Meiji period

Statue of Emperor Meiji at Naminoue Shrine in Okinawa, identified as kokka (国家), or, "The State."

• Dates: 1868-1912
• Other Names: 近代 (kindai)
• Japanese: 明治時代 (Meiji jidai)

The Meiji period, spanning the years from 1868 to 1912, saw dramatic changes in myriad aspects of politics, economy, culture, and society, and marked the emergence of the modern nation-state of Japan.

Politics

Following the Meiji Restoration which overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate, a new Imperial government under the Meiji Emperor was established, patterned after the constitutional monarchies and democracies of the West. After much consideration and debate, a Constitution was written up, and promulgated in 1889.

That said, though the history of this period is often, necessarily, simplified, the Meiji government did not, in fact, have a set plan from the beginning, which they then smoothly laid out step-by-step, addressing all the key problems in good order and good time. Quite to the contrary, during that time from 1868 until the promulgation of the Constitution in 1889, things were quite unstable. There was much disagreement within the government, and without. The Restoration could have fallen apart, or gone in a dramatically different direction, at any of numerous points.

• Abolition of Han. As part of the dismantling of the feudal system, the central government took control of most of the country's castles. Many were demolished at this time. Some were turned over to governmental or military purposes. Many former daimyô clans relocated to secondary residences, turning these into primary family mansions; the Hotta mansion which survives in Sakura, Chiba prefecture, and the Shimazu clan's Iso mansion at Sengan'en in Kagoshima are examples of this.
• Genro, etc.
• Iwakura Embassy
• Seikanron
• Satsuma Rebellion & other shizoku rebellions
• Constitution
• National Diet

Japan also began along the path of imperialism in the Meiji period, annexing Ezo (Hokkaidô) in 1869, the Ryûkyû Islands in 1879, Taiwan in 1895, and Korea in 1905-1910.

Economics

In terms of commerce, industry, and infrastructure, the country modernized perhaps more quickly than any country ever has. Railroads, electricity, gaslamps, steamships, and countless other technological advances which began to be introduced in the Bakumatsu era spread, quickly becoming ubiquitous. Banks, factories, import-export companies, and other sorts of modern corporate businesses abounded, and Japan quickly became a competitive force on the world stage. The government hired some 3,000 foreigners to serve as advisors and teachers in guiding these infrastructure efforts, and in teaching the first generation of Japanese experts at the newly established Imperial universities. The majority by far were experts in engineering and architecture, and were employed by the Ministry of Education.

Much of these economic changes were driven by individual entrepreneurs, including many of the former merchant class (such as the founders of Mitsukoshi, etc.), and also many of the former samurai class; for example, the Shimazu clan shifted their family wealth into the Shimazu Corporation, and low-ranking samurai Iwasaki Yatarô founded Mitsubishi. But much of this economic modernization and growth was also fueled by the government, which promoted nationalist slogans such as bunmei kaika (文明開化, "civilization and enlightenment"), fukoku kyôhei (富国強兵, "prosperous country, strong military"), wakon yôsai (和魂洋才, "Japanese spirit, Western technique"), and shokusan kôgyô (殖産興業, promotion of industry).

Society

The samurai class was abolished in 187X, and the system of feudal domains (han) in 1871. Though all were now meant to be relatively equal, as Imperial subjects, no longer divided into Confucian classes of merchants, peasants, and artisans, a new aristocracy was formed to include the former daimyô, court nobles, and others.

Culture

Everyday culture changed dramatically, from food to fashion to architecture, as Western styles were adopted. Much was retained, of course, or evolved into new modern forms without being discarded entirely; still, modernity came quickly, especially in the big cities, in these respects.

A national culture was born for the first time. Public education, nationwide newspapers, and the abolition of the feudal system & centralization of government under Tokyo, along with numerous other factors fueled the development of a single national culture. Regional culture was celebrated, but it was also suppressed. The government promoted, as it still does today, the distinctive sights and scenery of each region, and regional products (meibutsu, e.g. Aomori apples and Kagawa udon). But, it also promoted the idea that provincial dialects, and many other aspects of regional culture, were backwards, and un-modern. Through a singular nationwide public education curriculum and other methods, the government encouraged the development of a singular, modern, national culture and identity.

In response to this, however, a number of scholars, writers, and artists perceived the loss of regional folk traditions as an existential threat to Japanese identity. They argued that Japanese identity was grounded fundamentally in folk traditions, including especially folk arts (mingei) such as pottery and textiles, and that this was being actively destroyed by the nationalization and modernization efforts; as Japan modernized, they found in Hokkaidô, Okinawa, Korea, and Taiwan what they claimed was an earlier, truer form of Japanese culture, which was being lost and which needed to be recovered. While their efforts certainly did serve to revive or preserve many folk traditions which might otherwise have been lost, it is important to note that the Mingei movement was not in fact rescuing these traditions as they truly had been in ages past, but rather was re-inventing, re-conceptualizing these arts; the Mingei vision of Japanese culture, history, and identity was an invented tradition no less so than the more official and mainstream efforts to promote National arts.

Trough participation in World's Fairs, the establishment of Imperial (National) Museums, the establishment of a system of National Treasures, and the promotion of particular art forms, among other means, the government worked to prove to the Japanese people, and to the world, that Japan was modern, civilized, and possessed just as worthy a tradition and history as any other great nation. Many new art forms, such as Nihonga (neo-traditional painting) and yôga (Western-style oil painting) were born out of this, while many older art forms, such as Noh, kabuki, and tea ceremony, were formalized or re-invented as "national traditions."

The city of Kyoto was intentionally shaped into a symbol of Japan's great, noble, past, and numerous historical figures (such as Kusunoki Masashige) were revived and celebrated as national heroes. Nitobe Inazô invented and promoted the notion of bushido as a corollary to Europe's great tradition of chivalry. A European-style aristocratic peerage, complete with titles equivalent to Baron, Duke, and Marquis, was implemented, and many classical government positions were given equivalent European names; for example, the post of Naidaijin was named Lord of the Privy Seal, and was, at least partially, patterned in its new, modern incarnation, after the position of Lord of the Privy Seal in European courts.

For the first decade or two of the period, the Meiji government made little concerted effort to guide the (re)building and shaping of Tokyo and Kyoto, and in fact for the first several years of the period the government remained undecided as to which city would be the official capital, or whether they might have multiple capitals. Even after it was decided that Tokyo would be the national, Imperial, capital, for many years little coordinated effort was made to reshape the city into a national symbol and modern capital in the Western/modern mode. Only in the late 1880s and 1890s (albeit with a few earlier exceptions) did the government begin to build grand boulevards, triumphal arches, massive public parks, and statues of national heroes. And it was only at that time, in fact, that the Tokyo Imperial Palace itself was (re)built, from being a samurai castle which largely burned down in an 187X blaze, to being a modern Imperial palace. Similarly, the old imperial capital of Kyoto was largely left to simply fall into disrepair from 1868 until the 1880s, before the government decided to make a concerted effort to shape Kyoto into a powerful symbol of Japan's illustrious past. Beginning in the 1880s, the Kyoto Imperial Palace was repaired, and much of its grounds transformed into a public park, with many other sites in the city attracting government attention and support as well. Historian Takashi Fujitani writes of a "museumification of Kyoto" which was effected at this time, transforming the city into something "not unlike a public museum in its display of objects that were to be appreciated as the true representations of history."

State Shinto was also developed, along with a complex set of rituals, tradition, and national ideology surrounding the Emperor. However, like much else in this period, this developed over time. Though many of the earliest Meiji period documents express adulation of the emperor, continuing the sonnô jôi and kokugaku rhetoric which preceded them, it was only after the 1895 victory over the Chinese that the ultranationalist forms of "emperor-worship" emblematic of the 1930s-1940s began to settle into place. Buddhism was at the same time very briefly but very powerfully suppressed; a great many temples were closed in 1869-1870 or so, and a great many Buddhist artworks, icons, and artifacts were either sold to foreign collectors or were destroyed.

The massive cultural and societal shifts into modernity also brought significant linguistic developments. Firstly, the shift from woodblock printing to movable type meant a standardization of the characters (kana and kanji). Where woodblock printing previously emulated handwriting, in which each character might be abbreviated, calligraphically, in a number of ways, modern type (along with modern public education) now formalized both the kana and kanji into the forms we know today. Second, numerous new terms were coined and incorporated into the language, to refer to modern technologies, Western cultural and intellectual concepts, and modern political and social structures. The term tetsudô (鉄道, lit. "iron road") was coined, for example, to refer to railroads, and the terms jitensha (自転車, "self turning vehicle") and denwa (電話, "electric talk") for bicycles and telephone respectively. New words were coined to refer to "philosophy" (哲学, tetsugaku), "literature" (文学, bungaku), "economics" (経済, keizai), and "politics" (政治, seiji), as understood in their particular modern/Western forms. The concept of "art," that is, high art, especially as divided into "visual arts" and "performing arts," similarly had not previously existed in Japan, and so the terms bijutsu 美術 and geijutsu 芸術 were coined. Meanwhile, numerous new fields only first emerging in the West as well at that time, such as anthropology (人類学, jinruigaku), needed to be termed in Japanese. New political structures and concepts such as the "citizen" (国民, kokumin), the Imperial subject (皇民, kômin), and the Nation/State (国家, kokka), as well as "society" (社会, shakai), "freedom" or "liberty" (自由, jiyû), and "people's rights" (民権, minken), similarly came into being at this time. A great many of these terms were then adopted into Chinese.

History was also reconceptualized at this time, as Meiji discourse constructed a "national" history, one in which "Japan" had always existed as a single unit under an unbroken line of Emperors, and in which the Tokugawa period was repressive and backwards, and the Meiji period one of progress and modernity. In the course of writing this history, numerous terms were either coined anew, or appropriated from the Chinese classics, and applied retroactively, anachronistically, to the past. It was in these histories that the feudal domains of the Edo period were first called han, that the emperors were for the first time invariably called tennô, and that the term bakufu (lit. "tent government") was adopted as the chief, standard term for the three shogunates.