the advent of foreign ships and by the forceful renewal of foreign intercourse in the 19th century afforded convincing evidence of the shōgunate’s incapacity to protect the state’s supposed interests and to enforce the traditional policy of isolation which the nation had learned to consider essential to the empire’s integrity.
Another important factor made for the fall of the shōgunate. That factor was the traditional disaffection of the two great southern fiefs, Satsuma and Chōshū. When Iyeyasu parcelled out the empire, he deemed it the wisest policy to leave these chieftains in full possession of their large estates. But this measure, construed as an evidence of weakness rather than a token of liberality, neither won the allegiance of the big feudatories nor cooled their ambition. Thus no sooner did the nation divide into two camps over the question of renewed foreign intercourse than men of the above clans, in concert with representatives of certain of the old court nobles, placed themselves at the head of a movement animated by two loudly proclaimed purposes: restoration of the administration to the emperor, and expulsion of aliens. This latter aspiration underwent a radical change when the bombardment of the Satsuma capital, Kagoshima, and the destruction of the Chōshū forts and ships at Shimonoseki proved conclusively to the Satsuma and Chōshū clans that Japan in her unequipped and backward condition could not hope to stand for a moment against the Occident in arms. But the unwelcome discovery was accompanied by a conviction that only a thoroughly united nation might aspire to preserve its independence, and thus the abolition of the dual form of government became more than ever an article of public faith. It is unnecessary to recount the successive incidents which conspired to undermine the shōgun’s authority, and to destroy the prestige of the Yedo administration. Both had been reduced to vanishing quantities by the year 1866 when Keiki succeeded to the shōgunate.
Keiki, known historically as Yoshinobu, the last of the shōguns, was a man of matured intellect and high capacities. He had been put forward by the anti-foreign Conservatives for the succession to the shōgunate in 1857 when the complications of foreign intercourse were in their first stage of acuteness. But, like many other intelligent Japanese, he had learned, in the interval between 1857 and 1866, that to keep her doors closed was an impossible task for Japan, and very quickly after taking the reins of office he recognized that national union could never be achieved while power was divided between Kiōto and Yedo. At this juncture there was addressed to him by Yōdō, chief of the great Tosa fief, a memorial setting forth the hopelessness of the position in which the Yedo court now found itself, and urging that, in the interests of good government and in order that the nation’s united strength might be available to meet the exigencies of its new career, the administration should be restored to the emperor. Keiki received this memorial in Kiōto. He immediately summoned a council of all the feudatories and high officials then in the Imperial city, announced to them his intention to lay down his office, and, the next day, presented his resignation to the sovereign. This happened on the 14th of October 1867. It must be ranked among the signal events of the world’s history, for it signified the voluntary surrender of kingly authority wielded uninterruptedly for nearly three centuries. That the shōgun’s resignation was tendered in good faith there can be no doubt, and had it been accepted in the same spirit, the great danger it involved might have been consummated without bloodshed or disorder. But the clansmen of Satsuma and Chōshū were distrustful. One of the shōgun’s first acts after assuming office had been to obtain from the throne an edict for imposing penalties on Chōshū, and there was a precedent for suspecting that the renunciation of power by the shōgun might merely prelude its resumption on a firmer basis. Therefore steps were taken to induce the emperor, then a youth of fifteen, to issue a secret rescript to Satsuma and Chōshū, denouncing the shōgun as the nation’s enemy and enjoining his destruction. At the same time all officials connected with the Tokugawa or suspected of sympathy with them were expelled from office in Kiōto, and the shōgun’s troops were deprived of the custody of the palace gates by methods which verged upon the use of armed force. In the face of such provocation Keiki’s earnest efforts to restrain the indignation of his vassals and adherents failed. They marched against Kiōto and were defeated, whereupon Keiki left his castle at Osaka and retired to Yedo, where he subsequently made unconditional surrender to the Imperial army. There is little more to be set down on this page of the history. The Yedo court consented to lay aside its dignities and be stripped of its administrative authority, but all the Tokugawa vassals and adherents did not prove equally placable. There was resistance in the northern provinces, where the Aizu feudatory refused to abandon the Tokugawa cause; there was an attempt to set up a rival candidate for the throne in the person of an Imperial prince who presided over the Uyeno Monastery in Yedo; and there was a wild essay on the part of the admiral of the shōgun’s fleet to establish a republic in the island of Yezo. But these were mere ripples on the surface of the broad stream which set towards the peaceful overthrow of the dual system of government and ultimately towards the fall of feudalism itself. That this system, the outcome of five centuries of nearly continuous warfare, was swept away in almost as many weeks with little loss of life or destruction of property constitutes, perhaps, the most striking incident, certainly the most momentous, in the history of the Japanese nation.
The Meiji Era.—It must be remembered that when reference is made to the Japanese nation in connexion with these radical changes, only the nobles and the samurai are indicated—in other words, a section of the population representing about one-sixteenth of the whole. The bulk of the people—the agricultural, the industrial and the mercantile classes—remained outside the sphere of politics, not sharing the anti-foreign prejudice, or taking any serious interest in the great questions of the time. Foreigners often noted with surprise the contrast between the fierce antipathy displayed towards them by certain samurai on the one hand, and the genial, hospitable reception given to them by the common people on the other. History teaches that the latter was the natural disposition of the Japanese, the former a mood educated by special experiences. Further, even the comparatively narrow statement that the restoration of the administrative power to the emperor was the work of the nobles and the samurai must be taken with limitations. A majority of the nobles entertained no idea of any necessity for change. They were either held fast in the vice of Tokugawa authority, or paralyzed by the sensuous seductions of the lives provided for them by the machinations of their retainers, who transferred the administrative authority of the fiefs to their own hands, leaving its shadow only to their lords. It was among the retainers that longings for a new order of things were generated. Some of these men were sincere disciples of progress—a small band of students and deep thinkers who, looking through the narrow Dutch window at Deshima, had caught a glimmering perception of the realities that lay beyond the horizon of their country’s prejudices. But the influence of such Liberals was comparatively insignificant. Though they showed remarkable moral courage and tenacity of purpose, the age did not furnish any strong object lesson to enforce their propaganda of progress. The factors chiefly making for change were, first, the ambition of the southern clans to oust the Tokugawa, and, secondly, the samurai’s loyal instinct, reinforced by the teachings of his country’s history, by the revival of the Shintō cult, by the promptings of national enterprise, and by the object-lessons of foreign intercourse.
But though essentially imperialistic in its prime purposes, the revolution which involved the fall of the shōgunate, and ultimately of feudalism, may be called democratic with regard to the personnel of those who planned andCharacter of the Revolution.directed it. They were, for the most part, men without either official rank or social standing. That is a point essentialto a clear understanding of the issue. Fifty-five individuals may be said to have planned and carried out the overthrow of the Yedo administration, and only five of them were territorial nobles. Eight, belonging to the court nobility, laboured under the traditional disadvantages of their class, poverty and political insignificance; and the remaining forty-two, the hearts and hands of the movement, may be described as ambitious youths, who sought to make a career for themselves in the first place, and for their country in the second. The average age of the whole did not exceed thirty. There was another element for which any student of Japanese history might have been prepared: the Satsuma samurai aimed originally not merely at overthrowing the Tokugawa but also at obtaining the shōgunate for their own chief. Possibly it would be unjust to say that all the leaders of the great southern clan harboured that idea. But some of them certainly did, and not until they had consented to abandon the project did their union with Chōshū, the other great southern clan, become possible—a union without which the revolution could scarcely have been accomplished. This ambition of the Satsuma clansmen deserves special mention, because it bore remarkable fruit; it may be said to have laid the foundation of constitutional government in Japan. For, in consequence of the distrust engendered by such aspirations, the authors of the Restoration agreed that when the emperor assumed the reins of power, he should solemnly pledge himself to convene a deliberative assembly, to appoint to administrative posts men of intellect and erudition wherever they might be found, and to decide all measures in accordance with public opinion. This promise, referred to frequently in later times as the Imperial oath at the Restoration, came to be accounted the basis of representative institutions, though in reality it was intended solely as a guarantee against the political ascendancy of any one clan.
At the outset the necessity of abolishing feudalism did not present itself clearly to the leaders of the revolution. Their sole idea was the unification of the nation. But when they came to consider closely the practicalThe Anti-feudal Idea.side of the problem, they understood how far it would lead them. Evidently that one homogeneous system of law should replace the more or less heterogeneous systems operative in the various fiefs was essential, and such a substitution meant that the feudatories must be deprived of their local autonomy and, incidentally, of their control of local finances. That was a stupendous change. Hitherto each feudal chief had collected the revenues of his fief and had employed them at will, subject to the sole condition of maintaining a body of troops proportionate to his income. He had been, and was still, an autocrat within the limits of his territory. On the other hand, the active authors of the revolution were a small band of men mainly without prestige or territorial influence. It was impossible that they should dictate any measure sensibly impairing the local and fiscal autonomy of the feudatories. No power capable of enforcing such a measure existed at the time. All the great political changes in Japan had formerly been preceded by wars culminating in the accession of some strong clan to supreme authority, whereas in this case there had been a displacement without a substitution—the Tokugawa had been overthrown and no new administrators had been set up in their stead. It was, moreover, certain that an attempt on the part of any one clan to constitute itself executor of the sovereign’s mandates would have stirred the other clans to vehement resistance. In short, the leaders of the revolution found themselves pledged to a new theory of government without any machinery for carrying it into effect, or any means of abolishing the old practice. An ingenious exit from this curious dilemma was devised by the young reformers. They induced the feudal chiefs of Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa and Hizen, the four most powerful clans in the south, publicly to surrender their fiefs to the emperor, praying his majesty to reorganize them and to bring them all under the same system of law. In the case of Shimazu, chief of Satsuma, and Yōdō, chief of Tosa, this act must stand to their credit as a noble sacrifice. To them the exercise of power had been a reality and the effort of surrendering it must have been correspondingly costly. But the chiefs of Chōshū and Hizen obeyed the suggestions of their principal vassals with little, if any, sense of the probable cost of obedience. The same remark applies to all the other feudatories, with exceptions so rare as to emphasize the rule. They had long been accustomed to abandon the management of their affairs to their leading clansmen, and they allowed themselves to follow the same guidance at this crisis. Out of more than 250 feudatories, only 17 hesitated to imitate the example of the four southern fiefs.
An explanation of this remarkable incident has been sought by supposing that the samurai of the various clans, when they advised a course so inconsistent with fidelity to the interests of their feudal chiefs, were influencedMotives of the Reformers.by motives of personal ambition, imagining that they themselves might find great opportunities under the new régime. Some hope of that kind may fairly be assumed, and was certainly realized, in the case of the leading samurai of the four southern clans which headed the movement. But it is plain that no such expectations can have been generally entertained. The simplest explanation seems to be the true one: a certain course, indicated by the action of the four southern clans, was conceived to be in accord with the spirit of the Restoration, and not to adopt it would have been to shrink publicly from a sacrifice dictated by the principle of loyalty to the Throne—a principle which had acquired supreme sanctity in the eyes of the men of that era. There might have been some uncertainty about the initial step; but so soon as that was taken by the southern clans their example acquired compelling force. History shows that in political crises the Japanese samurai is generally ready to pay deference to certain canons of almost romantic morality. There was a fever of loyalty and of patriotism in the air of the year 1869. Any one hesitating, for obviously selfish reasons, to adopt a precedent such as that offered by the procedure of the great southern clans, would have seemed to forfeit the right of calling himself a samurai. But although the leaders of this remarkable movement now understood that they must contrive the total abolition of feudalism and build up a new administrative edifice on foundations of constitutional monarchy, they appreciated the necessity of advancing slowly towards a goal which still lay beyond the range of their followers’ vision. Thus the first steps taken after the surrender of the fiefs were to appoint the feudatories to the position of governors in the districts over which they had previously ruled; to confirm the samurai in the possession of their incomes and official positions; to put an end to the distinction between court nobles and territorial nobles, and to organize in Kiōto a cabinet consisting of the leaders of the restoration. Each new governor received one-tenth of the income of the fief by way of emoluments; the pay of the officials and the samurai, as well as the administrative expenses of the district, was defrayed from the same source, and the residue, if any, was to pass into the treasury of the central government.
The defects of this system from a monarchical point of view soon became evident. It did not give the power of either the purse or the sword to the sovereign. The revenues of the administrative districts continuedDefects of the First Measures.to be collected and disbursed by the former feudatories, who also retained the control of the troops, the right of appointing and dismissing officials, and almost complete local autonomy. A further radical step had to be taken, and the leaders of reform, seeing nothing better than to continue the method of procedure which had thus far proved so successful, contrived, first, that several of the administrative districts should send in petitions offering to surrender their local autonomy and be brought under the direct rule of the central government; secondly, that a number of samurai should apply for permission to lay aside their swords. While the nation was digesting the principles embodied in these petitions, the government made preparations for further measures of reform. The ex-chief of Satsuma, who showed some umbrage because the services of his clan in promoting the restoration had not been more fully recognized, was induced to take high ministerial office, as were also the ex-chiefs of Chōshū and Tosa. Each of the fourgreat clans had now three representatives in the ministry. These clans were further persuaded to send to Tōkyō—whither the emperor had moved his court—contingents of troops to form the nucleus of a national army. Importance attaches to these details because the principle of clan representation, illustrated in the organization of the cabinet of 1871, continued to be approximately observed for many years in forming ministries, and ultimately became a target for the attacks of party politicians.
On the 29th of August 1871 an Imperial decree announced the abolition of the system of local autonomy, and the removal of the territorial nobles from the posts of governor. The taxes of the former fiefs were to be paid thenceforthAdoption of Radical Measures.into the central treasury; all officials were to be appointed by the Imperial government, and the feudatories, retaining permanently an income of one-tenth of their original revenues, were to make Tōkyō their place of residence. As for the samurai, they remained for the moment in possession of their hereditary pensions. Radical as these changes seem, the disturbance caused by them was not great, since they left the incomes of the military class untouched. Some of the incomes were for life only, but the majority were hereditary, and all had been granted in consideration of their holders devoting themselves to military service. Four hundred thousand men approximately were in receipt of such emoluments, and the total amount annually taken from the tax-payers for this purpose was about £2,000,000. Plainly the nation would have to be relieved of this burden sooner or later. The samurai were essentially an element of the feudal system, and that they should survive the latter’s fall would have been incongruous. On the other hand, suddenly and wholly to deprive these men and their families—a total of some two million persons—of the means of subsistence on which they had hitherto relied with absolute confidence, and in return for which they and their forefathers had rendered faithful service, would have been an act of inhumanity. It may easily be conceived that this problem caused extreme perplexity to the administrators of the new Japan. They left it unsolved for the moment, trusting that time and the loyalty of the samurai themselves would suggest some solution. As for the feudal chiefs, who had now been deprived of all official status and reduced to the position of private gentlemen, without even a patent of nobility to distinguish them from ordinary individuals, they did not find anything specially irksome or regrettable in their altered position. No scrutiny had been made into the contents of their treasuries. They were allowed to retain unquestioned possession of all the accumulated funds of their former fiefs, and they also became public creditors for annual allowances equal to one-tenth of their feudal revenues. They had never previously been so pleasantly circumstanced. It is true that they were entirely stripped of all administrative and military authority; but since their possession of such authority had been in most cases merely nominal, they only felt the change as a relief from responsibility.
By degrees public opinion began to declare itself with regard to the samurai. If they were to be absorbed into the bulk of the people and to lose their fixed revenues, some capital must be placed at their disposal to beginTreatment of the Samurai.the world again. The samurai themselves showed a noble faculty of resignation. They had been a privileged class, but they had purchased their privileges with their blood and by serving as patterns of all the qualities most prized among Japanese national characteristics. The record of their acts and the recognition of the people entitled them to look for munificent treatment at the hands of the government which they had been the means of setting up. Yet none of these considerations blinded them to the painful fact that the time had passed them by; that no place existed for them in the new polity. Many of them voluntarily stepped down into the company of the peasant or the tradesman, and many others signified their willingness to join the ranks of common bread-winners if some aid was given to equip them for such a career. After two years’ consideration the government took action. A decree announced, in 1873, that the treasury was prepared to commute the pensions of the samurai at the rate of six years’ purchase for hereditary pensions and four years for life pensions—one-half of the commutation to be paid in cash, and one-half in bonds bearing interest at the rate of 8%. It will be seen that a perpetual pension of £10 would be exchanged for a payment of £30 in cash, together with securities giving an income of £2, 8s.; and that a £10 life pensioner received £20 in cash and securities yielding £1, 12s. annually. It is scarcely credible that the samurai should have accepted such an arrangement. Something, perhaps, must be ascribed to their want of business knowledge, but the general explanation is that they made a large sacrifice in the interests of their country. Nothing in all their career as soldiers became them better than their manner of abandoning it. They were told that they might lay aside their swords, and many of them did so, though from time immemorial they had cherished the sword as the mark of a gentleman, the most precious possession of a warrior, and the one outward evidence that distinguished men of their order from common toilers after gain. They saw themselves deprived of their military employment, were invited to surrender more than one-half of the income it brought, and knew that they were unprepared alike by education and by tradition to earn bread in any calling save that of arms. Yet, at the invitation of a government which they had helped to establish, many of them bowed their heads quietly to this sharp reverse of fortune. It was certainly a striking instance of the fortitude and resignation which the creed of the samurai required him to display in the presence of adversity. As yet, however, the government’s measures with regard to the samurai were not compulsory. Men laid aside their swords and commuted their pensions at their own option.
Meanwhile differences of opinion began to occur among the leaders of progress themselves. Coalitions formed for destructive purposes are often found unable to endure the strain of constructive efforts. Such lack of cohesionSaigō Takamori.might easily have been foreseen in the case of the Japanese reformers. Young men without experience of public affairs, or special education to fit them for responsible posts, found the duty suddenly imposed on them not only of devising administrative and fiscal systems universally applicable to a nation hitherto divided into a congeries of semi-independent principalities, but also of shaping the country’s demeanour towards novel problems of foreign intercourse and alien civilization. So long as the heat of their assault upon the shōgunate fused them into a homogeneous party they worked together successfully. But when they had to build a brand-new edifice on the ruins of a still vivid past, it was inevitable that their opinions should vary as to the nature of the materials to be employed. In this divergence of views many of the capital incidents of Japan’s modern history had their origin. Of the fifty-five men whose united efforts had compassed the fall of the shōgunate, five stood conspicuous above their colleagues. They were Iwakura and Sanjō, court nobles; Saigō and Okubo, samurai of Satsuma, and Kido, a samurai of Chōshū. In the second rank came many men of great gifts, whose youth alone disqualified them for prominence—Itō, the constructive statesman of the Meiji era, who inspired nearly all the important measures of the time, though he did not openly figure as their originator; Inouye, who never lacked a resource or swerved from the dictates of loyalty; Okuma, a politician of subtle, versatile and vigorous intellect; Itagaki, the Rousseau of his era; and a score of others created by the extraordinary circumstances with which they had to deal. But the five first mentioned were the captains, the rest only lieutenants. Among the five, four were sincere reformers—not free, of course, from selfish motives, but truthfully bent upon promoting the interests of their country before all other aims. The fifth, Saigō Takamori, was a man in whom boundless ambition lay concealed under qualities of the noblest and most enduring type. His absolute freedom from every trace of sordidness gave currency to a belief that his aims were of the simplest; the story of his career satisfied the highest canons of the samurai; his massive physique, commanding presence and sunny aspect impressed and attracted even those who had noopportunity of admiring his life of self-sacrificing effort or appreciating the remarkable military talent he possessed. In the first part of his career, the elevation of his clan to supreme power seems to have been his sole motive, but subsequently personal ambition appears to have swayed him. To the consummation of either object the preservation of the military class was essential. By the swords of the samurai alone could a newimperium in imperiobe carved out. On the other hand, Saigō’s colleagues in the ministry saw clearly not only that the samurai were an unwarrantable burden on the nation, but also that their continued existence after the fall of feudalism would be a menace to public peace as well as an anomaly. Therefore they took the steps already described, and followed them by a conscription law, making every adult male liable for military service without regard to his social standing. It is easy to conceive how painfully unwelcome this conscription law proved to the samurai. Many of them were not unwilling to commute their pensions, since their creed had always forbidden them to care for money. Many of them were not unwilling to abandon the habit of carrying swords, since the adoption of foreign costume rendered such a custom incongruous and inconvenient. But very few of them could readily consent to step down from their cherished position as the military class, and relinquish their traditional title to bear the whole responsibility and enjoy the whole honour of fighting their country’s battles. They had supposed, not unreasonably, that service in the army and navy would be reserved exclusively for them and their sons, whereas now the commonest rustic, mechanic or tradesman would be equally eligible.
While the pain of this blow was still fresh there occurred a trouble with Korea. The little state had behaved with insulting contumely, and when Japan’s course came to be debated in Tōkyō, a disruption resulted in theSplit among the Reformers.ranks of the reformers. Saigō saw in a foreign war the sole remaining chance of achieving his ambition by lawful means. The government’s conscription scheme, yet in its infancy, had not produced even the skeleton of an army. If Korea had to be conquered, the samurai must be employed; and their employment would mean, if not their rehabilitation, at least their organization into a force which, under Saigō’s leadership, might dictate a new policy. Other members of the cabinet believed that the nation would be disgraced if it tamely endured Korea’s insults. Thus several influential voices swelled the clamour for war. But a peace party offered strenuous opposition. Its members saw the collateral issues of the problem, and declared that the country must not think of taking up arms during a period of radical transition. The final discussion took place in the emperor’s presence. The advocates of peace understood the national significance of the issue and perceived that they were debating, not merely whether there should be peace or war, but whether the country should halt or advance on its newly adopted path of progress. They prevailed, and four members of the cabinet, including Saigō, resigned. This rupture was destined to have far-reaching consequences. One of the seceders immediately raised the standard of revolt. Among the devices employed by him to win adherents was an attempt to fan into flame the dying embers of the anti-foreign sentiment. The government easily crushed the insurrection. Another seceder was Itagaki Taisuke. The third and most prominent was Saigō, who seems to have concluded from that moment that he must abandon his aims or achieve them by force. He retired to his native province of Satsuma, and applied his whole resources, his great reputation and the devoted loyalty of a number of able followers to organizing and equipping a strong body of samurai. Matters were facilitated for him by the conservatism of the celebrated Shimazu Saburō, former chief of Satsuma, who, though not opposed to foreign intercourse, had been revolted by the wholesale iconoclasm of the time, and by the indiscriminate rejection of Japanese customs in favour of foreign. He protested vehemently against what seemed to him a slavish abandonment of the nation’s individuality, and finding his protest fruitless, he set himself to preserve in his own distant province, where the writ of the Yedo government had never run, the fashions, institutions and customs which his former colleagues in the administration were ruthlessly rejecting. Satsuma thus became a centre of conservative influences, among which Saigō and his constantly augmenting band of samurai found a congenial environment. During four years this breach between the central government and the southern clan grew constantly.
In the meanwhile (1876) two extreme measures were adopted by the government: a veto on the wearing of swords, and an edict ordering the compulsory commutation of the pensions and allowances received by the nobles andFinal Abolition of Sword-wearing and Pensions.the samurai. Three years previously the discarding of swords had been declared optional, and a scheme of voluntary commutation had been announced. Many had bowed quietly to the spirit of these enactments. But many still retained their swords and drew their pensions as of old, obstructing, in the former respect, the government’s projects for the reorganization of society, and imposing, in the latter, an intolerable burden on the resources of the treasury. The government thought that the time had come, and that its own strength sufficed, to substitute compulsion for persuasion. The financial measure—which was contrived so as to affect the smallest pension-holders least injuriously—evoked no complaint. The samurai remained faithful to the creed which forbade them to be concerned about money. But the veto against sword-wearing overtaxed the patience of the extreme Conservatives. It seemed to them that all the most honoured traditions of their country were being ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of alien innovations. Armed protests ensued. A few score of samurai, equipping themselves with the hauberks and weapons of old times, fell upon the garrison of a castle, killed or wounded some 300, and then, retiring to an adjacent mountain, died by their own hands. Their example found imitators in two other places, and finally the Satsuma samurai rose in arms under Saigō.
This was an insurrection very different in dimensions and motives from the outbreaks that had preceded it. During four years the preparations of the Satsuma men had been unremitting. They were equipped with rifles andSatsuma Insurrection.cannon; they numbered some 30,000; they were all of the military class, and in addition to high training in western tactics and in the use of modern arms of precision, they knew how to wield that formidable weapon, the Japanese sword, of which their opponents were for the most part ignorant. Ostensibly their object was to restore the samurai to their old supremacy, and to secure for them all the posts in the army, the navy and the administration. But although they doubtless entertained that intention, it was put forward mainly with the hope of winning the co-operation of the military class throughout the empire. The real purpose of the revolt was to secure the governing power for Satsuma. A bitter struggle ensued. Beginning on the 29th of January 1877, it was brought to a close on the 24th of September by the death, voluntary or in battle, of all the rebel leaders. During that period the number of men engaged on the government’s side had been 66,000 and the number on the side of the rebels 40,000, out of which total the killed and wounded aggregated 35,000, or 33% of the whole. Had the government’s troops been finally defeated, there can be no doubt that the samurai’s exclusive title to man and direct the army and navy would have been re-established, and Japan would have found herself permanently saddled with a military class, heavily burdening her finances, seriously impeding her progress towards constitutional government, and perpetuating all the abuses incidental to a policy in which the power of the sword rests entirely in the hands of one section of the people. The nation scarcely appreciated the great issues that were at stake. It found more interest in the struggle as furnishing a conclusive test of the efficiency of the new military system compared with the old. The army sent to quell the insurrection consisted of recruits drawn indiscriminately from every class of the people. Viewed in the light of history, it was an army of commoners, deficient in the fighting instinct, and traditionallydemoralized for all purposes of resistance to the military class. The Satsuma insurgents, on the contrary, represented the flower of the samurai, long trained for this very struggle, and led by men whom the nation regarded as its bravest captains. The result dispelled all doubts about the fighting quality of the people at large.
Concurrently with these events the government diligently endeavoured to equip the country with all the paraphernalia of Occidental civilization. It is easy to understand that the master-minds of the era, who had planned andSteps of Progress.carried out the Restoration, continued to take the lead in all paths of progress. Their intellectual superiority entitled them to act as guides; they had enjoyed exceptional opportunities of acquiring enlightenment by visits to Europe and America, and the Japanese people had not yet lost the habit of looking to officialdom for every initiative. But the spectacle thus presented to foreign onlookers was not altogether without disquieting suggestions. The government’s reforms seemed to outstrip the nation’s readiness for them, and the results wore an air of some artificiality and confusion. Englishmen were employed to superintend the building of railways, the erection of telegraphs, the construction of lighthouses and the organization of a navy. To Frenchmen was entrusted the work of recasting the laws and training the army in strategy and tactics. Educational affairs, the organization of a postal service, the improvement of agriculture and the work of colonization were supervised by Americans. The teaching of medical science, the compilation of a commercial code, the elaboration of a system of local government, and ultimately the training of military officers were assigned to Germans. For instruction in sculpture and painting Italians were engaged. Was it possible that so many novelties should be successfully assimilated, or that the nation should adapt itself to systems planned by a motley band of aliens who knew nothing of its character and customs? These questions did not trouble the Japanese nearly so much as they troubled strangers. The truth is that conservatism was not really required to make the great sacrifices suggested by appearances. Among all the innovations of the era the only one that a Japanese could not lay aside at will was the new fashion of dressing the hair. He abandoned thequeueirrevocably. But for the rest he lived a dual life. During hours of duty he wore a fine uniform, shaped and decorated in foreign style. But so soon as he stepped out of office or off parade, he reverted to his own comfortable and picturesque costume. Handsome houses were built and furnished according to Western models. But each had an annex where alcoves, verandas, matted floors and paper sliding doors continued to do traditional duty. Beefsteaks, beer, “grape-wine,” knives and forks came into use on occasion. But rice-bowls and chopsticks held their everyday place as of old. In a word, though the Japanese adopted every convenient and serviceable attribute of foreign civilization, such as railways, steamships, telegraphs, post-offices, banks and machinery of all kinds; though they accepted Occidental sciences, and, to a large extent, Occidental philosophies; though they recognized the superiority of European jurisprudence and set themselves to bring their laws into accord with it, they nevertheless preserved the essentials of their own mode of life and never lost their individuality. A remarkable spirit of liberalism and a fine eclectic instinct were needed for the part they acted, but they did no radical violence to their own traditions, creeds and conventions. There was indeed a certain element of incongruity and even grotesqueness in the nation’s doings. Old people cannot fit their feet to new roads without some clumsiness. The Japanese had grown very old in their special paths, and their novel departure was occasionally disfigured by solecisms. The refined taste that guided them unerringly in all the affairs of life as they had been accustomed to live it, seemed to fail them signally when they emerged into an alien atmosphere. They have given their proofs, however. It is now seen that the apparently excessive rapidity of their progress did not overtax their capacities; that they have emerged safely from their destructive era and carried their constructive career within reach of certain success, and that while they have still to develop some of the traits of their new civilization, there is no prospect whatever of its proving ultimately unsuited to them.
After the Satsuma rebellion, nothing disturbed the even tenor of Japan’s domestic politics except an attempt on the part of some of her people to force the growth of parliamentary government. It is evident that the unitedDevelopment of Representative Government.effort made by the fiefs to overthrow the system of dual government and wrest the administrative power from the shōgun could have only one logical outcome: the combined exercise of the recovered power by those who had been instrumental in recovering it. That was the meaning of the oath taken by the emperor at the Restoration, when the youthful sovereign was made to say that wise counsels should be widely sought, and all things determined by public discussion. But the framers of the oath had the samurai alone in view. Into their consideration the common people—farmers, mechanics, tradesmen—did not enter at all, nor had the common people themselves any idea of advancing a claim to be considered. A voice in the administration would have been to them an embarrassing rather than a pleasing privilege. Thus the first deliberative assembly was composed of nobles and samurai only. A mere debating club without any legislative authority, it was permanently dissolved after two sessions. Possibly the problem of a parliament might have been long postponed after that fiasco, had it not found an ardent advocate in Itagaki Taisuke (afterwards Count Itagaki). A Tosa samurai conspicuous as a leader of the restoration movement, Itagaki was among the advocates of recourse to strong measures against Korea in 1873, and his failure to carry his point, supplemented by a belief that a large section of public opinion would have supported him had there been any machinery for appealing to it, gave fresh impetus to his faith in constitutional government. Resigning office on account of the Korean question, he became the nucleus of agitation in favour of a parliamentary system, and under his banner were enrolled not only discontented samurai but also many of the young men who, returning from direct observation of the working of constitutional systems in Europe or America, and failing to obtain official posts in Japan, attributed their failure to the oligarchical form of their country’s polity. Thus in the intervalbetween1873 and 1877 there were two centres of disturbance in Japan: one in Satsuma, where Saigō figured as leader; the other in Tosa, under Itagaki’s guidance. When the Satsuma men appealed to arms in 1877, a widespread apprehension prevailed lest the Tosa politicians should throw in their lot with the insurgents. Such a fear had its origin in failure to understand the object of the one side or to appreciate the sincerity of the other. Saigō and his adherents fought to substitute a Satsuma clique for the oligarchy already in power. Itagaki and his followers struggled for constitutional institutions. The two could not have anything in common. There was consequently no coalition. But the Tosa agitators did not neglect to make capital out of the embarrassment caused by the Satsuma rebellion. While the struggle was at its height, they addressed to the government a memorial, charging the administration with oppressive measures to restrain the voice of public opinion, with usurpation of power to the exclusion of the nation at large, and with levelling downwards instead of upwards, since the samurai had been reduced to the rank of commoners, whereas the commoners should have been educated up to the standard of the samurai. This memorial asked for a representative assembly and talked of popular rights. But since the document admitted that the people were uneducated, it is plain that there cannot have been any serious idea of giving them a share in the administration. In fact, the Tosa Liberals were not really contending for popular representation in the full sense of the term. What they wanted was the creation of some machinery for securing to the samurai at large a voice in the management of state affairs. They chafed against the fact that, whereas the efforts and sacrifices demanded by the Restoration had fallenequally on the whole military class, the official prizes under the new system were monopolized by a small coterie of men belonging to the four principal clans. It is on record that Itagaki would have been content originally with an assembly consisting half of officials, half of non-official samurai, and not including any popular element whatever.
But the government did not believe that the time had come even for a measure such as the Tosa Liberals advocated. The statesmen in power conceived that the nation must be educated up to constitutional standards, and that the first step should be to provide an official model. Accordingly, in 1874, arrangements were made for periodically convening an assembly of prefectural governors, in order that they might act as channels of communication between the central authorities and the provincial population, and mutually exchange ideas as to the safest and most effective methods of encouraging progress within the limits of their jurisdictions. This was intended to be the embryo of representative institutions. But the governors, being officials appointed by the cabinet, did not bear in any sense the character of popular nominees, nor could it even be said that they reflected the public feeling of the districts they administered, for their habitual and natural tendency was to try, by means of heroic object lessons, to win the people’s allegiance to the government’s progressive policy, rather than to convince the government of the danger of overstepping the people’s capacities.
These conventions of local officials had no legislative power whatever. The foundations of a body for discharging that function were laid in 1875, when a senate (genro-in) was organized. It consisted of official nominees, and its duty was to discuss and revise all laws and ordinances prior to their promulgation. It is to be noted, however, that expediency not less than a spirit of progress presided at the creation of the senate. Into its ranks were drafted a number of men for whom no places could be found in the executive, and who, without some official employment, would have been drawn into the current of disaffection. From that point of view the senate soon came to be regarded as a kind of hospital for administrative invalids, but undoubtedly its discharge of quasi-legislative functions proved suggestive, useful and instructive.
The second meeting of the provincial governors had just been prorogued when, in the spring of 1878, the great minister, Okubo Toshimitsu, was assassinated. Okubo, uniformly ready to bear the heaviest burden of responsibilityAssassination of Okubo.in every political complication, had stood prominently before the nation as Saigō’s opponent. He fell under the swords of Saigō’s sympathizers. They immediately surrendered themselves to justice, having taken previous care to circulate a statement of motives, which showed that they ranked the government’s failure to establish representative institutions as a sin scarcely less heinous than its alleged abuses of power. Well-informed followers of Saigō could never have been sincere believers in representative institutions. These men belonged to a province far removed from the scene of Saigō’s desperate struggle. But the broad fact that they had sealed with their life-blood an appeal for a political change indicated the existence of a strong public conviction which would derive further strength from their act. The Japanese are essentially a brave people. Throughout the troublous events that preceded and followed the Restoration, it is not possible to point to one man whose obedience to duty or conviction was visibly weakened by prospects of personal peril. Okubo’s assassination did not alarm any of his colleagues; but they understood its suggestiveness, and hastened to give effect to a previously formed resolve.
Two months after Okubo’s death, an edict announced that elective assemblies should forthwith be established in various prefectures and cities. These assemblies were to consist of members having a high property qualification,Local Government.elected by voters having one-half of that qualification; the voting to be by signed ballot, and the session to last for one month in the spring of each year. As to their functions, they were to determine the method of levying and spending local taxes, subject to approval by the minister of state for home affairs; to scrutinize the accounts for the previous year, and, if necessary, to present petitions to the central government. Thus the foundations of genuine representative institutions were laid. It is true that legislative power was not vested in the local assemblies, but in all other important respects they discharged parliamentary duties. Their history need not be related at any length. Sometimes they came into violent collision with the governor of the prefecture, and unsightly struggles resulted. The governors were disposed to advocate public works which the people considered extravagant; and further, as years went by, and as political organizations grew stronger, there was found in each assembly a group of men ready to oppose the governor simply because of his official status. But on the whole the system worked well. The local assemblies served as training schools for the future parliament, and their members showed devotion to public duty as well as considerable aptitude for debate.
This was not what Itagaki and his followers wanted. Their purpose was to overthrow the clique of clansmen who, holding the reins of administrative power, monopolized the prizes of officialdom. Towards the consummationThe Liberal Party.of such an aim the local assemblies helped little. Itagaki redoubled his agitation. He organized his fellow-thinkers into an association calledjiyūtō(Liberals), the first political party in Japan, to whose ranks there very soon gravitated several men who had been in office and resented the loss of it; many that had never been in office and desired to be; and a still greater number who sincerely believed in the principles of political liberty, but had not yet considered the possibility of immediately adapting such principles to Japan’s case. It was in the nature of things that an association of this kind, professing such doctrines, should present a picturesque aspect to the public, and that its collisions with the authorities should invite popular sympathy. Nor were collisions infrequent. For the government, arguing that if the nation was not ready for representative institutions, neither was it ready for full freedom of speech or of public meeting, legislated consistently with that theory, and entrusted to the police large powers ofcontrolover the press and the platform. The exercise of these powers often created situations in which the Liberals were able to pose as victims of official tyranny, so that they grew in popularity and the contagion of political agitation spread.
Three years later (1881) another split occurred in the ranks of the ruling oligarchy. Okuma Shigenobu (afterwards Count Okuma) seceded from the administration, and was followed by a number of able men who had owedThe Progressist Party.their appointments to his patronage, or who, during his tenure of office as minister of finance, had passed under the influence of his powerful personality. If Itagaki be called the Rousseau of Japan, Okuma may be regarded as the Peel. To remarkable financial ability and a lucid, vigorous judgment he added the faculty of placing himself on the crest of any wave which a genuineaura popularishad begun to swell. He, too, inscribed on his banner of revolt against the oligarchy the motto “constitutional government,” and it might have been expected that his followers would join hands with those of Itagaki, since the avowed political purpose of both was identical. They did nothing of the kind. Okuma organized an independent party, calling themselves Progressists (shimpotō), who not only stood aloof from the Liberals but even assumed an attitude hostile to them. This fact is eloquent. It shows that Japan’s first political parties were grouped, not about principles, but about persons. Hence an inevitable lack of cohesion among their elements and a constant tendency to break up into caves and coteries. These are the characteristics that render the story of political evolution in Japan so perplexing to a foreign student. He looks for differences of platform and finds none. Just as a true Liberal must be a Progressist, and a true Progressist a Liberal, so, though each may cast his profession of faith in a mould of different phrases, the ultimate shape must be the same. The mainsprings of early political agitation in Japan were personalgrievances and a desire to wrest the administrative power from the hands of the statesmen who had held it so long as to overtax the patience of their rivals. He that searches for profound moral or ethical bases will be disappointed. There were no Conservatives. Society was permeated with the spirit of progress. In a comparative sense the epithet “Conservative” might have been applied to the statesmen who proposed to defer parliamentary institutions until the people, as distinguished from the former samurai, had been in some measure prepared for such an innovation. But since these very statesmen were the guiding spirits of the whole Meiji revolution, it was plain that their convictions must be radical, and that, unless they did violence to their record, they must finally lead the country to representative institutions, the logical sequel of their own reforms.
Okubo’s assassination had been followed, in 1878, by an edict announcing the establishment of local assemblies. Okuma’s secession in 1881 was followed by an edict announcing that a national assembly would be convened in 1891.
The political parties, having now virtually attained their object, might have been expected to desist from further agitation. But they had another task to perform—that of disseminating anti-official prejudices amongAnti-Government Agitation.the future electors. They worked diligently, and they had an undisputed field, for no one was put forward to champion the government’s cause. The campaign was not always conducted on lawful lines. There were plots to assassinate ministers; there was an attempt to employ dynamite, and there was a scheme to foment an insurrection in Korea. On the other hand, dispersals of political meetings by order of police inspectors, and suspension or suppression of newspapers by the unchallengeable verdict of a minister for home affairs, were common occurrences. The breach widened steadily. It is true that Okuma rejoined the cabinet for a time in 1887, but he retired again in circumstances that aggravated his party’s hostility to officialdom. In short, during the ten years immediately prior to the opening of the first parliament, an anti-government propaganda was incessantly preached from the platform and in the press.
Meanwhile the statesmen in power resolutely pursued their path of progressive reform. They codified the civil and penal laws, remodelling them on Western bases; they brought a vast number of affairs within the scope of minute regulations; they rescued the finances from confusion and restored them to a sound condition; they recast the whole framework of local government; they organized a great national bank, and established a network of subordinate institutions throughout the country; they pushed on the work of railway construction, and successfully enlisted private enterprise in its cause; they steadily extended the postal and telegraphic services; they economized public expenditures so that the state’s income always exceeded its outlays; they laid the foundations of a strong mercantile marine; they instituted a system of postal savings-banks; they undertook large schemes of harbour improvement and road-making; they planned and put into operation an extensive programme of riparian improvement; they made civil service appointments depend on competitive examination; they sent numbers of students to Europe and America to complete their studies; and by tactful, persevering diplomacy they gradually introduced a new tone into the empire’s relations with foreign powers. Japan’s affairs were never better administered.
In 1890 the Constitution was promulgated. Imposing ceremonies marked the event. All the nation’s notables were summoned to the palace to witness the delivery of the important document by the sovereign to theThe Constitution of 1890.prime minister; salvos of artillery were fired; the cities were illuminated, and the people kept holiday. Marquis (afterwards Prince) Itō directed the framing of the Constitution. He had visited the Occident for the purpose of investigating the development of parliamentary institutions and studying their practical working. His name is connected with nearly every great work of constructive statesmanship in the history of new Japan, and perhaps the crown of his legislative career was the drafting of the Constitution, to which the Japanese people point proudly as the only charter of the kind voluntarily given by a sovereign to his subjects. In other countries such concessions were always the outcome of long struggles between ruler and ruled. In Japan the emperor freely divested himself of a portion of his prerogatives and transferred them to the people. That view of the case, as may be seen from the story told above, is not untinged with romance; but in a general sense it is true.
No incident in Japan’s modern career seemed more hazardous than this sudden plunge into parliamentary institutions. There had been some preparation. Provincial assemblies had partially familiarized the people withWorking of the System.the methods of deliberative bodies. But provincial assemblies were at best petty arenas—places where the making or mending of roads, and the policing and sanitation of villages came up for discussion, and where political parties exercised no legislative function nor found any opportunity to attack the government or to debate problems of national interest. Thus the convening of a diet and the sudden transfer of financial and legislative authority from the throne and its entourage of tried statesmen to the hands of men whose qualifications for public life rested on the verdict of electors, themselves apparently devoid of all light to guide their choice—this sweeping innovation seemed likely to tax severely, if not to overtax completely, the progressive capacities of the nation. What enhanced the interest of the situation was that the oligarchs who held the administrative power had taken no pains to win a following in the political field. Knowing that the opening of the diet would be a veritable letting loose of the dogs of war, an unmuzzling of the agitators whose mouths had hitherto been partly closed by legal restrictions upon free speech, but who would now enjoy complete immunity within the walls of the assembly whatever the nature of their utterances—foreseeing all this, the statesmen of the day nevertheless stood severely aloof from alliances of every kind, and discharged their administrative functions with apparent indifference to the changes that popular representation could not fail to induce. This somewhat inexplicable display of unconcern became partially intelligible when the constitution was promulgated, for it then appeared that the cabinet’s tenure of office was to depend solely on the emperor’s will; that ministers were to take their mandate from the Throne, not from parliament. This fact was merely an outcome of the theory underlying every part of the Japanese polity. Laws might be redrafted, institutions remodelled, systems recast, but amid all changes and mutations one steady point must be carefully preserved, the Throne. The makers of new Japan understood that so long as the sanctity and inviolability of the imperial prerogatives could be preserved, the nation would be held by a strong anchor from drifting into dangerous waters. They laboured under no misapprehension about the inevitable issue of their work in framing the constitution. They knew very well that party cabinets are an essential outcome of representative institutions, and that to some kind of party cabinet Japan must come. But they regarded the Imperial mandate as a conservative safeguard, pending the organization and education of parties competent to form cabinets. Such parties did not yet exist, and until they came into unequivocal existence, the Restoration statesmen, who had so successfully managed the affairs of the nation during a quarter of a century, resolved that the steady point furnished by the throne must not be abandoned.
On the other hand, the agitators found here a new platform. They had obtained a constitution and a diet, but they had not obtained an instrument for pulling down the “clan” administrators, since these stood secure from attack under the aegis of the sovereign’s mandate. They dared not raise their voices against the unfettered exercise of the mikado’s prerogative. The nation, loyal to the core, would not have suffered such a protest, nor could the agitators themselves have found heart to formulate it. But they could read their own interpretation into the text of the Constitution, and they could demonstrate practically that a cabinet not acknowledging responsibility to the legislature was virtually impotent for law-making purposes.
These are the broad outlines of the contest that began in the first session of the Diet and continued for several years. It is unnecessary to speak of the special points of controversy. Just as the political parties had been formed on theThe Diet and the Government.lines of persons, not principles, so the opposition in the Diet was directed against men, not measures. The struggle presented varying aspects at different times, but the fundamental question at issue never changed. Obstruction was the weapon of the political parties. They sought to render legislation and finance impossible for any ministry that refused to take its mandate from the majority in the lower house, and they imparted an air of respectability and even patriotism to their destructive campaign by making “anti-clannism” their war-cry, and industriously fostering the idea that the struggle lay between administration guided by public opinion and administration controlled by a clique of clansmen who separated the throne from the nation. Had not the House of Peers stood stanchly by the government throughout this contest, it is possible that the nation might have suffered severely from the rashness of the political parties.
There was something melancholy in the spectacle. The Restoration statesmen were the men who had made Modern Japan; the men who had raised her, in the face of immense obstacles, from the position of an insignificant Oriental state to that of a formidable unit in the comity of nations; the men, finally, who had given to her a constitution and representative institutions. Yet these same men were now fiercely attacked by the arms which they had themselves nerved; were held up to public obloquy as self-seeking usurpers, and were declared to be impeding the people’s constitutional route to administrative privileges, when in reality they were only holding the breach until the people should be able to march into the citadel with some show of orderly and competent organization. That there was no corruption, no abuse of position, is not to be pretended; but on the whole the conservatism of the clan statesmen had only one object—to provide that the newly constructed representative machine should not be set working until its parts were duly adjusted and brought into proper gear. On both sides the leaders understood the situation accurately. The heads of the parties, while publicly clamouring for parliamentary cabinets, privately confessed that they were not yet prepared to assume administrative responsibilities;3and the so-called “clan statesmen,” while refusing before the world to accept the Diet’s mandates, admitted within official circles that the question was one of time only. The situation did not undergo any marked change until, the country becoming engaged in war with China (1894-95), domestic squabbles were forgotten in the presence of foreign danger. From that time an era of coalition commenced. Both the political parties joined hands to vote funds for the prosecution of the campaign, and one of them, the Liberals, subsequently gave support to a cabinet under the presidency of Marquis Itō, the purpose of the union being to carry through the diet an extensive scheme of enlarged armaments and public works planned in the sequel of the war. The Progressists, however, remained implacable, continuing their opposition to the thing called bureaucracy quite irrespective of its measures.