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Further, in the arts, considerable efforts were made to develop and promote "national" arts; many new art forms, such as ''[[Nihonga]]'' (neo-traditional painting) and ''[[yoga|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." This was born, in part, out of much the same motivations as a number of other cultural developments of the period: namely, the desire 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. 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 Inazo|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.<ref>Ben Ami Shillony, "Restoration, Emperor, Diet, Prefecture, or: How Japanese Concepts were Mistranslated into Western Languages," ''Collected Writings of Ben-Ami Shillony'', Edition Synapse (2000), 67.</ref>

Further, in the arts, considerable efforts were made to develop and promote "national" arts; many new art forms, such as ''[[Nihonga]]'' (neo-traditional painting) and ''[[yoga|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." This was born, in part, out of much the same motivations as a number of other cultural developments of the period: namely, the desire 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. 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 Inazo|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.<ref>Ben Ami Shillony, "Restoration, Emperor, Diet, Prefecture, or: How Japanese Concepts were Mistranslated into Western Languages," ''Collected Writings of Ben-Ami Shillony'', Edition Synapse (2000), 67.</ref>

[[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, like the ''[[sonno|sonnô]] [[joi|jôi]]'' and ''[[kokugaku]]'' rhetoric which preceded them, express adulation of the emperor, historian David Lu suggests we should not take this at face-value, and that it was only after the [[1895]] [[Sino-Japanese War|victory over the Chinese]] that the 1900s-1940s mode of emperor-worship began to settle into place.<ref>David Lu, ''Japan: A Documentary History'', M.E. Sharpe (1997), 306.</ref>

[[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 ''[[sonno|sonnô]] [[joi|jôi]]'' and ''[[kokugaku]]'' rhetoric which preceded them, it was only after the [[1895]] [[Sino-Japanese War|victory over the Chinese]] that the ultranationalist forms of "emperor-worship" emblematic of the 1930s-1940s began to settle into place.<ref>David Lu, ''Japan: A Documentary History'', M.E. Sharpe (1997), 306.</ref>

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