Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T13:14:18.041Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Citizenship and National Identity in Early Meiji Japan, 1868–1889: A Comparative Assessment*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Eiko Ikegami
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

After the collapse of the long-standing Tokugawa regime (1603–1867), Japan under the Meiji emperor (1867–1912) rapidly implemented the process of modern nation-building by effectively utilizing the venerable institution of the emperor (Tennō) as its new national symbol. Following the imperial restoration, the Meiji government abolished the socioeconomic and political privileges of the samurai class, namely its exclusive right to bear arms, hold office and receive hereditary stipends. By 1900, Japan had already equipped itself with a modern Constitution that defined citizens' rights and obligations, a parliamentary system, an updated judicial system, universal education, a restructured national and local bureaucracy, national standing army, private ownership of land, and a nation-wide taxation system. None of these institutions had existed prior to 1868. All of the developmental innovations listed above were instituted within little more than a quarter century after the collapse of their predecessor's political structures. Before the Meiji restoration, Japanese society had been governed exclusively by its hereditary samurai elites for two and a half centuries. It was only during the early Meiji period – a little more than two decades or so – that the concept of kokumin (usually translated as “citizen”, more literally “country-person”) entered the popular vocabulary for the first time in Japanese history. The complex social and political dynamics of this initial period of development for Japanese citizenship rights is the primary object of my inquiry.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 40 , supplement S3: Citizenship, Identity and Social History , December 1995 , pp. 185 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1995

References

1 Moore, Barrington Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., pp. 433–452; Trimberger, Ellen Kay, Revolution from Above (New Brunswick, NJ, 1978)Google Scholar. This perspective is in at least partial agreement with the writings of post-war Japanese leftist and liberal scholars, who have focused on this question: what prevented Japan from becoming a modern society in a liberal-democratic sense? In their views, Meiji Japan essentially took the first step on the fatal path toward militaristic authoritarianism and the catastrophe of 1945. To be sure, some scholars have articulated a “positive” evaluation of Meiji Japan. When the recovery and rapid expansion of the Japanese post-war economy became conspicuous, and a new set of liberal-democratic institutions, including civic and political citizenship appeared to take root, Western Japanese specialists began to describe Meiji Japan as the positive source of both economic and political developments. Pre-war institutional developments do provide some clues to explain the rapid adoption of economic and political reforms after 1945. Japanese social scientists are still generally reserved about positive evaluations of Meiji Japan, especially in the field of political developments – with good reason.

3 Moore, Social Origins; Bendix, Richard, Nation-Building and Citizenship (2nd ed., Berkeley, 1977)Google Scholar; Mann, Michael, “Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship”, Sociology, 21 (1987), pp. 339–354CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mann has classified Japanese development under the Meiji regime as an “authoritarian monarchist strategy”, together with German, Austrian, and Russian examples.

4 Marshall, T.H., “Citizenship and Social Class”, in Marshall, T.H. (ed.), Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (New York, 1964)Google Scholar.

5 Ikegami, Eiko and Tilly, Charles, “State Formations and Contention in Japan and France”, in Merriman, John M., McCain, James L. and Kaoru, Ugawa (eds), Edo and Paris (Ithaca, NY, 1995), pp. 429–454Google Scholar; Rozman, Gilbert, Urban Networks in Ch'ing China and Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, NJ, 1973)Google Scholar.

6 See for example Gordon, Andrew, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley, 1991)Google Scholar; Large, Stephen, The Rise of Labor in Japan-Yūaikai 1912–19 (Tokyo, 1972)Google Scholar.

7 Najita, Tetsuo, Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics (Chicago, 1974), p. 148Google Scholar.

8 Regarding late Meiji construction and promotion of the imperial ideology, the reader is referred to Gluck, Carol, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, 1985)Google Scholar; Masanao, Kano, “Meiji kōki ni okeru kokumin soshikika no katei”, in Masanao, Kano (ed.), Ronshū nihon rekishi – Rikken seiji (Tokyo, 1975)Google Scholar.

9 The logic was articulated in the well-known “Sword Hunt Edict” of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, promulgated in 1588, which ordered the confiscation of all weapons from villagers. The Tokugawa state basically inherited this logic. For a comparative sociological evaluation of Tokugawa state formation, the reader is referred to Ikegami, Eiko, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA, 1995)Google Scholar.

10 Regarding studies in English of pre-modern Japanese law, see Haley, John Owen, Authority without Power (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar.

11 For a complex picture of the pre-modern formation of Japanese nationalism and its impact on the restoration in English, the reader is referred to: Craig, Albert M., Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, MA, 1961)Google Scholar; Beasley, William G., The Meiji Restoration (Stanford, CA, 1972)Google Scholar; Totman, Conrad D., The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868 (Honolulu, 1980)Google Scholar. In the context of intellectual history, see Maruyama, Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Hane, Mikiso (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar; Harootunian, H.D., “The Consciousness of Archaic Form in the New Realism of Kokugaku”, in Harootunian, H.D. (ed.), Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period, 1600–1868 (Chicago, 1978), pp. 63–105Google Scholar; Harootunian, H.D., Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley, 1970)Google Scholar; and Koschmann, Victor J., The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform, and Insurrection in Late Tokugawa Japan 1790–1864 (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar.

12 Pyle, Kenneth B., “Treaty Revision and Self-Determination”, in Pyle, Kenneth B. (ed.), The New Generation in Meiji Japan (Stanford, 1969)Google Scholar; Yoshio, Matsui, “Jōyaku kaisei”, in Masao, Fukushima (ed.), Nihon kindaihō taisei no keisei ge (Tokyo, 1982)Google Scholar; Ch'en, Paul Heng-chao, The Formation of the Early Meiji Legal Order (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar; Fujio, Shimomura, Meiji shonen jōyaku kaiseishi no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1962)Google Scholar.

13 Kōji, Aoki, Meiji nōmin sōjō no nenji teki kenkyū (Tokyo, 1967)Google Scholar, and HyakushŌ ikki sōgō nenpyō (Tokyo, 1971). In post-war Japan, large-scale efforts to excavate local documents have produced remarkable advances in the study of Tokugawa collective uprisings. Drawing upon these documents, Aoki has catalogued conflicts which took place between 1590 and 1877. In English, see White, James, The Demography of Sociopolitical Conflict in Japan, 1721–1846 (Berkeley, 1992)Google Scholar. The reader is also referred to White, James, “State Growth and Popular Protest in Tokugawa Japan”, Journal of Japanese Studies 14 (1988), pp. 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an overview of Tokugawa rebellions, see Ikegami and Tilly, “State Formations and Contention”.

14 Regarding yonaoshi and ee janaika in English, see Wilson, George M., Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar.

15 Since the gōnō had been village leaders during the Tokugawa period, and had often been appointed as village officers, they had absorbed some aspects of samurai culture.

16 A status category ranking immediately below formal samurai status. Since gōshi had not been formally employed by the daimy˜, they were not samurai vassals, although they claimed descent from families of samurai status.

17 Saburo, Shimoyama, “Boshin sens˜ to ishin seiken”, in Saburo, Shimoyama (ed.), Iwanami k˜za Nihon rekishi, 14 (Tokyo, 1975)Google Scholar.

18 Regarding the financial crisis of the han polities, see Gotō Yasushi, “Shizoku hanran to mishū sojō”, in Shimoyama, Iwanami kōza Nihon rekishi, 14, pp. 271–281.

19 A few years later, the samurai stipends were terminated, and the carrying of the traditional swords was prohibited. At this stage, however, the abolition of the samurai's status and privileges was still incomplete.

20 Samurai, farmers, craftsmen and merchants. These four groups comprised the feudal status categories which defined the samurai as rulers and all others as subjects.

21 Chōhei kokuyu, reprinted in Nihon kindai shisō taikei, 4: Guntai to heishi (Tokyo, 1989), pp. 67–68. Regarding the history of conscription, the reader is referred to Yoshio, Matsushita, Chōheirei seiteishi (Tokyo, 1981)Google Scholar; Masao, Fukushima, “Gunji kikō no kensetsu”, in Masao, Fukushima (ed.) Nihon kindai hō taisei no keisei (Tokyo, 1981)Google Scholar; Shinzaburō, Ōishi, “Chōhei sei to ie”, Rekishigaku kenkyū, CXCIV (1956)Google Scholar.

22 Total figure, according to the army minister's report (rikugunkyō). Ōyama Iwao served as army minister in 1881. Chōhei ihi ni tsuki kengi, reprinted in Nihon kindai shisō taikei 4, p. 119. A number of handbooks describing ways to evade the draft were published during this period.

23 The normalization of land as private property confronted two obstacles: the abolition of the samurai's feudal privileges, and the identification of sharecroppers and landlords who were responsible for payment of land taxes. Regarding these complex issues, see Satoru, Niwa, “Ryōshusei no kaitai to tochi kaikaku”, in kenkyūkai, Rekishigaku and kenkyūkai, Nihonshi (eds), Kōza nihon rekishi (Tokyo, 1985), p. viiGoogle Scholar; Kunio, Niwa, Chiso kaisei to zaisei kikō no kakuritsu (Tokyo, 1981)Google Scholar; Nakamura Satoru, “Ryōshusei no kaitai to tochi kaikaku”, in Rekishigaku kenkyūkai and Nihonshi kenkyūkai (eds) Kōza Nihon.

24 Aoki, Hyakushō ikki.

25 For an overview of peasant rebellions of this era, see Gotō, “Shizoku hanran to nōmin sōjō”. For an account of the complex internal workings of these peasant uprisings against tax reform, see Kelly, William, Deference and Defiance in Nineteenth-Century Japan(Princeton, 1985), pp. 173–204Google Scholar.

26 A letter from Ōkubo to Prime Minister Saneyoshi, Sanjō, 27 December 1876, in Ōkubo Toshimichi bunsho (Tokyo, 1969), VII, p. 439Google Scholar.

27 Saigō had been considered the most prominent military hero of the Meiji restoration.

28 The exception was the abortive anti-government coup d'état in Kurume domain in 1871. In this case, the former daimyō lord was put under house arrest, and the government arrested 339 other participants.

29 The lesser samurai who received a small sum in government bonds often moved down the class ladder to join the numbers of the powerless urban poor, because they had few assets other than their hereditary income from the daimyō. The government introduced various employment programs for the ex-samurai, but none were very successful. For an overview of the process of samurai dissolution, see Sonoda, Hidehiro, “The Decline of the Japanese Warrior Class”, Japan Review, I (1990), pp. 73–111Google Scholar.

30 The sharp conflict of interest between the samurai and the peasantry was the locus of class struggles throughout the Tokugawa period. In pre-modern Japanese history, it was always the agricultural villages rather than the cities that had the organizational resources for mobilizing opposition against the feudal samurai powers. Under the Tokugawa system, the villages were collectively responsible for paying the grain tax to the daimyō lords. The villagers were allowed to retain some degree of self-government while the samurai vassals who had been landed lords in the previous period were forced to reside in the castle cities of the daimyō.

31 Takaaki, Ikai, “Jiyū minken undō to sensei seifu”, in kenkyūkai, Rekishi gaku and kenkyūkai, Nihonshi (eds), Kōza, Nihon rekishi 7 kindai 1 (Tokyo, 1985), pp. 261–268Google Scholar; Shigeki, Tōyama, “Yūshi sensei no seiritsu”, in Meiji ishin (Tokyo, 1973; 1st ed. 1959)Google Scholar.

32 There is no precise definition of Jiyū minken undō, as the term included a miscellany of loosely organized groups interested in promoting citizenship rights. In Japanese historical scholarship, popular movements in the period between 1874 and the early 1890s are usually lumped together as Jiyū minken undō, or Freedom and People's Rights Movements.

33 See Eiko Ikegami, Taming of the Samurai, pp. 349–360.

34 Ōhashi Tomonosuke, “Meiji kokka kensetsu ni okeru hō-kokka kan no sōkoku”, in Fukushima, Nihon kindai, p. 416. Regarding the ex-samurai's contribution to the movements, see Shigeki, Tōyama, “Jiyū minken undō ni okeru shizoku teki yōso”, Jiyū minken: rohshū nihon rekishi 10 (Tokyo, 1973)Google Scholar.

35 Eiichi, Emura, Jiyū minken kakumei no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1984), pp. 35–40Google Scholar; Daikichi, Irokawa, Hideo, Ei and Katsuhiro, Arai, Minshū kenpō no sōzō (Tokyo, 1970)Google Scholar.

36 Irokawa et al., Minshū kenpō, pp. 61–64.

37 27 March 1880, in Tekeaki, Haraguchi (ed.), Meiji jūsannen zenkoku kokkai kaisetsu genrōin kenpakusho shūsei (Tokyo, 1956)Google Scholar.

38 Haraguchi, Meiji jūsannen, pp. 6–7.

39 Matsui, “Jūyaku kaisei”, in Fukushima, Nihon kindaihō, p. 228. See also Jones, F.C., Extraterritoriality in Japan and the Diplomatic Relations Resulting in Its Abolition, 1853–1899 (New Haven, 1931), pp. 77–78Google Scholar.

40 Matsui, “Jōyaku kaisei”, p. 228.

41 During the early Meiji period, the influence of French law was predominant in the fields of Japanese commercial, family and criminal law. However, British and German legal systems were also intensively studied at this time.

42 Letter to Sanjō, December 1879. Reprinted in Iwakura Tomomi kankei bunsho, I, p. 94.

43 Around this time, the influential liberal progressive politician Ōkuma Shigenobu was expelled from the government. The remaining members then agreed among themselves to base the draft constitution on the Prussian model, in order to strengthen the power of the monarchy. The reader is referred to Hirano Takeshi, “Kenpō no seitei”, in Fukushima, Nihon kindaihō taisei, p. 283.

44 Regarding these incidents, see Bowen, Roger, Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan: A Study of Commoners in the Popular Rights Movement (Berkeley, 1980)Google Scholar.

45 Regarding the Iwakura group's contribution to kokutai discourse, the reader may consult Toshiaki, Ōkubo, “Meiji kenpō no seitei katei to kokutairon – Iwakura Tomomi no Taisei kiyō ni yoru sokumenkan”, in Rikken seiji: Ronshū nihon rekishi 11 (Tokyo, 1975; 1st ed. 1954)Google Scholar. Regarding the development of the notion of kokutai, see also Emura, Jiyū minken, pp. 221–224, and Masao, Maruyama, Nihon no shisō (Tokyo, 1961), pp. 33–35Google Scholar.

46 Hirano, “Kenpō no seitei”, in Fukushima, Nihin kindaihō taisei, pp. 301–302.

47 Ikai Takaaki, “Jiyū minken undō to sensei seifu”, in Kōza, Nihon rekishi 7 kindai I, pp. 286–295.

48 Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, p. 2. The reader may also wish to consult Mason, R.H.P., Japan's First General Election 1890 (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar.

49 Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 43Google Scholar.

50 Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States AD 990–1990 (Oxford, 1990), p. 159Google Scholar.

51 Somers, Margaret R., “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy”, American Sociological Review, 58 (1993), pp. 587–620CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood, p. 61. See also Oestreich, Gerhard, “The Estates of Germany and the Formation of the State”, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kohn, Hans, Prelude to Nation-States (Toronto, 1967)Google Scholar; Poggi, Gianfranco, The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction (Stanford, 1978)Google Scholar.

53 See, for example, Blackbourne, D. and Eley, G., The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Weber, Max, Economy and Society (Berkeley, 1978; 1st ed. 1968), p. 1236Google Scholar.

55 Gerhard Oestreich, “From contractual monarchy to constitutionalism”, in Neostoicism, pp. 166–186; Berman, Harold J., Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1983)Google Scholar.

56 Downing, Brian M., The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1992)Google Scholar.