NAME- AASTHA GUPTA

ROLL NUMBER- 210231

SEMESTER- VI
PAPER- HISTORY OF MODERN JAPAN

Q. What were the measures taken by the Meiji Restoration to modernize Japan? What was the nature of
this modernization?
The overthrow of Bakufu was achieved by a coalition of anti-Tokugawa forces, which included
some kuge and lower samurai and ronin from the major western clans. These forces were supported
financially by the merchant princes of Osaka and Kyoto. As the political representatives of the day, the
lesser samurai progressively surpassed the higher ranks of samurai and feudal lords, taking the lead in the
historic shift. The men of 1868 who attacked the shogunate in 1868 did so under the cover of tradition,
demanding that the Heavenly Sovereign resume power. However, the young men had much higher goals
in mind than just pulling off a coup that would restore the traditional virtues of the past and prevent the
extinction of their home territories. The new authorities implemented a number of changes that laid the
groundwork for constitutional government and set the country on the path to modernization and
industrialization throughout a two-decade period, spanning from 1868 to 1890.
Early in the century, Japan's "troubles from within" had cast doubt on the traditional polity's
capacity to address issues of samurai morale and poverty, adjust to the economic changes brought about
by proto industrialization and the commercialization of agriculture, manage social unrest, respond to
intellectual criticism, and create space for the new political consciousness demonstrated by acts of
collective dissidence. The shogunate's ideological bankruptcy and structural weaknesses were exposed by
the "troubles from without," which really got underway with Perry's arrival. The regime also gained the
enmity of "men of high purpose" and the contempt of the peasant and urban dwellers who had to deal
with the fallout from opening the nation to trade. The men who took over in 1868radicalized by the events
of the 1850s were convinced that only the most extreme measures could bring about a new period of
peace and prosperity, which inspired them to reject the beliefs of the past and try out novel concepts for
reshaping political ideology and the social order. One often stated goal was to protect Japan's national
sovereignty and stop more foreign incursions along with the unequivocal determination to become a great
and respected country, equal to the most advanced nations on the face of the globe.
Japan's youthful emperor called over four hundred officials to the Imperial Palace in Kyoto on the
fourteenth day of the Third Month of 1868, when they were given a declaration outlining the country's
policies. Known as the Charter Oath, the extraordinary document reflected a reform-oriented mindset that
influenced the revolutionary reforms implemented by the new government in the subsequent ten years.
ADMINISTRATIVE UNIFICATION
The Tokugawa political system, which was founded on divided sovereignty, was found to be
essentially incompatible with the political and military mobilization needed to maintain Japan's
independence in the face of nineteenth-century imperialism by the Meiji authorities. Among the
Restoration leaders, Kido Takayoshi was the one who first pushed for increased state power centralization
and quickly won over Okubo Toshimichi of Satsuma and Itagaki Taisuke of Tosa. The lords of Kido,
Okubo, and Itagaki's domains were convinced to willingly give over their han records, which are
emblems of daimyo power, to the emperor. Their example was followed by other daimyo, who were made
"governors" and given a tenth of the fief earnings as personal income, with all administrative expenses
covered by the Tokyo government. Meanwhile, Choshu, Satsuma, and Tosa joined together to form the
Imperial Guard, a ten thousand-strong national army under the exclusive control of the Tokyo
government. With an army under their control, the Meiji commanders felt safe enough to do away with
the fiefs completely. The emperor declared the end of daimyo authority in an edict that was released in
August of 1871. The domains were replaced by 302 prefectures (soon reduced to 72 and later to 48) and
three administrative cities, each under the jurisdiction of a new governor appointed by the Dajokan. The
government removed the final traces of daimyo rule later in 1871. Fief armies were dissolved, daimyo
were required to relocate permanently to Tokyo, and numerous local officials were fired. The rural areas
were now governed by governors selected by the Home Ministry.
After his return to Japan, Yamagata won appointment as the vice-minister of military affairs and
orchestrated the enactment of the Conscription Ordinance. The Conscription Act, enacted on January 10,
1873, compelled men between the ages of seventeen and forty-five to register for potential call-up duty
and subjected all twenty-year-old males to seven years of military service, with three years served in the
regular army and four years in the reserves. The immediate goal was to establish a real national army that
would serve the government and be appropriate for the highly disciplined military structure that the West
had just lately embraced as a measure and socially it constituted another step in disenfranchising the
samurai estate and creating a society based on equality of opportunity. Conscription provided a peacetime
establishment of 73,000 men and a total wartime strength of 200,000 more, the whole force being
equipped by 1894 with modern rifles and artillery, mostly of Japanese manufacture. The conscript army
provided a loyal force capable of quelling unrest at home, as it demonstrated in 1877 with the defeat of
Saigo's rebels.
In 1885, the Meiji leaders inaugurated a cabinet system modeled explicitly along European lines.
At the head of this government was a prime minister. In 1887 it began a system of civil service
examinations. From this point on, performance on this exam became the primary qualification for service
in the prestigious ranks of the ministries of the Japanese imperial state.
SOCIAL EMANCIPATION
Once they came to power in 1868, the young samurai immediately abolished social divisions
based on ancestry, having firsthand experience with the frustration of being a lower class member of
feudal society. The ancient categorization of commoners into status groups—peasant, merchant, and
artisan—based on occupation was abolished by the government starting in 1869 and they were lumped
together as heimin. After two years, it released communities of outcasts from the legal restrictions that
had imposed stringent isolation. Commoners were told that public displays of devotion to samurai,
including prostration, were no longer appropriate or obligatory, and they were allowed to take on
surnames. The multitude of hereditary positions within the samurai class was reduced to two: shizoku
(knight) and sotsu (foot soldier). Warriors were allowed to engage in trade, industry, and farming for the
first time. The government converted samurai stipends into interest-bearing bonds in 1876, which
matured in 20 years. This limited and significantly reduced the government's financial commitments in
the meantime. In the meantime, the samurai elite's trappings were also removed. Samurai privilege was
eliminated, allowing the new government to better allocate resources—both human and financial—as part
of a broader shift in society away from a rigid system of social classes and towards a more flexible,
merit-based social structure. This constituted social emancipation, at least on paper.
 LAND TAX REFORM
The Land Tax Reform Law designed by Okubo Toshimich was issued by the emperor on July 28,
1873, emphasizing his intention for "the tax to be levied impartially in order that the burden may be
shared equally among the people.". The new tax was payable in cash on the assessed value of land, and
the taxpayer was given title to his land. To assess the value of the land, the average crop was valued at the
prices used to convert tax payments in kind into payment in cash, with some regard to local market
conditions. From the gross value of the crop thus calculated were deducted allowances for seed, fertilizer,
and national and local taxes to arrive at the value of the net product, which was capitalized at rates
varying from 4 to 6 percent to give the assessed land value. The national land tax was set at 3 percent of
this figure, and the local tax at one-third of the national tax. As intended, it provided the Meiji regime
with tax receipts about equal to the total land taxes received by the shogunate and the daimyo domain,
supplanting the intricate and unfair Tokugawa processes with a more effective system that stabilized
government finances. Land became a capital asset that could be freely and legally sold, and with taxes
fixed in monetary terms, landowners - and not overlords - received the benefits from agricultural
improvements, specialization, falling transport costs, and price rises. Some farm families welcomed the
tax rate reductions that came with standardizing it, but others saw an increase in the obligations they had
to bear. The impending bankruptcy of small farmers unable to pay the land tax became a class issue and
ceased to be a matter of collective village concern.
JAPAN’S TURN TO WEST
The Meiji oligarchs started looking for concepts and models that could direct their ongoing
efforts to realize the Meiji Dream of national independence, treaty revision, equality with the West, and
domestic tranquility and prosperity even as they consolidated their claims to power in the 1870s,
hammering out the initial reforms that gave them power and defeating their opponents. A period of
bunmei kaika ("Civilization and Enlightenment") was ushered in by the nation's leaders and some of its
most powerful private residents' passionate interest in the West.
One of the most noteworthy attempts to gain knowledge of Western cultures occurred in 1871
when Iwakura Tomomi took a delegation of government officials on a protracted tour of Europe and the
United States. The official goal of the Iwakura mission was to amend the unfair treaties that the first
Tokugawa mission to America in 1860 had ratified and exchanged in Washington, but the true goal of its
members was to find conditions in the West and bring them back to Japan in order to establish the new
Meiji state. Subgroups were formed and tasked with studying Western political and constitutional
systems; gathering data on trade, industry, banking, taxation, and currency; and researching philosophical
and educational frameworks. The Meiji leaders realized that to revise the unequal treaties, they would
have to restructure Japan by putting it on a par with Western states and reforming domestic laws and
institutions to bring them into line with those of the Western powers. With the goal of creating a
"Prosperous Nation, Strong Military," as encapsulated in another catchphrase of the time, "fukoku kyohe,"
Kido, Okubo, and the other members of the Iwakura Mission returned to Japan in 1873, inspired by what
they had witnessed abroad.
The Occident ruled the world in the nineteenth century, and given the conceited Western belief in
cultural superiority, the Japanese were correct to believe that they would not be considered even
semi-equals until they acquired not only modern technology but also many of the surface-level features of
Western culture. For instance, when Western hygiene methods were introduced, Japanese people
eventually developed a strong tooth brushing habit and a need to purchase patented medications. The
seven-day workweek, Sunday holiday, and Gregorian calendar were all accepted. Mail service was
introduced the same year, and in 1886 Japan joined the international metric agreement. Western-style
haircuts were a major symbol of Westernization. Uniforms reminiscent of the West were worn by soldiers
and bureaucrats, and prominent men frequently wore Western attire, including the full beards that were
fashionable at the time in the West. In 1872, it became mandatory for all court and official occasions to
wear Western attire. Ballroom dancing and foreign languages were taught to women from well-off
families. Western architecture and art were absorbed, resulting in dreary "Western rooms" in the houses of
the wealthy and an unsightly Victorian façade in the cities.
LEGAL REFORMS
One of the most aggravating aspects of the unequal-treaty system was its extraterritoriality, but
until the Western countries fully trusted the Japanese legal system, there was little chance of its abolition.
The five French law codes were to be translated by Mitsukuri Rinsho per an instruction from the Meiji
administration in 1869. Eto led a group that started assembling a civil code based on Mitsukuri's
translation. However, the debate over the civil code continued for a few years because of some of its
contentious parts. In 1898, lto Hirobumi and Saionji Kimmochi's new code was ultimately put into effect.
Together, these two tenets established the Meiji civil code: (1) Indigenous Japanese institutions and
customs should be properly considered; and (2) the best features of legislative theories from all Western
countries, not only France and Italy, should be incorporated. Based on the spirit of individualism, the
property portion included the ideas of personal property ownership, liability resulting from negligence,
and legal equality between the sexes and the previous social-status categories.
To reinforce the authority of the head of the household, however, the section on social
connections was significantly altered to include provisions specifically for fathers, parents, and family
leaders. People were consequently restricted by being positioned inside a familial structure of status.
RELIGIOUS REFORMS
The anti-Christian laws of the bakufu were overturned by the Meiji administration in 1873, but
religious activity was not given any special protection. A restricted degree of religious freedom was
granted under the 1889 constitution, "within limits not prejudicial to peace and not antagonistic to duties
as citizens." Christianity also attracted many inquiring Japanese intellectuals from the samurai class, who
saw in it the key to Western progress and strength. They also saw in Protestant Christianity a new code of
personal ethics and loyalty that would strengthen Japan at this time of confusion over the old codes of
conduct. In an attempt to achieve legitimacy, the Meiji state continuously managed all religious practices
actively.
EDUCATION REFORMS
In 1871, the newly appointed officials established the ministry of education with the goal of
creating a structured educational system, realizing that it was essential to a modern society. The so-called
"temple schools," as well as the domain schools for samurai that were oriented towards Confucianism,
declined. In 1869 the language programmes at the Institute for the Study of Barbarian Books, the medical
school, and the Confucian "University" in Edo merged into a unified government academy. The institution
was renamed Tokyo University in 1877, and it has operated under that name ever since after the
non-Western components of the curriculum were cut in 1871. The country was split into university,
middle school, and elementary school districts by the Fundamental Code of Education,implemented in
1872. It required all boys and girls to attend school for four years, starting at age six. The new educational
framework shifted the emphasis from Confucian morality to practical arts and sciences, personal growth,
and individual development. Thus, in the thousands of elementary schools that had opened by 1875,
children taught the fundamentals of reading, writing, and math in addition to studying translated Western
literature on science, geography, and history. Standardized textbooks, ethics courses, and uniforms
prevailed. The ministry of education at first adopted a highly centralized system of education along
French lines but soon a shift back toward a more centralized, authoritarian educational system came in the
1880s and reached its height in the issuance in 1890 of an Imperial Rescript on Education.
TOWARDS INDUSTRIALIZATION
Throughout the early Meiji period, the unchanging maxim "Prosperous Nation, Strong Military" defined
the objectives of significant economic growth. Prosperity would make Japan respectable to the West and
provide the country a solid base of strength, allowing the newly modernizing country to fend off the
danger of Western imperialism. The new government's reliance on the Ministry of Public Works and the
Home Ministry, which were founded in 1 870 and 1 873, respectively, to organize domestic industries and
import technology from overseas, is indicative of its goals. A second catchphrase, "Increase Production,
Promote Industry" (shokusan kogyo), soon pushed its way into the Meiji vocabulary.
The oligarchs worked hard to finish the transportation and communication infrastructure that
would facilitate industrialization. An English engineer was employed by the newly established Meiji
government in 1869 to build a telegraph line connecting Tokyo and Yokohama. The following year,
public service between the two cities was inaugurated. Nearly fifty cities had telephone exchanges
connected by long-distance lines by the end of the century. Japan's modernistic communication networks
were centered around the postal service. The youthful Meiji leaders thought of railway building not only
as an extension of their postal services but also as a critical industry-wide expansion and a strategically
important means of meeting Japan's defense requirements. The Japanese government formally decided
late in 1869 that the first two routes would connect the Shinbashi neighborhood of Tokyo with Yokohama,
the thriving new port serving the capital, and Osaka with Kobe, the premier commercial hub and new
entrepot of western Japan, respectively.
The confusing mess of coins and hundreds of varieties of paper notes that were in circulation
during the late Tokugawa period gave way to the yen as Japan's unit of currency in 1871 with the passage
of the New Currency Regulation. A year later, in 1872, the National Bank Ordinance permitted the
establishment of national banks in order to support the orderly growth of the currency system and to make
it easier for mercantile capital to accumulate for industrialization.
The government also established model factories and managed certain civilian businesses in the
hope of stimulating private enterprise. The Hokkaido Colonization Office, which promoted sake brewing,
founded a sugar refinery, opened flour mills, and oversaw the construction of fish canneries as part of the
Meiji government's efforts to settle and develop that northern island. Soon, such machines were
hammering away at the most well-known model plant constructed by the government, the silk factory in
Tomioka, Gunma Prefecture. Home Ministry officials did not cut corners on this project, which was
intended to serve as the foundation for Japan's contemporary silk reeling industry and revive silk exports
as a source of foreign currency vital to the new regime's existence.
By engaging in foreign trade on its own account the government obtained funds to import goods
and machinery, lending some of them to local authorities to serve as models for Japanese manufacturers,
selling others on an installment plan to those who needed capital equipment. It organized trade fairs, set
up technical schools, and sent students for training to Europe and America. Foreign instructors, advisers
and engineers were brought in to run a number of the new concerns and train the technicians who were to
run them in the future, as many as 130 being employed by the Department of Public Works alone by
1879.
 However, the failure of many government operated businesses, the inflationary crisis and other
economic problems that came to the fore at the end of the 1870s, seemed poised to overwhelm the
successes of the decade and turn the vision of rapid industrialization into a chimera. To that end,
Matsukata Masayoshi as finance minister from October 1881, raised indirect taxes, cut back on
administrative spending, and put a lot of government-run businesses up for sale. He used that budget
surplus to purchase notes that the national banks had previously printed, therefore using the excess supply
of paper money. In an effort to find a long-term solution to the currency issue, Matsukata planned the
national banks' conversion into regular commercial banks and established the Bank of Japan as a central
bank with exclusive authority to issue paper money in 1882. His financial retrenchment corrected tax
receipts, balanced the budget, stabilized prices, and whipped inflation. His financial reforms contributed
to the government's increasing list of achievements in building an infrastructure that would enable future
growth. The government's industrial strategy was reoriented with the implementation of the Matsukata
reform programme, which favored the laissez-faire orthodoxy common in the industrially advanced
nations of western Europe instead of direct state control of businesses.
NATURE OF MODERNISATION
A modern nation-state is defined as an economic state that has undergone the industrial
revolution; socially, it is a state with a centralized political system in which the legislative institutions of a
constitutional order organize popular involvement. After their country's opening (kaikoku), the Japanese
faced challenges in gaining modernity and establishing themselves as a "nation" and "state" in the face of
an ostensibly superior "civilization" represented by the states of Europe. To that end, they had to establish
a centralized government, train bureaucrats to administer the state, establish a universally
conscription-based army and navy, set up a legal system, promote capitalism, do away with feudal
privilege, execute the "equality of the four status groups," unify their educational system, and change their
customs. For the most part, they had been successful in accomplishing these goals. Some of the social,
technological and cultural changes were greeted with wonder and enthusiasm, especially in the cities, but
others created discontent and dislocation, as is revealed by samurai and peasant rebellions and the
emergence of a political opposition movement in the 1870s and 1880s.
Researchers influenced by modernization theory in America and Great Britain have traditionally
seen Japan as an example of a smooth transition from feudalism to modernity, where disagreement was
maintained within reasonable bounds by emperor loyalty and consensus ideals. These historians saw the
state as a dominant and enlightened force in promoting Japan’s
modernization and the population as a pliant yet capable mass able to be guided toward modern ways.
During their lifetimes, the founders of the Meiji Restoration never gave up on their goals of swiftly and
thoroughly restructuring political, social, and economic institutions, even in the face of opposition from
reactionary and progressive political factions. Conversely, the majority of historians from Japan and some
Western countries attribute the downfall of the opposition movements to the authoritarian nature of the
Meiji state. They highlight the oligarchy's control over the new state's effective security apparatus as well
as the integration of oppressive semi feudal structures into the Meiji ‘modern’ political structure. As
regarded by Marius Jansen, politics in the first half-century of modernization, the period in which the
basic pattern of institutional and ideological articulation took shape, was bureaucratic and authoritarian. In
most respects the society created by the Meiji oligarchy was "modern," being capitalistic, meritocratic,
and scientific, but also politically and socially repressive and increasingly chauvinistic and militaristic.
According to Marxist historians, Meiji's progressive reforms, particularly those that brought about
meritocracy, private property protection, citizen equality, and the encouragement of capitalist economic
growth, greatly benefited the wealthy farmers, landlords, entrepreneurs, and commercial and educated
classes, even though they were accompanied by relatively high property taxes and government exclusion.
However, the classes marginalized by the Meiji reforms, groups that were losing social power as a result
of modernization, faced an entirely different situation. The traditional warrior and small-scale subsistence
farmer did not fit into the new order, and the government sacrificed their social needs quite ruthlessly to
speed national integration and capital accumulation. Victims of the particular development strategies
pursued by the Meiji government, these groups suffered severe and irreversible decline in socioeconomic
status. The reforms of the Meiji government shifted the rural economy from a moral economy to a market
economy, leaving peasants in materially impoverished, spiritually immiserated circumstances, with little
agency to exercise and with no paternal figure willing to minister to their needs in times of distress.
Early Meiji decades saw an upward trend in growth lines, and Japan would go on to build on
these first successes and emerge at the start of the twentieth century as one of the world's major economic
powers. But the sort of progress represented by the enterprises extracted a staggering cost from a mass of
unsung workers, who toiled in conditions that wrecked their health and shortened their lives. Japan's quest
for wealth and power cast up numerous heroes
and a great many victims who paid dearly for national greatness. Moreover, the assimilation of various
aspects of Western culture that were considered essential to modernisation was dictated by reasons of
state, yet such efforts were fraught with an uneasiness that Japan's cultural self-identity might be violated.
Japan's modernization process was thus plagued by a psychological issue of easily wounded pride, which
led to the country's show of what could be described as weird fanaticism in every subsequent foreign
crisis involving the West. The fact that the phrase "uphold the national essence" was able to captivate the
hearts of Japanese people is definitely connected to this psychological issue.
At last, it may be said that Japan, in 1889, became the first non-Western country to adopt a
constitutional political system and, at around the same time, it became the first non-Western industrial,
capitalist economy, in spite of all its flaws. It's true that these were remarkable political and economic
successes. After all, the growing predominance of Euro-American nation-states at this time exposed a
large portion of the non-Western globe to increasing levels of political and economic subjugation. Even
the new Meiji system was just as authoritarian as some of the so-called advanced Western countries.
However, the Meiji period's transformations left a complicated legacy of both progress and suffering, as
do all modern revolutions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
● Beasley, William G. 1972. The Meiji restoration. N.p.: Stanford University Press.
● Fairbank, John K., Edwin O. Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig. 1989. East Asia : tradition
& transformation. N.p.: Houghton Mifflin Company.
● Gordon, Andrew. 2020. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the
Present. N.p.: Oxford University Press.
● Jansen, Marius B., ed. 2008. The Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 5, The
Nineteenth Century. N.p.: Cambridge University Press.
● McClain, James L. 2002. Japan, a modern history. N.p.: W.W. Norton & Company.
● Norman, E. H. 2000. Japan's Emergence as a Modern State: Political and Economic
Problems of the Meiji Period. Edited by Lawrence T. Woods. N.p.: UBC Press.
● Pyle, Kenneth B. 1978. The Making of Modern Japan. N.p.: Heath