Modern Japan

Aspects of History, Literature and Society

W. G. Beasley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032152875
• eBook ISBN: 9781000510935
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1975, much of Western scholarly writing on Japan had in recent years concerned the study of modernisation. The papers in this volume, which were prepared by leading specialists from Europe and Israel, concentrate on the problems arising from modernisation, rather than on an analysis of the process itself. The historical papers deal with various aspects of the political and international tensions that link modernisation to Japanese expansion and the Second World War: the civil war of 1868; early newspapers and nationalist opinion; the Washington Conference; politics in the 1930s; the bombing of Japan in 1945. Those on literature examine some related themes concerning national attitudes, as expressed in drama and the novel, especially in the context of the relationship of modern ideas and institutions to traditional culture and society. Similar questions are raised by the discussion of new post-war religions, as well as in papers on the use of leisure and on industrial relations in contemporary Japan. Finally, there are two contributions dealing with the economic consequences of the industrial miracle that has marked the latest phase of modernisation, one on balance of payments difficulties and one on current plans to deal with the problems of urban growth. Many of these papers present the results of hitherto unpublished research of great importance to students of modern Japan.

Part I History

1 The Politics of the Civil War of 1868

Charles D. Sheldon

The year 1868 was a time of extreme trials for the new Meiji government. Perhaps because these trials were ultimately weathered, historians have tended to underemphasise their importance, and the importance of the civil war itself. Within the new government there were two closely balanced opposing forces: the group led by Chōshū and Satsuma leaders, chiefly Ōkubo Toshimichi, Saigō Takamorj, both of Satsuma, and Kido Kōin of Chōshū, and usually associated with the crafty and influential court noble Iwakura Tomomi. This group is often called in Japanese buryoku tōbaku-ha (the faction favouring bringing down the Bakufu—the Shogunate—by military force). For convenience, as this is a bit unwieldy in English, I will refer to this faction as the Ōkubo group. It is the party associated with a policy of thorough and uncompromising centralisation of the country under the Emperor, and, increasingly, with an anti-feudal policy and modernisation on the Western model.

The other group, kōgi seitai-ha in Japanese, the faction advocating a political structure based on consultation, consisted of a loose alignment of moderate and conservative forces. It was not nearly so singleminded, but in numbers it was vastly superior to the Ōkubo group. Its numerical advantages were, however, largely outside the government. It favoured compromise, clemency to the Tokugawa, and maintenance of a modified, more centralised feudal system. I will use the term ‘moderate group’ to characterise this faction.

Despite strong pressure for a moderate solution, the Ōkubo group won in the end due to determination and willingness to use force, to a clearsighted policy, and also, as is often the case in human affairs, to simple good luck as well. Three events played a crucial role in this success: the victories of the Imperial forces in the battles at Toba and Fushimi (27–30 January 1868)—this, in fact, was a virtually independent action of Satsuma and Chōshū forces—in the one-day battle of Ueno in Edo (4 July), and in the taking of the castle of Wakamatsu in northern Japan (5 November) after a long and difficult campaign.^* Last, and most important, the challenges and opportunities offered to the government during the day-to-day hostilities created patterns which did much to determine the kind of central government which emerged, and the options open to that government.

^* See Figure 1, p. 29, for domain and other geographical location.

Figure 1. Sketch Map to show Geographical Names mentioned

There are two indisputable facts which no doubt have led historians to underestimate the importance of the civil war: at the very beginning, the most crucial battle, that at Toba and Fushimi, ended in a decisive victory for the new government; and the pro-Tokugawa holdouts under Admiral Enomoto, far away in Hokkaido, who were the last to surrender, were obviously no serious threat to the Meiji government. But this is to overlook the importance of the struggle that went on throughout most of 1868, which included a long and difficult campaign in the north against a large anti-government alliance. This comprised thirty-one domains, plus Aizu and Shōnai, aided by several thousand officers and men from the Bakufu, from Kuwana, Mito and other han, together with French ‘military advisers’, and by the former Bakufu fleet under Enomoto. It also misses the importance of the use of government troops to threaten or to force recalcitrant or hesitant feudal lords throughout much of the country to swear allegiance to the new government under the Emperor. Under these conditions, military considerations and military men came to the fore. Both force and the threat of force proved to be very important politically, in the effects they had on the breakdown of the feudal system and its later abolition. Okubo and other leaders, fully aware of the basic weakness and narrow base of the new government, took the war very seriously indeed. The nature of the war, in which both sides were striving to ‘modernise’, spurred on the search for new military and political methods and solutions, mostly suggested by Western experience, and the fear of foreign aid or intervention on behalf of the ‘rebels’, made this search all the more pressing.

The year 1868 marked the real beginning of the shift from a feudal to a modern Japan, when the political struggle which had been set off by Perry’s arrival in 1853 finally broke out into an open fight. The ruling classes, the many-tiered hierarchy of warriors, were not alone involved in the fighting. Whether in the villages, towns or cities, people of all classes were involved in one way or another. The civil war served to intensify conflicts and compromises of group interests, breaking down feudal solidarity among the samurai, stimulating new ideas and innovations, and speeding the defeat of the traditional political and moral principles associated with feudalism.

However, it was not simply a struggle between progressive and unprogressive forces. The reforms of the Bakufu under the last Shogun, the vigorous and impressive Tokugawa Yoshinobu (Keiki) were in some ways surprisingly progressive. Not only were efforts made to build a modern navy (with British help) and to modernise the Bakufu army (with French aid), but Oguri Tadamasa and other Bakufu bureaucrats, under French tutelage, planned to institute a prefectural system which would have cut off the prerogatives of the feudal lords (daimyo).¹

These reforms were making good progress until they were interrupted by the civil war. Their very successes, in the short run, and their radical nature, coupled with respect for the political abilities of Yoshinobu, provoked greater militancy on the part of the anti-Bakufu forces, and helped to bring about the Satsuma-Chōshū alliance. It is, however, problematical whether they would have been ultimately successful in reviving the Bakufu. In any case, they were interrupted by the civil war, and, aside from the basic difficulty, perhaps impossibility, for the Bakufu to dispense with the feudal system, there were many more immediate obstacles to the ultimate success of the reforms. They included the limitations of French aid, corruption in the Bakufu bureaucracy, and the fact that public opinion had already foresaken the Bakufu after the failure of the second punitive expedition against Chōshū in October 1866. Evidences of widespread disillusionment with the Bakufu include increasing disregard for Bakufu law, the lack of response by the daimyo to Bakufu requests and even orders, as well as peasant uprisings and riots which were at their worst in Bakufu territories. All this leads one to conclude that although something of the feudal system might well have been prolonged, the Tokugawa system was without doubt irretrievably lost by the time Yoshinobu became Shogun in January 1867.

Perhaps the best description of Yoshinobu comes to us from the British diplomat A. H. Mitford, later Lord Redesdale:

’[He] was a very striking personality. He was of average height, small as compared with Europeans, but the old Japanese robes made the difference less apparent. I think he was the handsomest man, according to our ideas, that I saw during all the years I was in Japan. His features were regular, his eye brilliantly lighted and keen, his complexion a clear, healthy olive colour. The mouth was very firm, but his expression when he smiled was gentle and singularly winning. His frame was well-knit and strong, the figure of a man of great activity; an indefatigable horseman, as inured to weather as an English master of hounds....He was a great noble if ever there was one. The pity of it was that he was an anachronism.’²

The coup d’état of 3 January 1868, which secured control of the young Emperor by a small group of court nobles and representatives of the three tozama (’outside’) han of Satsuma, Tosa and Aki (Hiroshima) and the Tokugawa related houses of Owari (sanke) and Echizen (kamon), proved to be the decisive date for the Restoration of the Emperor and the beginning of far-reaching changes. But, as Professor Beasley has pointed out: ‘To all appearances it was no more than another palace revolution—as many of the participants must have thought it.’³

The decisions taken by a council, which excluded all known opponents, included stripping the former Shogun of his offices and lands. But this was understood by some to mean only part of his lands, and in any case, the decisions of the council were not made public. Chōshū, having been pardoned by the Emperor, moved troops to Kyoto, and Yoshinobu left the capital for Osaka on 7 January. Mitford, who was there, describes the scene when the former Shogun arrived at Osaka castle:

‘A more extravagantly weird picture it would be difficult to imagine. There were some infantry armed with European rifles, but there were also warriors clad in the old armour of the country carrying spears, bows and arrows, curiously shaped with sword and dirk, who looked as if they had stepped out of some old pictures of the Gem-Pei wars in the Middle Ages. Their jimbaoris [coats worn over armour], not unlike heralds’ tabards, were as many-coloured as Joseph’s coat. Hideous masks of lacquer and iron, fringed with portentous whiskers and moustachios, crested helmets with wigs from which long streamers of horsehair floated to their waists, might strike terror into any enemy. They looked like the hobgoblins of a nightmare. Soon a troop of horsemen appeared. The Japanese all prostrated themselves and bent their heads in reverent awe. In the midst of the troop was the fallen Prince, accompanied by his faithful adherents, Aidzu and Kuwana. The Prince himself seemed worn and dejected ... his head wrapped in a black cloth, taking notice of nothing. ... At the gate all dismounted, according to custom—save only the War Lord himself; he rode in, a solitary horseman. It was the last entry of a Shogun into the grand old castle which had come into the heritage of the Tokugawa by one tragedy, and was to pass out of their possession by another.’⁴

But this was not the end of Yoshinobu as a force in Japanese politics. With less thought for himself than for the preservation of the Tokugawa clan, he turned his efforts towards a compromise settlement, with the help of Owari and Echizen, two of the han which had participated in the Restoration council, both related to the Tokugawa. Yoshinobu agreed to their proposal that he would give up his offices and court rank, but only enough of his domains to give the Emperor a sufficient revenue. Yoshinobu’s explanation of his withdrawal to Osaka was that he wished to avoid civil war. On 14 January, he wrote a memorial to the Court interpreting the coup d’etat as having resulted from plans, based on self-interest, of one or two han (a reference to Chōshū, banned from the Court, and Satsuma), brazenly making use of the boy Emperor. Yoshinobu proposed a return to the situation before the coup, calling a meeting of the principal lords, selecting men ‘of integrity’, and securing the resignation of the traitors. The memorial was received by Iwakura, who shelved it, not telling others in the government, perhaps for fear of a disturbance.⁵

In the Imperial council meeting of 18 and 19 January, the issue between the two factions on the problem of the resignation of the Shogun and the confiscation of his lands was reconsidered. Iwakura, while ostensibly carrying out the implications of the coup d’état, absented himself from the meeting on the pretext of illness. The meeting finally decided that, ‘After an investigation into the administrative means for the distribution of lands, the matter will be decided by reference to opinion in the country’, significantly omitting any reference to the return of lands to the Emperor. The efforts of the Ōkubo group and the demand for the return of lands in Iwakura’s letter were swept aside by the moderate faction, now evidently in a position of predominance. Iwakura’s withdrawal left a strong suspicion that the position he had taken earlier had been no more than a manoeuvre. The same day, returning to the principles of the memorial of Yamauchi Yōdō (the Tosa Memorial), on the basis of which the Shogun had resigned, the moderate faction took the lead in deciding that government expenses would be levied against the main han, including the Tokugawa, ‘as soon as a decision in detail is taken on the problem of Yoshinobu’s return of lands to the Emperor’.⁶

At this point, Yoshinobu advanced a step further. On 23 January he sent word to Tokugawa Yoshikatsu (of Owari) and Matsudaira Keiei (of Echizen), leaders of the moderate group in Kyoto, that if the e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: Modern Japan: An Historian’s View
• Part I History
• Part II Literature
• Part III Society
• Notes
• Index