Political History of Japan During the Meiji Era, 1867-1912

Walter Wallace McLaren

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780714620183
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136995491
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

First Published in 1966. In this book, the author has endeavours to supply the information which is essential to the formation of accurate judgments as to the meaning of Japanese policy by reviewing her modern political history, describing her system of government, and explaining her national ambitions. McLaren presents a careful survey of the evolution of the existing political institutions of Japan and an enumeration of the powers exercised by the various authorities and the bureaucracy. The author then follows the history of the Japanese Diet from its establishment in 1890 until the beginning of 1913 – assessing the political parties, their internal dissensions as well as their struggles with the various oligarchic Cabinets.

PART I

THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD

A Political History of Japan During the Meiji Era

CHAPTER I

THE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

THE Japanese coup d’état of 1867, commonly called the Restoration, was as swiftly executed as it had been elaborately prepared for by the supporters of the Imperial cause. The forces which finally thrust the Emperor forward into the position of an active ruler were of varying degrees of power and of diverse origin, intellectual, sentimental, political, and military, some at work for several centuries, and others the result of the two decades immediately preceding the event. Of the methods adopted to ensure the success of this movement, some were the devices of men of high qualities who were loyally and unselfishly devoted to the national ideal, while others were obviously those of jealous and reckless samurai, bent on revenge or improvement of their own fortunes.

Among the actual promoters of the movement for the Emperor’s restoration there were two very different views of its meaning. To the Conservatives it was a return to antiquity (Fukko), to the Radicals a renovation (Isshin). As time went on and the exigencies of change began to exert their inherent force, it became apparent that the more conservative directors of the movement could no longer fashion it upon the pattern of antiquity. To set up in the middle of the nineteenth century for the government of a nation of thirty millions a polity which had been unsuited to even the needs of a small tribe in the year 645 was an impossible task, and eventually the views of the more radical reformers prevailed. When once it came to be seen clearly that nothing short of a complete “renovation” of the Government of Japan would meet the changed circumstances of the times, the way was opened for the introduction of those remarkable reforms at which the world, often ignorant of their true significance, has never ceased to wonder.

The immediate object of the League of the Western Clans in 1867 was to destroy the Shogunate, whose origin dates back as far as 1192, when the Emperor Go Toba appointed Minamoto Yoritomo Sei-i-tai-Shogun (Foreign - Barbarian - Repressing Great General). The nature of that institution and its effects upon the monarchy require some explanation.

The Shogunate, which exercised the executive powers of the national Government, was founded upon the feudal order. Without feudalism it could never have existed, for the Shogun would necessarily have become a supplanter of the Emperor, and could not have permitted his deposed rival to continue even as spiritual head of the nation, with a Court of his own at Kyoto. The campaign which set Yoritomo upon his pedestal of power at Kamakura was fought out between two great rival military clans, the Minamoto and the Taira, and the Emperor, who was without military resources, was not brought into the conflict directly. He was merely the spectator of a struggle between two groups of his nominal subjects, and stood ready to confer any powers or titles which might be demanded of him by the victorious clan. Thus it was that after the Taira had been crushed on land and sea at Minatogawa and Dan-no-Ura, Yoritomo made a triumphal entry into Kyoto, and proceeded to set the Imperial house in order and receive from the Emperor Go Toba Tenno, a boy of his own nomination, and from the retired emperor, Go Shirakawa, such honours as he chose to ask. It is true that the Taira for a brief space in the twelfth century, under the leadership of Kiyomori and his son Munemori, held possession of the person of the Emperor and were, therefore, Kwangun—the loyal defenders of his cause. But the Minamoto had not been blind to the fiction by which a rival clan could claim the status of supporters of the throne, nor did they hesitate to acquire by force that same status for themselves. In the holocaust which destroyed the Taira the young Emperor Antoku Tenno, who had succeeded to the title at the age of three, and was but eight years old in 1185, lost his life. Yoritomo had immediately placed on the throne as Antoku’s successor Go Toba Tenno, a boy of eight years of age. In this way the Imperial house was affected by the strife of its subjects; but however much royal individuals might suffer accidentally, or however much interference there might be in the succession, the feudal warriors were careful to refrain not only from usurping the throne for themselves or scions of their houses, but from going outside of the Imperial line for candidates for royal honours.

If Minamoto Yoritomo was capable of branding as a sham the Taira claim that in taking up arms against them he became a rebel in the eyes of the Court, why was he, like his predecessors and his successors through the whole history of feudal Japan, so careful to nominally preserve intact in the succeeding generations of one family the succession to the throne? Modern Japanese writers point to this fact with an immoderate pride. “The Imperial throne of Japan,” they say with a show of truth, “has been occupied by a single line through generations unbroken from the beginning.” The reason commonly ascribed—that the Imperial ancestors from the heavenly sphere have directed the progress of their race, and, however much purely human forces have been permitted to prevail, have at least shielded the Imperial line from dishonour and destruction—is not accepted by intelligent Japanese themselves, much less by foreign students of their history. To cast doubt upon the claim of an unbroken succession would not be difficult unless we are prepared to believe that adoption into the Imperial family did not constitute a break in the actual line; unless what we call and what the Japanese themselves now call illegitimacy is as serviceable as legitimacy for the perpetuation of an Imperial line. Concubinage was the universal habit of royalty and the nobility in Japan until the Restoration. The reigning Emperor to-day is not the child of the Empress, the legal consort of the Meiji Tenno, but of the Lady Nakayama. So little did the Japanese, even of the early years of Meiji, condemn the practice of polygamy that documents published by the Imperial Household Department and translated officially into English gave the names of the Imperial concubines and their offspring. Whatever may be said in palliation of these facts, the claim of unbroken descent can only be substantiated by acknowledging the prevalence of customs which the Japanese of to-day would willingly forget.

Moreover, even though we might be willing to accept adoption as conferring royal lineage upon a member of the Imperial family outside of the direct line, or illegitimacy as a substitute for legitimacy, there remain the plain facts of history, which show that throughout the whole of the long period from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries the Shoguns, the military usurpers, displayed for the Court an astonishing contempt. Emperors were placed upon the throne or compelled to make room for successors as the Shogun and his Council saw fit. At all times, whether the Shoguns resided in Kamakura or Yedo, or the Taiko in Osaka, the Imperial palace in Kyoto was guarded like a prison. Funds for its maintenance were provided by the Shogunate, and sometimes so meagre was that provision that the Emperor was in actual want. Of so little importance was the Imperial person in the days of early foreign intercourse that the Jesuits hardly knew of the Emperor’s existence. They seem to have thought of him as a Japanese counterpart of the Pope of Rome, except that he had no aspirations for temporal power. The Dutch writers likewise were in the habit of referring to the Shogun as “his Majesty,” and on their annual pilgrimage from Deshima to Yedo, Kyoto was the only city which they were permitted to examine freely. The privilege was probably accorded by the Tokugawa to show the foreigners how lightly the Court was regarded. Commodore Perry delivered to the Shogun in Yedo the autograph letter to the Emperor of Japan from the President of the United States, and none of the ambassadors of the Western Powers seemed to have entertained any suspicion that in dealing with the authorities in Yedo they were not approaching the throne.

In the light of these facts, some other explanation of the relations between the Shogunate and the Imperial Court must be sought than that which depends upon the claim now made by Japanese historians of the official type, that the throne throughout this whole period was divinely preserved by the Heavenly Gods. We naturally turn to look for the truth in feudal institutions and in the monarchy itself.

The origins of feudalism¹ on its institutional side are to be found not only in the Constitution of Taikwa (645 A.D.) but in the political society of Japan previous to the seventh century, a society composed largely of patriarchal units, each of which had its chief who exercised authority over the members of the group and the land on which they lived. The Emperor was in theory the head of the entire tribe, but his power rested upon the military strength of the members of his own immediate unit. In case of a weak or non-military Emperor the theoretical sovereignty which he exercised over the people might not only fall into abeyance but be transferred to the head of some other unit. The tendency was thus wholly toward decentralization, the breaking up of the tribe into units or groups, which were feudal to all intents and purposes, though the headship of the units was not necessarily bestowed for military genius. It was to offset this alarming process of decentralization, which threatened the position of the Emperor and the strength of the tribe, that the reforms of Taikwa were introduced. The State socialism of China, the country which threatened the national existence of Japan in that day, was copied. The adopted form of government provided for the division of the free people of the tribe into the governing and supporting classes. The governing class consisted of the holders of high civil offices, and attached to those offices were grants of rice-land to be held during tenure, the holders enjoying exemption from the payment of tribute to the Emperor. The supporting class was provided with grants of rice-land which were subject to periodic redistribution, and in return for their land the people of this class owed the Government taxes and the performance of military services. In this way the free element in the population was destined to become not only the administrative class but the basis of the military power of the State in all national contests with foreign Powers.

The first effect of these reforms was to turn the former heads of units into civil officials of the reorganized State, to change the name but not the reality of the former régime except in one respect—that certain of the officials were supposed to exercise control over all the units of the tribe or nation. In the second place, the fact that only the rice-lands were allotted and provision was made for their periodic redistribution left out of account by far the larger part of the national domain, and thus opened the way for the growth of estates (Sho) which subsequently became the nuclei of the fiefs of the powerful territorial lords. By the end of the eighth century the equality which was supposed to be maintained by periodic redistribution of rice-lands had given place to inequality, partly because that redistribution had not been rigidly carried out in all parts of the national domain, and partly because of the freedom with which individuals alienated their lands. The immunity of the higher officials from taxation and the greed of the Buddhist sects were also factors operating to destroy the Constitution of Taikwa shortly after its adoption. Out of the failure of this early Japanese experiment in State socialism feudalism grew, for it is only necessary to point to the methods by which men were able to add acre to acre in building up their fiefs, and to the natural process by which those fiefs came under the control of a military class, to see the civil power, represented by the Imperial house, dominated by first one and then another of the military clans, the Taira, Minamoto, Hojo, Ashikaga, and finally Tokugawa.

When the landed estates had begun to multiply, as they did rapidly even in the eighth century, by taking new lands into cultivation and by acquiring by purchase or otherwise the original allotments, the process was accelerated by a variety of devices with which every student of European feudalism is familiar. The practice of commendation—the granting of real rights in his property by a peasant to a more powerful neighbour in return for protection—was considered illegal during the ninth century, but nevertheless a rapid movement in that direction took place, especially during the tenth and eleventh centuries. The opposite tendency, the granting of benefices by a superior to an inferior, in return for services of a military or fiscal nature, completed the development of the institution of feudalism. The motives, in so far as they were acquisitive, are easily understood. To obtain land as the basis of wealth was the ambition of every enterprising magnate, and to found upon that land a race of military servitors was merely to insure the perpetuation of his tenure. But there were other motives, too, which hastened the development of feudalism. As we have already pointed out, the rice-lands allotted at the beginning of the eighth century to the high civil officials were immune from taxation, and that immunity not only stimulated imitation but caused the burden of taxation for the support of the State to lie all the heavier upon those whose lands were taxable. The new estates carved out of unoccupied and unregistered lands enjoyed fiscal immunity, and the result was that as population grew, and with it the expenses of the Government, the sources of revenue remained almost stationary and the rate in consequence tended to increase. To escape this burden of taxation was one of the peasant’s objects when he transferred the title of his land to a powerful neighbour. As the practice of commendation grew, not only did the revenues of the State diminish, but the officials in their efforts to refill the empty treasury were compelled to lay fresh levies upon those who had not secured immunity. It is easy to see, therefore, how the land-greed of the rising feudal chiefs was seconded by the desire of small holders to escape taxation. And it is also obvious that the central government, for lack of revenue, was not in a position to extend its control over the whole nation as the population increased. The revenues from the royal lands hardly sufficed to defray the expenses incurred in their administration. Less and less pressure was exerted by the central government over outlying districts, and as that pressure diminished the feudal lords became more independent, until in the end a condition of complete decentralization was arrived at.

While this process was going on, another no less essential to feudalism was at work. Not only was the accumulation of land necessary to the growth of the feudal chiefs’ power, but the development of a body of armed retainers was imperative. Beneficing did not necessarily imply military service; oftentimes taxes in the form of rice were the compensation given in exchange for the protection of the magnate. The creation of a military class in the fiefs was at least partly due to other causes than these, the most important of which was undoubtedly the appearance of a class of landless and lawless men, recruited in part from the original land-owning free citizens, who deserted their lands to obtain relief from the growing burden of taxation. These men not only became the material for a military class supported by the fief, but made such a class necessary as the surest means of defending the estate against marauding expeditions from outside. But a band of warriors upon an estate was not only useful for defensive but for offensive purposes, and by the eleventh century the practice of violence against nearby fiefs in order to acquire their lands was as common as evasion of the law had been in the eighth and ninth for the same purpose.

With this development of military forces in connection with the estates of the great landed proprietors, several changes occurred which it is important to notice. The civil nobility of the eighth century gave place to a military nobility. Enterprising men of the lower orders sought to commend themselves only to the military leaders of the time. The great offices of State which had been hereditary in the Fujiwara family no longer carried with them the prestige necessary to attract the support of the people. Moreover, the domain over which the civil officials exercised control was relatively diminishing. Even the capital itself was not free from disturbances caused by the feuds of supporters of rival military houses, and along with the decline of the civil authority went that of the Imperial Court. The only part which it could play—and a dangerous rôle it proved to be—was to intrigue first with one military commander and then another, in an attempt to keep always on the winning side. As a result, the history of the Imperial house from the twelfth century onwards presents an almost unbroken record of misfortune. Emperors were assassinated, deposed, retired, and their power was always overshadowed by that of some military upstart. How it came about that the succession to the throne remained hereditary in one family, in the limited sense that it did, can only be explained by the force of the cult of its descent from the gods. That the various Shoguns should not have usurped the name as well as the substance¹ of royalty was certainly not due to any lack of power, nor to the possibility of resistance on the part of the Court.

Another development which followed close upon the rise of a military feudalism was the changed status of the people. By the Taikwa reforms the free citizens of the kingdom were divided into the ruling and the supporting classes. The proportion between the ruling caste and the unprivileged orders, as distinguished from the slaves, was something like 1 to 200, the former constituting about one-half per cent. of the free people. The unfree or slaves amounted to about 4 or 5 per cent. of the total population, which numbered in 700 A.D. about 3,000,000 or 3,500,000 people. From these figures it would appear that the main body of the nation was composed of a peasantry employed in the cultivation of the soil, of which they owned and occupied small but equal holdings, for which they paid taxes to the sovereign in rice, silk, and textile products, who were in addition liable to forced labour or corvée when not conscripted to serve in the Imperial Guard of the capital. But with the growth of military feudalism a startling change took place in their status. The ownership of land passed out of their hands by the processes of alienation or commendation to the feudal lords, nor was this divorcing of the peasantry from the ownership of soil counteracted by the practice of conferring benefices or by subinfeudation, which became common in the tenth century and continued thereaf...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Contents
• Part I The Reconstruction Period
• Part II The Parliamentary Régime
• Index