Meiji era

The Meiji era (明治時代, meiji jidai^?) or Meiji Period (October 23, 1868 - July 30, 1912) denotes the 45-year reign of the Japanese Emperor Meiji. During this period, the country began its modernization and westernization, establishing itself as a world power. The name means 'Rules Cult Era'.

In 1868 the Meiji revolution took place, and the emperor regained his power. Then, some legal reforms tending to equate Japanese society with European society are undertaken, taking the liberal Prussia of Guillermo II as a model.

The Meiji Restoration and the Emperor

On February 3, 1868, Mutsuhito succeeded his father, Emperor Kōmei. He was proclaimed the Meiji Emperor and a new Meiji Era, which means 'worship of the ruler'. The Meiji Restoration ended 265 years of rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate.

The first reform was the promulgation of the Letter of Oath in 1868, a general declaration intended for the Meiji oligarchy to gain the necessary momentum to win the confidence and financial support of the Government of Meiji Japan. The five statutes consisted of:

1. Establishment of deliberative assemblies.
2. Integration of all classes in the task of advancing the state.
3. Replacement of "injurious habits" by "natural laws."
4. International quest for knowledge.
5. Strengthening the foundations of the imperial rule.

Implicit in the Oath was to end the political exclusivity of the Bakufu and move towards more democratic participation in government. To implement the statutes of the Oath, eleven constitutional articles were elaborated. In addition to providing a new Council of State, legislative body, and rank system for nobles and officials, tenure was limited to four years, public voting was allowed, a new tax system was established, and new laws were established. administrative premises.

The Meiji government assured foreign forces that they should follow the ancient treaties negotiated with the Bakufu and that they should act in accordance with international law. Mutsuhito, who reigned until 1912, selected a new title Meiji, or Cult of Government, to mark the beginning of a new era in Japanese history.

To stage the new order, the capital was moved from Kyoto, where it had been located since 794, to Tokyo (East Capital), a new name for Edo. In a pivotal move for the consolidation of the new regime, most Daimyō voluntarily handed over their land and census records to the emperor during the abolition of the Han system, symbolizing that the land and people were under jurisdiction. of the emperor Confirmed their hereditary positions, the daimyō became governors, and the central government assumed their administrative expenses and paid the samurai's stipends. The han was replaced by the prefectures in 1871, and authority continued to flow to the central government. Officials favored by the previous han, such as those of Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Hizen Province, were placed in positions in the new ministries. Formally, nobles not favored by the court and lower-ranking and more radical samurai replaced Bakufu appointees, Daimyō, and former court nobles as a new ruling class emerged..

As the Meiji Restoration attempted to return the emperor to a superior position, efforts focused on establishing a Shinto state more like the state of a thousand years ago. Although Shinto and Buddhism had been molded into a Syncretistic belief over the previous thousand years, a new Shinto state had been built for that purpose. The Office of Shinto Worship, ranked above the State Council in importance, was established. The Kokutai ideas of the Mito schools were adopted, and the ancestral divinity of the Japanese imperial family was emphasized. In a small but important move, the government supported Shinto teachers. Although the Office of Shinto Worship was demoted in 1872, by 1877 the House of Minister controlled all Shinto shrines and the state recognized certain Shinto sects. The Shinto religion was separated from the Buddhist administration and its features restored. Although Buddhism suffered from state support for Shinto, it had its own resurgence. Christianity was also legalized, and Confucianism remained an important ethical doctrine. However, the number of Japanese thinkers identifying with Western ideologies and methodologies increased more and more.

Politics

The major institutional achievement after the Satsuma Rebellion was the beginning of a trend toward representative government development. After the Meiji Restoration, people who had been forced to stay away from government affairs witnessed or heard about the success of representative institutions in other countries around the world and put pressure on the government.

One of the greatest proponents of representative government was Itagaki Taisuke (1837-1919), a powerful leader from Tosa province who was a deputy on the Seikanron State Council in 1873. Itagaki used peaceful means instead of rebel media to gain a voice in the government. He started a school and a movement that sought to establish a constitutional monarchy and a legislative assembly. Itagaki, along with others, wrote the Tosa Memorial in 1874, criticizing the unbridled power of the oligarchy and calling for the immediate establishment of representative government.

Between 1871 and 1873, a series of tax and land laws were enacted as the basis for modern fiscal policy. Private ownership was legalized, deeds created, and land appraised at fair market value, with taxes to be paid in cash instead of the slightly lower rates previously.

Unhappy with the pace of reforms, after meeting with the Council of State in 1875, Itagaki organized his supporters and other democratic proponents into a nationwide Aikokusha (Society of Patriots) to push for representative government in 1878. In In 1881, in an action for which he is best known, Itagaki helped found the Jiyuto (Liberal Party), which favored French political doctrines. In 1882 Okuma Shigenobu established the Kaishintō (Constitutional Progressive Party), which sought a British-style constitutional democracy. In response, government bureaucrats, local government officials, and other conservatives established the Rikken Teiseito (Imperial Government Party), a pro-government party, in 1881. The subsequent outbreak of numerous political protests, some of them violent, resulted in some government restrictions. The restrictions made it difficult to create political parties and created internal divisions between them. The Jiyuto, which was against the Kaishinto, was dissolved in 1884, and Okuma resigned from the Kaishinto presidency. Government leaders, concerned about violent dealings, stability problems and the Seikanron's literati divisions, were mostly in favor of establishing a constitutional government. Chōshū leader Kido Takayoshi had favored a constitutional form of government since before 1874, and various draft proposals were made as proposals to guarantee constitutional government. The oligarchy, however, while acknowledging the reality of political pressure, was determined to maintain control.

The Osaka Conference in 1875 resulted in a reorganization of the government with an independent judiciary and a Council of Elders appointed to review the legislature's proposals. The emperor declared that "a constitutional government should be established in gradual stages" by ordering the Council of Elders to draft a constitution.

Three years later, the Conference of Prefectural Governors established an elected assembly. Although limited in its authority, this assembly represented a movement in the direction of representative government at the national level. Town and city assemblies were also formed in 1880, and delegates from twenty-two prefectures held a national convention to establish the Kokkai Kisei Domei (League to Establish a National Assembly).

Although the government was not opposed to a parliamentary government, it continued to try to maintain control of the political situation. New laws established in 1875 prohibited the press from criticizing the government or discussing national laws. The Public Assembly Law (1880) severely limited public gatherings, prohibiting the attendance of public officials and requiring police permission for all gatherings.

When the emperor finally relinquished a portion of his authority and gave his subjects rights and freedoms, the 1889 Constitution of the Empire of Japan provided for the Imperial Diet (Teikoku Gikai), composed of elected members of the House of Representatives with voting rights limited to male citizens over the age of 25 and paying 15 yen in national taxes, about 1% of the population, and the House of Nobles, made up of nobility and designated imperial members, and a responsible cabinet to the emperor and independent to the legislature. The Diet could pass government legislation and laws, representing the government, and send petitions to the emperor. However, despite these institutional changes, sovereignty still resided with the emperor and the basis of his ancestral divinity.

The new constitution specified a form of government that stood in character, with the emperor retaining supreme power and only a few privileges granted to popular rights and parliamentary mechanisms. Party participation was recognized as part of the political process. The Meiji Constitution remained the fundamental law until 1947.

In the early years of constitutional rule, the strengths and weaknesses of the Meiji Constitution came to the fore. A small group of the Satsuma and Chōshū elite continued to rule Japan, being institutionalized as an extraordinary body of the Genrō. Collectively, the Genrō made decisions reserved for the emperor, and it was the Genrō and not the emperor who controlled the government politically. Throughout the era, however, political problems were usually resolved through compromise, and political parties gradually increased their power over the government and as a result held an even larger role in the political process. Between 1891 and 1895, Ito served as prime minister with a cabinet made up mostly of members of the Genrō who sought to establish a partisan government to control the House of Representatives. Although not fully realized, a trend towards partisan politics was also established.

Society

On his return, one of the first actions of the government was to establish new ranks for the nobility. Five hundred of the former court nobility, including daimyō and samurai who rendered valuable services to the emperor, were organized into five ranks: prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron.

It was around this time that the Ee ja nai ka movement, a spontaneous outburst of ecstatic behavior, took place.

In 1885, intellectual Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote the influential essay Datsu-A Ron, arguing that Japan should aim to be one of the "civilized countries of the East", leaving behind the "irremediable underdevelopment" of the Asian neighbours, naming Korea and China. This essay certainly contributed to the rise of economic and technological advances during the Meiji Period, but it may also have laid the foundations for a future policy in the Japanese colonial region, a fact that became apparent in the run-up to World War II.

Economy

Considering that the country's economic and production structure was very similar to that of Elizabethan England, becoming a world power in such a short time amounts to remarkable progress. There were at least two reasons for the great speed with which Japan modernized: employing more than 3,000 foreign experts (called O-yatoi gaikokujin or 'contracted foreigners') specializing in fields such as the teaching of English, science, engineering, the military and navigation; and the sending of Japanese students abroad, especially Europe and America, based on the fifth and last article of the Letter of Oath of 1868: "Knowledge will be sought throughout the world to consolidate the foundations of imperial rule." This modernization process was heavily subsidized and closely monitored by the Meiji government, enhancing the power of large Zaibatsu firms such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Hand in hand, the Zaibatsu and the government guided the nation, always bringing technology from the West. Japan gradually took control of much of the Asian merchandise manufacturing market, beginning with textiles. The economic structure became highly commercial, importing raw materials and exporting finished products; reflection of the relative poverty of raw materials in Japan.

Japan emerged from the Tokugawa-Meiji transition as Asia's first industrialized nation. Domestic commercial activities and limited foreign exchange satisfied the demands for cultural material in the Tokugawa era, but the modernized Meiji era demanded radical differences. From the beginning, the Meiji rulers embraced the concept of a market economy and embraced the British and American forms of free market capitalism. The private sector, in a nation with an abundance of aggressive entrepreneurs, welcomed the change.

Economic reforms included a unified currency based on the yen, banking, trade and tax laws, the stock market, and a communications network. The establishment of a modern institutional structure for an advanced capitalist economy took time but was completed during the 1890s. By then, the government had relinquished much of the direct control of the modernization process, mainly for budgetary reasons.

Many of the former daimyō, whose pension had been paid off in one fell swoop, benefited greatly from investments made in new industries. Those who had been informally involved in foreign trade before the Meiji Restoration also prospered. The old servants of the Bakufu who clung to their traditional ways failed to adapt to the new business environment.

The government was initially involved in economic modernization, providing a number of "model factories" to ease the transition to a modern era. After the first twenty years of the Meiji era, the economic industry expanded rapidly until about 1920 with Western technological advances and large private investment. Spurred by wars and careful economic planning, Japan emerged as one of the leading industrial nations after World War I.

Militarism

Despite criticism from the opposition, Meiji leaders continued to modernize the nation through initiatives such as telegraph wiring to major cities, construction of railways, shipyards, munitions factories, mines, manufacturing facilities of textiles, factories, and agricultural experiment stations. Concerned with national security, the leaders made significant efforts at military modernization, which included the establishment of a small standing army, an extensive reserve system, and conscription for all men. Foreign military systems were studied, foreign advisers were hired, and cadets were sent to military and naval schools in Europe and the United States.

Foreign Relations

When the United States Army ended Japan's Sakoku policy, as well as its isolation, the Japanese found themselves defenseless against military pressure and economic exploitation by Western powers. In order for Japan to emerge from the feudal era, it had to avoid the colonial fate of other Asian countries by establishing genuine national independence and equality.

Following the victory against China in Korea during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), Japan emerged as an international power with a victory against Russia in Manchuria (northeast China) in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 at 1905. Allied with Britain through the Anglo-Japanese Alliance signed in London on January 30, 1902, Japan joined the Allies in World War I, seeking in the process to seize German-held territory in China and the Pacific, but for the most part without taking significant part in the conflict.

After the war, a weakened Europe left a large part of international markets to the United States and Japan, who emerged greatly strengthened. Japanese competition made a major inroad into the hitherto dominated European market in Asia, not only in China, but in almost all European colonies such as India and Indonesia, reflecting the development of the Meiji era.

Conversion to the Gregorian calendar

Meiji	1.o	2.	3.o	4.o	8.	13.	18.	23.	28.o	33.	38.	43.	45.
Gregorian	1868	1869	1870	1871	1875	1880	1885	1890	1895	1900	1905	1910	1912