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Whig History, Japanese Style: The Min'yūsha Historians and the Meiji Restoration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Peter Duus
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Abstract

With these stirring lines Takekoshi Yosaburō opened the preface to the 1893 edition of his Shin Nihonshi {History of New Japan). It is difficult to imagine a more enthusiastic celebration of the Meiji Restoration than one likening it to the epochal founding of the Chou dynasty. Yet those who read beyond the confident affirmation of the preface soon encountered a rising note of anxiety, concern, even alarm in the pages that followed. For it was clear that however highly Takekoshi regarded the ideals of the “great revolution of the Restoration,” he also saw them in jeopardy. “Today,” he wrote, “slightly more than twenty years since the Restoration, the general public has begun to tread the path of unrighteousness. Ministers in power err in their policies, and those in opposition err in their views, and together both make pronouncements that give comfort only to themselves. That is why the author has taken up his brush in indignation to narrate a general outline of the changing times since the Restoration.” The revolution, in short, was a revolution betrayed, or at least unfulfilled.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , May 1974 , pp. 415 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1974

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References

The author wishes to thank the National Foundation of Humanities for financial support during a stay in Japan in 1972–73 when this essay was written. He would also like to thank Professor John Picrson of the University of Illinois and Professor Harry Harootunian of the University of Chicago for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

1 Eiichi, Matsushima (ed.), Meiji shiron shū, I: Meiji Bungaku zenshū, Vol. 77 (Chikuma shobō, 1965) p. 3. Throughout this essay I have relied on the version of Takekoshi's Shin Nihon shi found in this volume.Google Scholar

2 Ibid, p. 131.

3 Spencer, Herbert, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (Littlefield, 1963) pp. 69'70.Google Scholar

4 For a summary of Fukuzawa's views on historiography, seeBlacker, Carmen, The Japanese Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1954) pp. 90–100;Google ScholarYōko, Shirayanagi, “Meiji no shikaron,” in Matsushima, op, cit., pp. 428–432.Google Scholar

5 In addition to the essay by Shirayanagi cited in note 4, there are several other good introductory essays on Meiji historiography: Toshiaki, Ōkubo, “Meiji shonen no shigakkai to kindai rekishigaku no sciritsu,” in Matsushima, op. cit., pp. 407–422;Google ScholarSaburō, Ienaga, “Keimō shigaku,” in Matsushima, op. cit., pp. 422–427;Google ScholarAizan, Yamaji, “Nihon gendai no shigaku oyobi shika,” in Sumiya Mikio (ed.), Nihon no meicho: Tokutomi Sohō/Yamaji Aizan (Chūō Kōronsha, 1971) pp. 489–498. Shirayanagi's essay was originally published in 1934, Ōkubo's in 1940, and Ienaga's in 1957.Google Scholar

6 I have used the Iwanami bunko edition: Ukichi, Taguchi, Nihon kaika shōshi, annotated by Kaji Ryūichi, Iwanami bunko 1019–1020 (Iwanami shoten, 1972.)Google Scholar

7 Ibid, p . 145.

8 Ibid, pp. 147–172.

9 Ibid, pp. 189–194.

10 Quoted in Ienaga, op. cit., pp. 424–425.

11 Ōkubo, op. cit., pp. 414–418.

12 Sumiya, op. cit., pp. 486–487.

13 Aizan, Yamaji, “Shigakuron,” in Toshiaki, Ōkubo (ed.), Yamaji Aizan shū: Meiji bungaku zenshū, Vol. 35 (Chikuma shobō, 1965) p. 325. The essay originally appeared in Kokumin shimbun, 7/20/1900.Google Scholar

14 I have relied on the version of Shōrai no Nihon found in Sumiya, op. cit., pp. 61–183. A convenient summary of the book may also be found in Daikichi, Irokawa, “Tokutomi Sohō ron,” Rekishi hyōron, Vol. 96, pp. 32–43; Vol. 97 (1958), pp. 2–18.Google Scholar

15 As others have noted, heiminshugi is a troublesome term to translate. Masaaki, Cf. Kōsaka, Japanese Thought in the Meiji Era, tr. David Abosch (Pan-Pacific Press, 1958) p. 207.Google Scholar Tokutomi intended to use it as a translation for the word “democracy.” Professor John Pierson kindly pointed out to me that the original draft of Tokutomi's manuscript used minshūshugi instead of heiminshugi. However, the whole thrust of Tokutomi's work suggests that he understood “democracy” less as a set of political institutions than as a social systern characterized by status equality. Hence I have chosen to translate heiminteki as “popular” or “commoner” rather than as “democratic.”

16 Sumiya, op. cit., pp. 77–78.

17 Quoted in Parsons, Talcott et al. , (ed.), Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociology, Vol. 1 (Free Press, Glencoe, 111., 1961) p. 143. Spencer was not a unilinear evolutionist. As he noted in his Principles of Sociology, “Like other kinds of progress, social progress is not linear but divergent and re-divergent. Each differentiated product gives origin to a new set of differentiated products.” (Vol.3, p. 331.)Google Scholar

18 Sumiya, op. cit., pp. 72–74.

19 Ibid, pp. 95–138.

20 Taguchi, op. cit., pp. 195–208.

21 Sumiya, op. cit., p. 156.

22 Ibid, pp. 193–196.

23 Ibid, pp. 165–170.

24 Ibid, p. 166.

25 Ibid, p. 170.

26 I have relied on the version of Yoshida Shōin found in Sumiya, op. cit., pp. 189–329. This is the original edition published in 1893. As is well known, Tokutomi later revised the work in 1908 out of deference to the wishes of Yoshida's former students, who had become leaders of the hanbalsu and patrons of Tokutomi himself. Cf. Ibid, p. 31. In the original version Tokutomi portrayed Yoshida as a “child of the times.” As he wrote, the “atmosphere of ferment in Japan at length produced men like him and brought about actions like his.” Ibid, p. 192. Again, Tokutomi pointed out in the early edition, “With social conditions such as they were, a revolution could not have been avoided eventually, even without the sudden emergence of the foreign problem.” Ibid, p. 196.

27 The first volume of Shin Nihon shi appeared in July 1891 and went through seven printings by January 1893. The second volume appeared in August 1892. A third volume was projected and was evidently prepared, but was never published. The first two volumes were published by the Min'yūsha.

28 Matsushima, op. cit., pp. 133–134.

29 Ibid, p. 134.

30 Loc. cit.

31 Ibid, pp. 4–6.

32 Ibid, p. 135.

33 Ibid, pp. 135–136. Also see pp. 158–160.

34 Ibid, p. 136.

35 Ibid, pp. 137–138.

36 Loc. cit.

37 Ibid, pp. 139–141.

38 Ibid, p. 142.

39 Ibid, p. 143.

40 Ibid, pp. 145–146.

41 Ibid, pp. 160–161.

42 Several of these may be found in the collections of Yamaji's works cited above. Yamaji's best known essays on Meiji history are Meiji bungakusin (1893), Gendai Nihon kyōkai shi (1905), and Gendai kinken shi (1908).

43 Aizan, Yamaji, “Kinsei busshitsuteki shimpo,” in Ōkubo (ed.), op. cit., p. 269. This essay was originally published in Kokumin no tomo, 10–11/ 1892.Google Scholar

44 Loc. cit.; Aizan, Yamaji, “Tokugawa jidai no minsei,”Google Scholar in ibid, pp. 279–290; “Heiminteki tanka no hattatsu,” ibid, p. 290–296. The latter two essays appeared in Kolkumin no tomo, 11–12/1892, and 9–10/1892, respectively.

45 Ōkubo (ed.), op. cit., p. 290.

46 Aizan, Yamaji, “Nihon ni okeru jinken no hattatsu no konseki,”Google Scholar in ibid, pp. 314–324. The essay appeared in Kokumin no tomo, 1/1897.

47 Ibid, p. 315.

48 Ibid, p. 318.

49 Ibid, pp. 315–318.

50 Ibid, pp. 320–323.

51 Ibid, p. 324.

52 Quoted in Mikio, Sumiya, “Meiji nashonarizumu no konseki,” in Sumiya (ed.), op. cit., p. 13.Google Scholar

53 Ibid, p. 179.

54 This is the way in which most Japanese historians approach Tokutomi's thought. Kenneth Pyle's treatment of the Min‘yūsha group (The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, Stanford, 1969) presents a new and original way of looking at him from a vantage point not yet considered by Japanese historians themselves.

55 For example, Daikichi, Irokawa, “Meiji nijūnenclai no bunka,” in Iwanami kōza: Nihon no rekishi: Kindai 4, Vol. 17 (Iwanami shoten, 1962) pp. 271–314.Google Scholar

56 Quoted in Sumiya, op. cit., p. 15.

57 Matsushima (ed.), op. cit., p. 168.

58 Ibid, pp. 82–85, 161–168.

59 Ibid, p. 159. For a discussion of Tokutomi's views on the role of the “country gentlemen,” see Sumiya, op. cit., pp. 24–26; Masanao, Kanō, Shihonshugi keiseiki no chitsujo ishiki (Chikuma shobō, 1969) pp. 338–339.Google Scholar

60 Kokumin no tomo, Nr. i6, 2/17/1888, p. 89.

61 The preceding views of the Min'yūsha on the role of the country gentlemen are most succinctly stated in “Inmitsu naru seijijō no henkan,” a serial article that appeared in the Kokumin no tomo, Nr. 15–18 (2/3/1888–3/16/1888).

62 It might be hypothesized that the failure of the “country gentlemen” to seize the opportunities so apparent to Tokutomi and his circle played a key role in Tokutomi's “Change of heart.” Cf., Sumiya, op. cit., p. 26.