# The Constitutional Development of Japan, 1853–1881/Chapter 1

Chapter I. Beginning of the Constitutional Movement.
The constitutional movement of Japan began in a spontaneous agitation of the whole body politic when the nation was irritated by the sudden contact with foreigners. The sense of national weakness added a force to this agitation. Had not the foreigners come, the Restoration might have been effected, feudalism might have been abolished, but the new Japanese constitution would hardly have seen the day. Had the government of Japan at the time of the advent of foreigners been in the strong hand of a Taiko or an Iyeyasu, the rulers might have been greatly exercised by the extraordinary event, but public opinion for reform would hardly have been called forth, and the birth of constitutional liberty would long have been delayed. As the vices of King John and the indifference and ignorance of the first two Georges of England begat the strength and hope of the English Parliament, so the public opinion of Japan sprouted out of the ruins of the Shogunate régime. We must therefore seek for the beginning of the Constitutional Movement of Japan in the peculiar circumstances in which she found herself between 1853 and 1868.
The advent of Commodore Perry in 1853 was to Japan like the intrusion of a foreign queen into a beehive. The country was stirred to its depth. Let us note what a native chronicler says about the condition of Japan at the arrival of Perry:
"It was in the summer of 1853 that an individual named Perry, who called himself the envoy of the United States of ​America, suddenly arrived at Uraga, in the Province of Sagami, with four ships of war, declaring that he brought a letter from his country to Japan and that he wished to deliver it to the sovereign. The governor of the place, Toda Idzu No Kami, much alarmed by this extraordinary event, hastened to the spot to inform himself of its meaning. The envoy stated, in reply to questions, that he desired to see a chief minister in order to explain the object of his visit and to hand over to him the letter with which he was charged. The governor then despatched a messenger on horseback with all haste to carry this information to the castle of Yedo, where a great scene of confusion ensued on his arrival. Fresh messengers followed, and the Shogun Iyeyoshi, on receiving them, was exceedingly troubled, and summoned all the officials to a council. At first the affair seemed so sudden and so formidable that they were too alarmed to open their mouths, but in the end orders were issued to the great clans to keep strict watch at various points on the shore, as it was possible that the barbarian' vessels might proceed to commit acts of violence. Presently a learned Chinese scholar was sent to Uraga, had an interview with the American envoy, and returned with the letter, which expressed the desire of the United States to establish friendship and intercourse with Japan, and said, according to this account, that if they met with a refusal they should commence hostilities. Thereupon the Shogun was greatly distressed, and again summoned a council. He also asked the opinion of the Daimios. The assembled officials were exceedingly disturbed, and nearly broke their hearts over consultations which lasted all day and all night. The nobles and retired nobles in Yedo were informed that they were at liberty to state any ideas they might have on the subject, and, although they all gave their opinions, the diversity of propositions was so great that no decision was arrived at. The military class had, during a long peace, neglected military arts; they ​had given themselves up to pleasure and luxury, and there were very few who had put on armor for many years, so that they were greatly alarmed at the prospect that war might break out at a moment's notice, and began to run hither and thither in search of arms. The city of Yedo and the surrounding villages were in a great tumult. And there was such a state of confusion among all classes that the governors of the city were compelled to issue a notification to the people, and this in the end had the effect of quieting the general anxiety. But in the castle never a decision further from being arrived at, and, whilst time was being thus idly wasted, the envoy was constantly demanding an answer. So at last they decided that it would be best to arrange the affair quietly, to give the foreigners the articles. they wanted, and to put off sending an answer to the letter to tell the envoy that in an affair of such importance to the state no decision could be arrived at without mature consideration, and that he had better go away; that in a short time he should get a definite answer. The envoy agreed, and after sending a message, to say that he should return in the following spring for his answer, set sail from Uraga with his four ships."
Thus was the renowned commander kept away for awhile. He went, however, of his own accord. Perry was an astute diplomatist. He knew that time was needed for the impressions which he and his magnificent fleet had made upon the country to produce their natural effect.
The news of Perry's visit and demands spread far and wide with remarkable rapidity. The government and the people were deeply stirred. Soon the song of the "red-bearded barbarians" and of the black ships was in everybody's mouth. The question "What shall Japan do when the barbarians come next spring?" became the absorbing theme of the day.
​There was now but one of two policies which Japan could pursue, either to shut up the country or to admit the foreigners' demand. There was no middle course left. The American envoy would no longer listen to the dilatory policy with which the Japanese had just bought a few months' respite from anxiety.
The majority of the ruling class, the Samurai, were in favor of the exclusion policy. So was the court of Kioto. But the views of the court of Yedo were different. The court of Yedo had many men of intelligence, common sense and experience — men who had seen the American envoy and his squadron, equipped with all the contrivances for killing men and devastating the country. These men knew too well that resistance to the foreigners was futile and perilous.
Thus was the country early divided into two clearly defined parties, the Jo-i party and the Kai-Koku party.
Meanwhile, the autumn and winter of 1853 passed. The spring of 1854 soon came, and with it the intractable "barbarians." Let us hear the author of Genje Yume Monogatari relate the return of Perry and the great discussion that ensued at the court of Yedo:
"Early in 1854 Commodore Perry returned, and the question of acceding to his demands was again hotly debated. The old prince of Mito was opposed to it, and contended that the admission of foreigners into Japan would ruin it. 'At first,' said he, 'they will give us philosophical instruments, machinery and other curiosities; will take ignorant people in, and, trade being their chief object, they will manage bit by bit to impoverish the country, after which they will treat us just as they like — perhaps behave with the greatest rudeness and insult us, and end by swallowing up Japan. If we do not drive them away now we shall never have another opportunity. If we now resort to a dilatory method of proceeding we shall regret it afterwards when it will be of no use.'
​"The officials (of the Shogun), however, argued otherwise and said: 'If we try to drive them away they will immediately commence hostilities, and then we shall be obliged to fight. If we once get into a dispute we shall have an enemy to fight who will not be easily disposed of. He does not care how long a time he must spend over it, but he will come with myriads of men-of-war and surround our shores completely; he will capture our junks and blockade our ports, and deprive us of all hope of protecting our coasts. However large a number of ships we might destroy, he is so accustomed to that sort of thing that he would not care in the least. Even supposing that our troops were animated by patriotic zeal in the commencement of the war, after they had been fighting for several years their patriotic zeal would naturally become relaxed, the soldiers would become fatigued, and for this we should have to thank ourselves. Soldiers who have distinguished themselves are rewarded by grants of land, or else you attack and seize the enemy's territory and that becomes your own property; so every man is encouraged to fight his best. But in a war with foreign countries a man may undergo hardships for years, may fight as if his life were worth nothing, and, as all the land in this country already has owners, there will be none to be given away as rewards; so we shall have to give rewards in words or money. In time the country would be put to an immense expense and the people be plunged into misery. Rather than allow this, as we are not the equals of foreigners in the mechanical arts, let us have intercourse with foreign countries, learn their drill and tactics, and when we have made the nation as united as one family, we shall be able to go abroad and give lands in foreign countries to those who have distinguished themselves in battle. The soldiers will vie with one another in displaying their intrepidity, and it will not be too late then to declare war. Now we shall have to defend ourselves against these foreign enemies, skilled in the use of mechanical appliances, with our soldiers whose military skill has considerably ​diminished during a long peace of three hundred years, and we certainly could not feel sure of victory, especially in a naval war.'"
The Kai-Koku party, the party in favor of opening the country, triumphed, and the treaty was finally concluded between the United States and Japan on the 31st of March, 1854. After the return of Commodore Perry to America, Townsend Harris was sent by the United States Government as Consul-General to Japan. He negotiated the commercial treaty between the United States and Japan on July 29, 1858.
At the heels of the Americans followed the English, French, Russians, Dutch, and other nations. Japan's foreign relations became more and more complicated and therefore difficult to manage.
The discussion quoted above is a type of the arguments used by the Jo-i party and the Kai-Koku party. The history of Japanese polities from 1853 to 1868 is the history of the struggle between these two parties, each of which soon changed its name. As the Jo-i party allied itself with the court of Kioto, it became the O-sei or Restoration party. As the Kai-Koku party was associated with the court of Shogun, it became the Bakufu party. The struggle ended in the triumph of the Restoration party. But by that time the Jo-i party, from a cause which I shall soon mention, had been completely transformed and converted to the Western ideas.
Among the leaders of the Jo-i party was Nariaki, the old prince of Mito. He belonged to one of the San Kay (three families), out of which Iyeyasu ordered the Shogun to be chosen. He was connected by marriage with the families of the Emperor and the highest Kuges in Miako, and with the wealthiest Daimios. In power the Mito family thus ranked high among the Daimios. Among the scholars the Prince of Mito was popular. The prestige of his great ancestor, the compiler of Dai-Nihon-Shi, had not yet died out. The Prince of Mito was thus naturally looked up to ​by the scholars as the man of right principles and of noble ideas. A shrewd, clever, and scheming old man, the Prince of Mito now became the defender of the cause of the Emperor and the mouthpiece of the conservative party.
At the head of the Bakufu party was a man of iron and fertile resources, Ii Kamon No Kami. He was the Daimio of Hikone, a castled town and fief on Lake Biwa, in Mino. His revenue was small, being only three hundred and fifty thousand koku. But in position and power none in the empire could rival him. He was the head of the Fudai Daimios. His family was called the Dodai or foundation-stone of the power of the Tokugawa dynasty. His ancestor, Ii Nawo Massa, had been lieutenant-general and right-hand man of Iyeyas. Ii Kamon No Kami, owing to the mental infirmity of the reigning Shogun, had lately become his regent. Bold, ambitious, able, and unscrupulous, Ii was the Richelieu of Japan. From this time on till his assassination on March 23, 1860, he virtually ruled the empire, and, in direct contravention to the imperial will, negotiated with foreign nations, as we have seen, for the opening of ports for trade with them. He was styled the "swaggering prime minister," and his name was long pronounced with contempt and odium. Lately, however, his good name has been res1 and his fame restored by the noble of an able writer, Mr. Saburo Shimada. But this able prime minister fell on March 23, 1860, by the sword of Mito ronins, who alleged, as the pretext of their crime, that "Ii Kamon No Kami had insulted the imperial decree and, careless of the misery of the people, but making foreign intercourse his chief aim, had opened ports." "The position of the government upon the death of the regent was that of helpless inactivity. The sudden removal of the foremost man of the empire was as the removal of the fly-wheel from a piece of complicated machinery. The whole empire stood aghast, expecting and fearing some great political convulsion."
​The Shogun began to make a compromise to unite the Emperor's power and the Shogun's, by taking the sister of the Emperor for his wife.
Meanwhile great events were taking place in the southern corner of Kiushiu and on the promontory of Shikoku, events which were to effect great changes in men's ideas. These were the bombardments of Kagoshima and of Shimonosheki, the first on August 11, 1863, the second on September 5, 1864. I shall not dwell here on the injustice of these barbarous and heathenish acts of the so-called civilized and Christian nations; for I am not writing a political pamphlet. But impartially let us note the great effects of these bombardments.
I.These conflicts showed on a grand but sad scale the weakness of the Daimios, even the most powerful of them, and, on the other hand, the power of the foreigners and their rilled cannon and steamers. The following Japanese memorandum expresses this point: "Satsuma's eyes were opened since the fight of Kagoshima, and affairs appeared to him in a new light; he changed in favor of foreigners, and thought now of making his country powerful and completing his armaments."
The Emperor also wrote in a rather pathetic tone to the Shogun touching the relative strength of the Japanese and the foreigners: "I held a council the other day with my military nobility (Daimios and nobles), but unfortunately inured to the habits of peace, which for more than two hundred years has existed in our country, we are unable to exclude and subdue our foreign enemies by the forcible means of war. . . .
"If we compare our Japanese ships of war and cannon to those of the barbarians, we feel certain that they are not sufficient to inflict terror upon the foreign barbarians, and are also insufficient to make the splendor of Japan shine in ​foreign countries. I should think that we only should make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of the barbarians."
From the time of the bombardment, Satsuma and Choshiu began to introduce European machinery and inventions, to employ skilled Europeans to teach them, and to send their young men to Europe and America.
II.These bombardments showed the necessity of national union. Whether she would repel or receive the foreigner, Japan must present a united front. To this end, great change in the internal constitution of the empire was needed; the internal resources of the nation had to be gathered into a common treasury; the police and the taxes had to be recognized as national, not as belonging to petty local chieftains; the power of the feudal lords had to be broken in order to reconstitute Japan as a single strong state under a single head. These are the ideas which led the way to the Restoration of 1868. Thus the bombardments of Kagoshima and Shimonosheki may be said to have helped indirectly in the Restoration of that year. But before we proceed to the history of the Restoration, let us examine what were the great Councils of Kuges and Daimios, which were sometimes convened during the period from 1857 to 1868.
The Council of Kuges was occasionally convened by the order of the Emperor. It was composed of the princes of the blood, nobles, and courtiers. The Council of Daimios was now and then summoned either by the Emperor or by the Shogun. It was composed mostly of the Daimios. These councils were like the Witenagemot of England, formed of the wise and influential men of the kingdom. As the Daimios had far more weight in the political scale of the realm than the Kuges, so the council of the Daimios was of far more importance than that of the Kuges. But it must not be understood that these councils were regular meetings held in the modern parliamentary way; nor that they had anything ​like the powers of the British Parliament or of the American Congress. These councils of Japan were called into spasmodic life simply by the necessity of the time. They were held either at the court of Kioto or that of Yedo, or at other places appointed for the purpose. The Kuges or Daimios assembled rather in an informal way, measured by modern parliamentary procedure, but in accordance with the court etiquette of the time, whose most minute regulations and rules have often embarrassed and plagued the modern ministers accredited to the court of the Emperor. Then these councils proceeded to discuss the burning questions of the day, among which the most prominent was, of course, the foreign policy. The earliest instance of the meeting of the Council of Kuges was immediately after the news of Perry's arrival had reached the court of Kioto. "Upon this," says the author of Genje Yume Monogatari, "the Emperor was much disturbed, and called a council, which was attended by a number of princes of the blood and Kuges, and much violent language was uttered."
From this time on we meet often with the record of these councils. A native chronicler records that on the 29th day of the 12th month of 1857 "a meeting of all Daimios (present in Yedo) was held in the Haku-sho-in, a large hall in the castle of Yedo. The deliberations were not over till two o'clock on the morning of the 30th."
Soon after this the Emperor ordered the Shogun to come to Kioto with all the Daimios and ascertain the opinion of the country. But the Shogun did not come, so the Emperor sent his envoy, Ohara Sammi, and called the meeting of the Daimios at Yedo in 1862, in which the noted Shimadzu Saburo was also present.
In 1864 the council of Daimios was again held, and Minister Pruyn, in his letter to Mr. Seward, bears witness of the proceeding: "It is understood the great council of ​Daimios is again in session; that the question of the foreign policy of the government is again under consideration, and that the opposite parties are pretty evenly balanced."
From this time the council of Daimios was held every year, sometimes many times in the year, till the Revolution of 1868. These examples will suffice to show the nature and purpose of these councils of Kuges and Daimios. Let us next consider how these councils originated.
The political development of Japan gives another illustration of one of the truths which Mr. Herbert Spencer unfolds in his Principles of Sociology. "Everywhere the wars between societies," says he, "originate governmental structures, and are causes of all such improvements in those structures as increase the efficiency of corporate action against environing societies."
Experience has shown that representative government is the most efficient in securing the corporate action of the various members of the body politic against foreign enemies. When a country is threatened with foreign invasion, when the corporate action of its citizens against their enemy is needed, it becomes an imperative necessity to consult public opinion. In such a time centralization is needed. Hence the first move of Japan after the advent of foreigners was to bring the scattered parts of the country together and unite them under one head.
Japan had hitherto no formidable foreign enemy on her shores. So her governmental system-the regulating system of the social organism-received no impetus for self-development. But as soon as a formidable people, either as allies or foes, appeared on the scene in 1853, we immediately see the remarkable change in the state system of regulation in Japan. It became necessary to consult public opinion. Councils of Kuges and Daimios and meetings of Samurai sprung forth spontaneously.
​I believe, with Guizot, that the germ of representative government was not necessarily "in the woods of Germany," as Montesquieu asserts, or in the Witenagemot of England; that the glory of having a free government is not necessarily confined to the Aryan family or to its more favored branch, the Anglo-Saxons. I believe that the seed of representative government is implanted in the very nature of human society and of the human mind. When the human mind and the social organism reach a certain stage of development, when they are placed in such an environment as to call forth a united and harmonious action of the body politic, when education is diffused among the masses and every member of the community attains a certain degree of his individuality and importance, when the military form of society transforms itself into the industrial, then the representative idea of government springs forth naturally and irresistibly. And no tyrant, no despot, can obstruct the triumphal march of liberty.
Whatever may be said about the soundness of the above speculation, it is certain that in the great councils of Kuges and Daimios and in the discussions of the Samurai, which the advent of the foreigners called into being, lay the germ of the future constitutional parliament of Japan.
* ↑ Genje Yume Monogatari. Translated by Mr. Ernest Satow, and published in the columns of the Japan Mail.
* ↑ The original gives names of some prominent officials thus summoned.
* ↑ This is also quoted in F. O. Adams's History of Japan, Vol. I., p. 109. I have compared the passage with the original and quote here with some modifications in the translation.
* ↑ Jo-i means to expel the barbarians; Kai-Koku means to open the country.
* ↑ Given also in Kai-Koku Simatsu, p. 166; Ansei-Kiji, pp. 219, 220.
* ↑ Life of Ii Nawosuke Tokyo, 1888.
* ↑ Dickson's Japan, p. 454.
* ↑ American Executive Document, Diplomatic Correspondence, Part 3, 1865–66, p. 233, 1st Sess. 39th Cong.
* ↑ American Executive Document, Diplomatic Correspondence, Part 8, 1864–65, p. 502, 3d Sess. 38th Cong.
* ↑ See Ansei-Kiji, pages 1, 3, 57, 59, 61, 174, 192, 352; Bosin-Simatsu, Vol. II., pp. 4, 69; Vol. III., pp. 379, 414; Vol. IV., pp. 121, 152.
* ↑ American Executive Document, Diplomatic Correspondence, Part 3, 1864–85, p. 486, 2d Sess. 38th Cong.
* ↑ Principles of Sociology, p. 540.