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Edo Castle, center of Tokugawa rule

The de facto national flag by 1868.
The white stands for honesty and purity,
the red for sincerity and passion.

Naval ensign, from 1889

World News for this month

The Tokugawa and Western Intrusions

In the mid 1800s, when Western powers began demanding trade and diplomatic relations with Japan, some in Japan were more opposed to foreign impositions than others. Many if not most Japanese saw their homeland as having been founded by their supreme god, the Sun Goddess, and, seeing Japan as connected to the will of the gods, they saw Japan as the "divine land, as superior to other nations. Some among the Japanese saw foreign mannerisms as stupid and referred to foreigners as barbarians. They considered foreigners arrogant in making demands upon the Japanese and believed that the foreigners had to be driven away for the honor of Japan and the preservation of all that was dear.

Since 1603 Japan had been ruled by the Tokugawa family, a military rule from Edo (present-day Tokyo), the male family leader holding the title of Shogun. The Tokugawa family was Buddhist, as was Japan's emperor, who had become a figurehead, surrounded by a few advisors and bureaucrats at his palace in the city of Kyoto.

The challenge to Tokugawa rule was from feudalistic territorial lords (daimyo), rulers of the 250 or so fiefdoms (han) that divided Japan. The Tokugawa dominated the lords militarily, and the shogun had checkpoints (seki) at strategic locations along Japan's main roads to prevent any activity hostile to Tokugawa rule. It was a military superiority benefiting from a monopoly on the main ingredient in gunpowder -- saltpeter -- available only through imports from abroad, with the Tokugawa shogun in control of importations. The result for Japan was a couple of centuries of stability and no major civil wars.

There had been peasant disturbances -- 1,809 such disturbances between the years 1590 and 1867.[note] Japan had also experienced the usual periodic floods and typhoons, droughts, locust infestations and major famines, including the famine of 1833-36 which killed thousands upon thousands of people -- 80,000 in one location alone. But under Tokugawa rule agricultural production increased, with more use of fertilizers and a greater variety of crops, the greater agricultural production stimulating Japan's money economy and the growth in the number and size of towns. Fishing had remained an important industry, as was mining, forestry and handicraft industries.

With the growth of commerce and demand for goods, but little increase in production, under the Tokugawa inflation increased, and there was an increased disparity between people of wealth and common folk. Peasants complained about being over-taxed, which included payments of a portion of their crops to the lords -- and the poor resorted more to abortion and infanticide. Wealthy merchants, meanwhile, acquired the right to have surnames, to wear a sword, and they had begun to act like aristocrats, practicing the military arts, studying Chinese books, reading poetry, and paying for visits by prostitutes. The warrior aristocrats - samurai -- remained vassals of the territorial lords and grew accustomed to a more elaborate lifestyle, while many of them were becoming more dependent on money lenders.

The increased contact with foreigners introduced the Japanese to the West's superiority in weaponry, technology and science. Scientific books from the West increased, including works on medicine and astronomy, and these were translated largely by government employees, the rangaku-sha. Religious books or books using the word "God" were not accepted by the Tokugawa government. Christian missionaries were still forbidden entry to Japan., while some technology experts from abroad were.

The Tokugawa shoganate wanted to prevent the fate that had befallen China, and in the 1850s it submitted to a number of "Unequal Treaties" with Britain, the United States, France and Russia. The treaties opened the cities of Edo and Osaka to foreign residents, and ports were opened to foreign ships. In these ports Westerners were granted extraterritorial rights -- exemption from Japan's laws. And the Western Powers took control of Japan's foreign-trade tariffs, creating a trade balance unfavorable to Japan.

Commerce with the West increased in the early 1860s, and in the 1860s Japan's more sophisticated upper classes became more interested in things from the West - gadgets, food, clothing, music and the arts. And those passionate about Japan as a divine and superior land were increasingly offended. In the early 1860s, religious and chauvinistic Japanese began a campaign of terror against Westerners and those who accommodated Westerners. Civil war erupted in 1863, and among those opposed to the foreigners were advisors around the figurehead emperor, Komei (who ruled from 1846 to 1867).

Overthrow of the Tokugawa

With the arrival of the Westerners in the mid-1800s, two of Japan's territorial lords began acquiring saltpeter -- superior in quality to the damp, old saltpeter stored by shogunate. The shogunate's monopoly on gunpowder was at an end. Territorial lords combined forces against the shogunate. Together they were led by a clique of aristocrats believing in unity and consensus, and with them were nineteen samurai chosen from several domains of the territorial lords (han). The U.S., British, French and Dutch forces joined against the shogunate, shelling coastal forts and sinking the shogun's ships. Japan's wealthy merchants supported the war against the Tokugawa shogunate, while ordinary townspeople were, as usual, distracted by their own survival concerns.

The territorial lords were in alliance with Japan's new monarch, Meiji, who, in 1868, declared the end of the shogunate's 265 year-rule -- although the war would not end until 1869. Meiji, at age fifteen, had no military force or lands of his own. He remained a figurehead, but, with the victory of the opponents of the shogunate the emperor's power was considered restored, with Meiji as Japan's 122nd emperor. Emperor Meiji was moved from Kyoto to the former shogun's place of rule, in Edo, renamed Tokyo -- Eastern Capital.

A slogan for opponents of the shogunate had been "honor the emperor, expel the barbarian," but the leaders of the military campaign against the shogunate had come face to face with the probability that an attempt to "expel the barbarian," would evoke a military response from the Western powers. Terrorist attacks on foreigners continued in 1868, and those ruling in the name of Emperor Meiji punished the terrorists. They promised the West that the treaties with Japan would be scrupulously observed, and Emperor Meiji approved a memo from the regime's leaders that expulsion was to be disavowed. For the sake of strengthening Japan, the leaders of the military victory pursued a policy of full cultural and commercial relations with the West. They wanted Japan to be an equal member in the world community of nations and eligible to participate in international power politics.

Facing the Western powers and believing in a need for a national military force and tax system, leaders of the victory over the Tokugawa believed that Japan needed centralized rule rather than power divided among the han. Four of the daimyo turned control of their han over to what was in theory the authority of the emperor, and in 1871 the other daimyo followed those four. The daimyo were made governors, given government stipends and moved to Tokyo. What had been the han became prefectures. People who had directed their loyalty to their daimyo began to direct their loyalty to the emperor.

Leaders of the military victory over the Tokugawa had placed Emperor Meiji on a sacred pedestal, and they associated the emperor with Shinto ideology. Shinto had the patronage of the Meiji government. Across the centuries, Shinto had fused with Buddhist worship, with Shinto shrines common on Buddhist temple grounds, and now an effort was underway to free Shinto from Buddhist domination. Violence and the breaking of images was committed against Buddhism. Buddhist temple lands were confiscated, and within a decade nearly 18,000 Buddhist temples were closed.

In Western society, everyone, king and beggar, was equal before God, the order in heaven remained disconnected from the social order on earth, and the soul of man was not worshipped as a god. In the new Japan the emperor was a living god, father of the nation and favored in heaven.

New Institutions

From 1871 to 1873, Meiji oligarchs went abroad to study the West -- the Iwakura Mission. They examined technology, banking systems, political systems, infrastructures, educational systems, zoos and agricultural techniques and considered what would work in Japan and what would not.

Confucianism had been a part of Japan's ideology regarding the ethical character of the state, acquired ready-made from China, with some religious aspects, including ancestor worship. And now the Meiji government relegated Confucianism to a secular philosophy, no longer a part official state theology -- while Buddhism was under attack and religious freedom, in 1873, declared.

The Meiji government abolished Japan's class system. Aristocrats were now allowed to marry commoners. Common people were given the right to wear formal apparel and to travel on horseback. The lowest caste status of people called Eta and Hinin, was abolished. The government abolished the right of samurai to cut down disrespectful commoners with impunity. Samurai lost their right to wear swords. Daimyo and samurai were paid pensions, putting a heavy drain on government finances, but the pensions of lower ranking samurai were reduced to the pay level of the common soldier. There were samurai revolts, the largest in 1877, involving several thousand men, confined to Southern Kyushu -- the last feudal uprising against Emperor Meiji's government.

There were many peasant revolts. The agricultural sector of Japan's economy bore the burden in taxes to pay the cost of modernizing and industrializing the nation. One third of Japan's arable land was farmed by tenants, and the average tenant paid 60 percent of his crop to the landowner as rent -- half of which went to the government as a land tax. And 40 percent of those farmers who owned their land had only 1.1 acre or less.

Peasants were unhappy too about being drafted -- a "blood tax." To create a sense of identity with the national interest, the Meiji government tried to drum into its recruits a sense of loyalty and service to the emperor.

Universities were founded and an educational system created, influenced in part by what was discovered in the United States and Prussia. Elementary education was made universal and four years of schooling was made compulsory, with each school year consisting of four months. In 1872 there was only a 28-percent attendance by those of school age, which jumped to 40 percent by 1878, most of those attending school being boys. Largely the students were unmoved by their studies of Western personages, and Japan's traditionalists in education, steeped as they were in Confucianism, disliked the shift of focus from Confucian moral principles to teaching kids about material things, such as "peaches, chestnuts, and persimmons."

The government allowed Western-style daily newspapers to publish -- the first such Japanese language daily being the Yokohama Mainich Shimbun. Newspapers began expressing hostility toward the government, and the government responded with a law requiring owners, editors and printers to register. All comments in the paper were to be signed and the newspaper editor was to be held responsible for slander or articles that "reviled existing laws" or confused people about their duty to observe these laws. In July 1877, Japan's home minister acquired the right to prohibit or delay publication of any newspaper in violation of this government standard. In 1880 these security laws extended to the activities of political and other organizations of private individuals.

Japan adopted a police system and a legal system modeled roughly from what they found in France. There were to be no trials by jury. The Western (Gregorian) calendar was adopted. And in the early 1880s work began on the creation of a European-style constitution.

Meiji Japan established a constitution in 1889 modeled on a political theory of a German, Lorenz von Stein, who held that a monarchy existed to arbitrate between groups with competing interests, to prevent the exploitation of the weak by the strong. The Meiji constitution left the emperor as the arbiter of the will of all Japanese. There was to be no division of powers as with constitutions in the West. There was to be a parliament -- the Diet -- elected by men eligible to vote based on property qualification, but the Diet had no power other than to express grievances or to work on technical details regarding budgetary or security issues -- all of which was subject to approval by the emperor. A governmental cabinet, working with the Diet but not responsible to it, was to have no power to initiate legislation or to deny the Meiji government money. In keeping with his godly status, the emperor was subject to no checks on his power. In theory, only the emperor could legislate. He could end parliament sessions. It was the emperor who had the power to declare war. The emperor was the supreme commander of the armed forces. Only he could conclude treaties. And given the emperor's lack of involvement in the study, work and decisions of government, real power rested with those around him, who made decisions in his name.

Meanwhile, the government had been pushing for additional control over the thought processes of Japan's masses. From the government came detailed regulations of the content of subjects taught in schools. Textbooks were to be government publications and the content of such books to be without thoughts that jeopardized the morality of the Japanese. In 1880, control over Japanese schools was taken away from locally elected school boards and returned to centralized control, and during the 1880s a more conservative direction was applied to schooling. The individualistic values of the West that had found their way into Japan's schools were replaced by Shintoist views and by Confucianism's devotion and respect by children for their elders and other persons of authority. And children were taught the "special virtues" embodied in the Japan of their emperor.

Economic Progress

Early in the reign of Emperor Meiji, Japan's government was determined to modernize the country's economy. The economy was primarily agricultural, with only 20 percent of its land suitable for cultivation and tea and silk as major exports. The government freed farmers from restrictions on land use, in 1871 giving them freedom to grow whatever they wanted, and, in 1872, it granted people the right to buy and sell land. The government invested in agriculture, establishing agricultural colleges, establishing an experimental farm and providing farmers with technical advice. Improvement in seed strains were made, and in planting techniques. There was an increase in use of fertilizers, improved pest control and an extension of irrigation systems. By 1890, agricultural production was almost double what it had been in 1873 -- up 175 percent to be exact. And by 1900 it would be up 228 percent from what it had been in 1873.

The growth of the agricultural sector of the economy helped make possible the growth in Japan's manufacturing, with farmers paying the taxes that created revenues that government used in investing in industrial development. Japan's government and its industrialists, the zaibatsu, guided the nation economically, but Japan was developing its industries at a fast pace, largely because its government wanted to make Japan a significant military power, with its slogan "rich country, strong army." Shipbuilding commenced. Japan's government encouraged the building of railroads across much of the nation and encouraged the creation of a telegraph network and shipping lines. A modern banking system was developed. The textile and silk industries expanded rapidly.

In total population, Japan was just a little ahead of Britain, Japan's population rising from 35 million in 1873 to 43.8 million in 1900 -- 58 percent of the U.S. population, at 75.9 million in 1900.But only 8.6 percent of Japan's population was urbanized in 1900, compared to 32.8 percent for Britain, 18.7 percent for the United States, 15.5 percent for Germany and 13.3 percent for France.

Laborers suffered during Japan's rapid industrialization, as laborers had in Europe and the United States during their industrial revolutions. Miners lived in barracks and worked 12 hours a day for little pay and in the presence of guards who did not allow them to slacken their pace of work, at temperatures that might reach as high as 130 degree Fahrenheit. For the sake of industrial growth the Meiji government supported the industrialists and was opposed to strikes. But strikes occurred, such as that of 100 female workers in a cotton mill. And strikes continued to grow to the end of the century, when the Meiji government made strike organizing a crime.

Industrialization and the government giving free reign to business interests were opposed by some Buddhists. Such Buddhists saw ambition for material things and money as something that people should deny themselves. And some Confucianists were not happy about the individualism and utilitarianism that accompanied Japan's revolution.

Japanese Imperialism

Japan had a dearth of raw materials and was importing raw materials from elsewhere in Asia and exporting finished products. By industrializing, Japan was able to dominate in the sale of manufactured goods, especially textiles, to those areas abroad that it was closer to geographically than were the Western powers. And Japan remained determined to assert itself as a great nation and not to suffer domination by the West as was China. One of the oligarchs running Japan in the name of Emperor Meiji, Fukuzawa Yukichi, in 1885, described Japan's need to be a leading power in Asia and to behave "in the same way as the civilized countries of the West are doing." He added: "We would do better to treat China and Korea in the same way as do the Western nations."

Militarily, Japan benefited not only from its rapid industrialization but also by its being an island nation, and by having as a neighboring military rival a great but crippled power -- China. And in imperial competition with the West, Japan had an advantage in being geographically closer to targets of imperial interest, such as China, Manchuria, Korea.

Japan had another ingredient useful for imperial expansion -- arrogance -- a view of their country as the land favored by the Gods, the land that others should recognize as superior. This was expressed as early as 1868 when Japan sent to Korea an announcement of the Meiji restoration. The announcement implied that Japan's monarch was superior in status to Korea's monarch. Diplomacy would have been served by Korea smiling at Japanese arrogance and accepting the announcement. Instead the Koreans rejected it, and Japan's militant patriots and supporters of Meiji rule considered Korea's response an affront to Japan's national dignity, and exchanges in the months that followed failed to mollify the irritation felt by both sides.

In the 1870s, Japanese warships, with troops, threatened the Koreans and struck at Korea's port city of Pusan and at Kanghwado island. Japan was proving its perceived superiority militarily, and in 1876 Korea signed a treaty, drafted by the Japanese, that granted the Japanese in Korea extraterritoriality, exemption from tariffs and recognition of Japanese currency at ports of trade.

In 1878 a branch of Japan's Daiichi Bank was established in Pusan, which encouraged more Japanese merchants to do business in Korea.Japanese merchants purchased rice, soy beans, cattle hides and alluvial gold at low prices and sold these in Japan. Exports from Japan to Korea were mainly Japan's reselling of European, especially English, and American commodities.

By the 1890s, with Russian expansion in mind, Japan's military strategists were looking upon Korea as a zone of defense. In 1894, a war was approaching between Japan and China, regarding Korea. Korea had xenophobes as did Japan, and in July 1894 in southern Korea a peasant and anti-foreign rebellion, the Tong-hak rising, occurred.[note] Korea's king called on China for help in suppressing the riots. China landed a force of 2,000 in Korea. Japan objected, claiming that this violated an agreement in 1885 -- the Tianjin Convention. The rivalry between China and Japan regarding Korea became a bigger issue than the Tong-hak rising. In Japan, patriotic activists claimed that Japan's national honor was at stake, and public opinion in Japan was aroused and in agreement with the super-patriots. Japan sent troops to Korea, took over Korea's royal palace and, by the end of September, Japan's army was in control of most of Korea and Japan's navy in control of the Yellow Sea (Huang Hai).Korea's king, Min, found refuge in the Russian legation. Some Japanese were involved in the assassination of Queen Min, who had been making overtures to China and Russia. And the Japanese forced out of Korea's government those who favored China.

Japanese army divisions crossed northward from Korea into Manchuria. Three divisions moved southward in Manchuria and captured a Chinese naval arsenal and fortress at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, at what is today Lushun -- to be known as Port Arthur. Japan's army occupied Weihaiwei, on the Shandong Peninsula. China's antiquated military was overwhelmed by Japan's modern forces, and China in 1895 signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceding to Japan control over Lushan, Dalaian and the Liaodong peninsula at the southern tip of Manchuria, ceding to Japan the island of Taiwan and permitting Japanese to live and trade in China.

A group of leading Taiwanese, aided by rebellious Chinese officials, defied the Japanese and declared Taiwan a republic -- Asia's first independent republic. Japan sent in troops and within a few months crushed that independence, Taiwan becoming a part of Japan's empire.

Meanwhile, in 1894 in London, Japan had signed a new commercial and navigation treaty -- the Aoki-Kimberley Treaty -- with Britain, which abolished extraterritorial rights for the British in Japan and provided reciprocity in most favored nation treatment. The U.S. had followed this with a similar agreement, and Russia and Germany established similar agreements in 1895, with France and the Netherlands joining them in 1896.

Britain welcomed Japanese imperialism as a counter to Russian expansion. The U.S. government instructed its representatives to make no statement unfavorable to Japan. France and Germany supported Russia, which saw Japan's gains as a threat to her rail line through Manchuria to China. Pressure from Russia, France and Germany -- the so-called Triple Intervention -- resulted in Japan returning its gains in Manchuria and the Shandong peninsula to China. With some bribing of Chinese officials, Russia acquired a 25-year lease at Lushan (Port Arthur), Germany acquired control over Jiaozhou Bay at the south of the Shandong Peninsula. Britain leased Hong Kong for 99 years and took control of Weihaiwei in the north on Shandong, agreeing to stay there as long as the Russians remained at Lushan. France also took control of a piece of the Shandong Peninsula and took control of Guangzhou (Canton) in southern China. The Japanese public went from exultation over their country's victories to bitterness. And the Triple Intervention inspired the Japanese to further build the strength of its military and to improve its manufacture of military equipment.

Russia improved its ties with Korea, including the sending of a military mission there. In 1898, Russia and Japan agreed to refrain from interference in Korean politics and to consult with each other before sending military or financial advisors to Korea -- seven years before the outbreak of war between these two countries.

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