THE WESTERNIZATION OF JAPAN

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THE WESTERNIZATION OF JAPAN
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bet | 11/43 | Sana | 22.11.2020 | Hajmi | 0,7 Mb. | | #12762 |
10. THE WESTERNIZATION OF JAPAN
In 1853, the arrival of the American naval commander Matthew Perry in Yokohama harbor with four ships, and his demand that Japan open herself to trade with America, caused a major change in Japanese society and the country’s place in the world. Commodore Perry, as Henry Kissinger writes, “bore a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the Emperor of Japan, which he insisted on delivering directly to imperial representatives in the Japanese capital (a breach of two centuries of Japanese law and diplomatic protocol). Japan, which held foreign trade in as little esteem as China, cannot have been particularly reassured by the President’s letter, which informed the Emperor (whom Fillmore addressed as his ‘Great and Good Friend!’) that the American people ‘think that if your imperial majesty were so far to change the ancient laws as to allow a free trade between the two countries it would be extremely beneficial to both.’ Fillmore clothed the de facto ultimatum into a classically American pragmatic proposal to the effect that the established seclusion laws, heretofore described as immutable, might be loosened on a trial basis…
“The Japanese recipients of the message recognized it as a challenge to their concept of political and international order. Yet they reacted with the reserved composure of a society that had experienced and studied the transitoriness of human endeavors for centuries while retaining its essential nature. Surveying Perry’s far superior firepower (Japanese cannons and firearms had barely advanced in two centuries, while Perry’s vessels were equipped with state-of-the-art naval gunnery capable, as he demonstrated along the Japanese coast, of firing explosive shells), Japan’s leaders concluded that direct resistance to the ‘black ships’ would be futile. They relied on the cohesion of their society to absorb the shock and maintain their independence by that cohesion. They prepared an exquisitely courteous reply explaining that although the changes America sought were ‘most positively forbidden by the laws of our Imperial ancestors’, nonetheless, ‘for us to continue attached to ancient laws, seems to misunderstand the spirit of the age’. Allowing that ‘we are governed now by imperative necessity’, Japanese representatives assured Perry that they were prepared to satisfy nearly all of the American demands, including constructing a new harbor capable of accommodating American ships.
“Japan drew from the Western challenge a conclusion contrary to that of China after the appearance of a British envoy in 1793… China reaffirmed its traditional stance of dismissing the intruder with aloof indifference while cultivating China’s distinctive virtues, confident that the vast extent of its population and territory and the refinement of its culture would in the end prevail. Japan set out, with studious attention to detail and subtle analysis of the balance of material and psychological forces, to enter the international order based on Western concepts of sovereignty, free trade, international law, technology, and military power – albeit for the purpose of expelling the foreign domination. After a new faction came to power in 1868 promising to ‘revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians’, they announced that they would do so by mastering the barbarian concepts and technologies and joining the Westphalian world order as an equal member. The new Meiji Emperor’s coronation was marked with the Charter Oath signed by the nobility, promising a sweeping program of reform, which included provisions that all social classes should be encouraged to participate. It provided for deliberative assemblies in all provinces, an affirmation of due process, and a commitment to fulfill the aspirations of the population. It relied on the national consensus, which had been one of the principal strengths – perhaps the most distinctive feature – of Japanese society…
“Japan would henceforth embark on the systematic construction of railways, modern industry, an export-oriented economy, and a modern military. Amidst all these transformations, the uniqueness of Japanese culture and society would preserve Japanese identity…”150
W.H. Spellman goes into more detail on how this momentous change took place, beginning with the removal from power of the de facto priestly ruler, the Shogun: “Against the considerable opposition of the Tokugawa shogun and the emperor…, economic, military and political modernization became the rallying cry of those samurai elites and urban commercial leaders who were determined not to allow Western domination of the country to proceed unchecked. Turning from the shogunate to the imperial office for support, a new monarchical regime called 'Meiji' or 'Enlightened Rule' was inaugurated after the death of the emperor Komei in January 1867. Leaders of the four most important feudal families turned over their estates to the new 15-year-old emperor Mutsuhito (1852-1912) in a gesture of insurgent nationalism. In a memorial addressed to the emperor, the clan leaders maintained that they were returning to the Son of Heaven what had originally been his 'so that a uniform rule may prevail throughout the empire. Thus the country will be able to rank equally with the other nations of the world.' In July 1869 an imperial decree ordered all other landed elites to make the same submission. In return these aristocrats would become provincial governors under the crown; private political authority in the countryside, the norm for over a millennium, was now defined as usurpation and effectively brought to a close.
"Under Mutushito, the 122nd monarch in a line from Jinmu, calls for the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate intensified. Seeing the scale of the opposition to his family's rule and unwilling to plunge the country into civil war, Tokugawa Yoshinobu abolished the family office - and eight centuries of military government - in November 1867. Establishing a new capital in Tokyo (formerly Edo), the emperor enjoyed enough support from disgruntled samurai warriors, clan leaders and urban commercial interests to defeat the hold-out troops of the now-defunct shogunate. There ensued three decades of unprecedented reform, catapulting feudal Japan into the industrial age. Feudalism was officially abolished in 1871, a national conscript army based on the German model was created, and Western military advisors were recruited in order to assist with the building of a modern navy. State-sponsored and mandatory elementary education was adopted, the Gregorian calendar was introduced, a representative system of local government was created, and a robust commercial and industrial revolution began, the first of its kind in the non-western world. No other non-European nation responded as quickly and as effectively as Japan to the threat of Western imperialism.
"The ideological components of the revolution which occurred in Japan in 1868 centred on two key elements: nationalism and tenno-ism. The historic uniqueness of Japanese civilization was stressed while the monarchy was held up as the embodiment of the nation's highest ideals, its closest bond with earlier times. There was no establishment of direct imperial rule in 1868, but instead the emperor's authority was gradually enhanced as anti-Tokugawa reformers claimed a mandate from the divine ruler. By linking the ancient institution of monarchy with the innovative programme of economic modernization and social change, reformers hoped to make change more palatable in traditionalist circles. Not the least of these changes involved the new national political institutions. After a series of delegations sent to Europe and the United States during the 1870s and 1880s returned with their suggestions for constitutional reform, in 1889 a new framework of government, reflecting the German imperial model, established a bicameral parliamentary structure with cabinet responsibility for national policy. The lower house or diet, elected on a restricted franchise which excluded 95 per cent of the adult male population, served as an advisory body to the government, but the emperor retained control over the military and named his chief ministers, all of whom served at the pleasure of the monarch. An upper house composed of former nobles and Meiji leaders rounded out the parliamentary system.
"The first article of the new German-style constitution emphasized the centrality of the sacred monarch's role in the new government. Here it was stated plainly that 'The empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of emperors unbroken for ages eternal.' Ito Hirobumi, one of the principal authors of the new constitution, provided a commentary on the document which encapsulates the thinking of the Meiji reformers. The emperor, according to Hirobumi, 'is Heaven-descended, divine and sacred; he is pre-eminent above all his subjects. He must be reverenced and is inviolable. He is indeed to pay due respect to the law, but the law no power to hold Him accountable to it.'151
"Unlike his predecessors, the Meiji emperor undertook a new public role designed to link the monarchy with the actions of the state. Reviewing troops, giving audiences to foreign envoys, presiding at various public awards ceremonies, placing his name on a large list of policy decrees, the emperor became the exclusive focus of national loyalty. At court, traditional dress was abandoned in favour of mandatory Western styles, and young Japanese eagerly embraced the idea of modernization in the service of the monarchy.
"It is in this last idea - service to the tenno (lord of heaven) - that the uniqueness of Japan's drive towards modernization must be assessed. The revolution of 1868 was not a middle-class, bourgeois-inspired call for an individualistic and capitalist state along Western lines. Instead the reforming oligarchs who were responsible for the end of the shogunate continued to emphasize the virtues of obedience, loyalty and acquiescence in the service of one's superiors. In an imperial rescript on education issued by the emperor in 1890 - a document to be memorized by generations of schoolchildren down to 1948 - young Japanese were exhorted to 'offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth. So shall ye not only be Our good and faithful subjects, but render illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers.' These values, it was hoped would combine to shape a nationalist ideology unique in its association with the institution of monarchy."152
Japan’s lack of a loyal but independent religious institution laid the foundations of the tragedy of 1945. As Ienaga Saburo writes: "The vast majority of the people were educated from youth into a frame of mind in which they could not criticise state policies independently and had to follow them, mistaken though they were. Education since 1868 carries heavy responsibility for bringing on that tragedy."153
However, the Japanese monarchy was not typically pagan. As Dominic Lieven writes: "Japanese tradition was totally opposed to the Emperor actually attempting to act as the chief executive officer of his government. For centuries the Emperor's role had been purely ceremonial and priestly, actual power being exercised by the Shogun. In the last decades of the Tokugawa era even the Shogun did not rule personally, his powers being used by subordinates in his name. Although in theory the Meiji restoration returned power to the monarchy's hands, it was never the intention of the restoration's key statesmen that the monarch should literally run his own government like a Russian or German emperor. On the contrary, the monarchy's role was to provide legitimacy for the Meiji era's reformist oligarchy and to act as a symbol around which the Japanese nation could rally. As in Europe, however, one key reason for the oligarchy's determination to locate sovereignty in the Emperor was their opposition to accepting the only alternative principle, namely the sovereignty of the people exercised through elected institutions.
"In a way that was not true even in Prussia, let alone Russia, court and government were always sharply separated in Meiji Japan. The court was the world of priestly rites and Confucian moral virtues, never of actual political rule. Though in theory the Emperor chose prime ministers, in fact they were selected by the genro, in other words the tiny group of elder statesmen who constituted a sort of supreme privy council and presented the monarch with a candidate whom he never rejected. Recommendations on policy were submitted to the crown in the unanimous name of the government. The Emperor was never asked to adjudicate personally between conflicting choices or groups, still less to devise his own policies and find minister to support them. The traditions of the imperial house meant that the monarchs did not revolt against this passive role. The Emperor Meiji, for instance, is said to have rebuffed efforts to draw him more directly into government by commenting that 'when one views [our] long history one sees that it is a mistake for those next to the throne to conduct politics'. In any case since no modern Japanese emperor, Meiji included, had ever possessed real political power there was never any question of the need to surrender it into the oligarchy's hands. When the Emperor Hirohito contemplated intervening personally to tilt the balance against military extremists in 1937 he was warned by the sole remaining genro, Prince Saioniji, that the monarchy must not endanger itself by active political engagement. Only in the apocalyptic circumstances of 1945 did the monarch decisively enter the political arena and even then this happened because the government was split down the middle on the issue of peace or war and requested his intervention."154
This strange position of the Japanese emperor meant that ordinary Japanese could sincerely venerate, even worship him, while despising the idea of one-man-rule. Thus "during the Second World War the Japanese Communist Nosaka Sanzo told a Chinese Communist party conference that 'the Japanese people may hold the Emperor... in religious awe, but they do not worship the system of despotic rule. We must abolish the Emperor system immediately and establish a democratic system... However, we must be very careful in defining our attitude to... his [the Emperor's] semi-religious influence... Many soldiers captured by the [Communist] Eighth Route Army said they could agree with the [Communist] ideology, but if they sought to destroy the emperor, they would be opposed. This can be seen as a general pattern of thought held by the majority of the Japanese people."155
"Modernizing the Japanese economy required strong governmental initiatives and harsh fiscal policies. There had been for a time a grave danger of opposition and disorder. Centuries before, the imperial power had gone into eclipse, unable to control over-mighty subjects; its restored authority faced new dangers in a new age. Not all conservatives could be reconciled to the new model Japan. Discontented ronin or retainers - rootless and masterless samurai, the traditional fighting class - had been one source of trouble. Another was peasant misery; in the first decade of the Meiji era there had been scores of agrarian revolts, but reform had created unconditional private ownership in land and many tenant farmers were to benefit from it. There had also been a last feudal rebellion, but the energies of the discontented samurai were gradually siphoned off into the service of the new state; building their interests into it, though, only intensified an assertive nationalism in certain key sectors of the national life. It was soon expressed not only in continuing resentment of western powers but also in support of imperial ambitions directed towards the nearby Asian mainland..."156
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