Meiji Restoration

“ Although the incursions made into Chinese philosophy and the revival of Japanese traditions during the Tokugawa Epoch contributed materially to the overthrow of feudalism and the restoration of the Throne’s administrative power, the immediate tendency of the last two events was to The Meiji Era. divert the nation’s attention wholly from the study of either Confucianism or the Record of Ancient Matters. ”

“ It was the time most inartistic, if there was ever such a time in any country, when the new Meiji Government had hardly settled itself on the sad ruins of the Tokugawa feudalism, under which all prosperity and peace, even art and humanity, were buried, and the people in general even thought the safety of their lives was beyond reach, now with the so-called Civil War of Meiji Tenth, and then with that or this. ”

“ There can be no doubt that at this period were laid the foundations of that unexampled industrial prosperity which has distinguished the latter portion, down to the present time, of the Meiji era, and which, resting as it does on the most secure basis—one which even a war with a great European power has been powerless to disturb—bids fair to last for ages to come. ”

“ Besides, I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind,—so that my ghostly company should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji. That old cemetery behind my garden would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has been shaped by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living brain ”

“ Why does he study hard? No matter how great a scholar he may become, what is there left of him when he is dead? Only bones."
Miyakawa was the merriest and wittiest in his class; and the contrast between his joyous character and his words seemed to me almost startling. But such swift glooms of thought—especially since Meiji—not unfrequently make apparition in quite young Oriental minds. They are fugitive as shadows of summer clouds; they mean less than they would signify in Western adolescence; and the Japanese lives not by thought, nor by emotion, but by duty. ”

“ The future historian will not improbably give to the evolution of Japan in the era of Meiji the foremost place amongst the great events of the second half of the nineteenth century. Only fifty-one years have even now elapsed since the nations of the West, applying to Japan the same forceful methods that had already been applied to China, compelled her most reluctantly to reopen to foreign intercourse the doors which she had kept hermetically sealed for two hundred years against the outer world. ”

“ Living in segregated hamlets, forbidden to marry with heimin, still less with samurai, not allowed to eat, drink or associate with persons above their own class, the eta remained under the ban of ostracism from generation to generation, though many of them contrived to amass much wealth. They were governed by their own headmen, and they had three chiefs, one residing in each of the cities of Yedo, Osaka and Kiōto. All these members of the submerged classes were relieved from proscription and admitted to the ranks of the commoners under the enlightened system of Meiji. ”

“ The Shogun’s administration was prompt to realise, on the opening of the country to trade with Western nations under the treaties, the serious loss which the country was sustaining on account of the disordered state of the coinage, but before any adequate steps were taken towards reform the Shogunate regime came to an end and an new era dawned for Japan under the beneficent influences of the reign of Meiji. ”

“ The Meiji Era.—It must be remembered that when reference is made to the Japanese nation in connexion with these radical changes, only the nobles and the samurai are indicated—in other words, a section of the population representing about one-sixteenth of the whole. The bulk of the people—the agricultural, the industrial and the mercantile classes—remained outside the sphere of politics, not sharing the anti-foreign prejudice, or taking any serious interest in the great questions of the time. ”

“ Indeed, the insight which even a superficial examination of the financial position in the early years of Meiji is apt to afford the student must tend to add to the wonder always experienced that the marvellous results which it is on all sides acknowledged were achieved by the men in power were attained with no greater sacrifices than those which had to be recorded. ”

“ Even today, no man more quickly wins the popular regard during his life or more surely draws homage to his tomb, securing even apotheosis, than the suicide, though he may have committed a crime. In this era of Meiji or enlightened peace, most appalling is the list of assassinations beginning with the murder in Kiōto of Yokoi Héishiro, who was slain for recommending the toleration of Christianity, down to the last cabinet minister who has been knifed or dynamited. ”

“ For a considerable portion of the first year of the Meiji era there was warfare between the troops of the Shogun and the Choshiu clan, and in January 1868 came the coup d’état at Kioto by which the Aidzu clansmen were relieved of the guardianship of the Nine Gates of the capital and the duty was undertaken by the drilled forces of Satsuma and Choshiu combined. ”

“ The general cause was that several years necessarily elapsed before the nation’s material condition began to respond perceptibly to the improvements effected by the Meiji government in matters of administration, taxation and transport facilities. Fiscal burdens had been reduced and security of life and property obtained, but railway building and road-making, harbour construction, the growth of posts, telegraphs, exchanges and banks, and the development of a mercantile marine did not exercise a sensible influence on the nation’s prosperity until 1884 or 1885. ”

“ Such a question as "Is the Mikado popular?" which we have sometimes been asked in England, shows the questioner to be ten thousand miles from an appreciation of the attitude of men's minds in Japan, or indeed in any Far-Eastern land,—an attitude entirely reverential and distant, as to a god. Future generations of Japanese will probably know the present monarch as Meiji Tennō, the word Tennō, as already explained, signifying "Heavenly Emperor," and Meiji being the chronological designation of the years comprised in his reign. ”

“ Having taken her place as a power on an equality with the great world-powers, Japan entered upon the Twentieth Century as the leader of Asiatic nations in introducing modern civilization. The year 1901, in the Japanese calendar, was called the Meiji Era, or Period of Enlightened Rule—a fitting name for the first year of the New Empire in the new century. ”

“ In Japan, until the Meiji era, human life was cheap. For criminals of the military classes, suicide was the honorable method of leaving this world; the lower orders of society suffered loss of life at the hands of the military class without redress. ”

“ Throughout the centuries including the present era of Meiji, it is the Shinto religion that has provided and that still provides religious sanctions for the social order—even for the new social order that has come in from the West. It is the belief of the people in the divine descent of the Emperor, and his consequent divine right, that to-day unifies the nation and causes it to accept so readily the new social order ”

“ There is a so-called Shinto sect which was started twenty years ago by an ignorant woman. It has believers in every part of Japan. It is rather communistic." [176] None of the landlords who talked with me believed in the possibility of a "revival of Buddhism." One of them noted that "people educated in the early part of Meiji are most materialistic. It is a sorrowful circumstance that the officials ask only materialistic questions of the villagers."
Page 213 I asked one of the landlords about his tenants. He said that his "largest tenant" had no more than 1.3 tan of paddy. ”

“ Americans were called in to help in the matter of education and in agriculture; while experts from Italy and Holland acted as advisers on questions concerning silk culture and embankments.
Speaking of the craze for imitating the West which prevailed at 124this period, the History of Japan, compiled under official direction for the Chicago Exposition of 1893, says: “During the early years of the Meiji era any knowledge, however slight, of Western science was regarded as a qualification for official employment. ”

“ For the interest of the costume is much less in its beauty of form and tint than in its significance as idea,—as representing something of the mind that devised or adopted it. And the supreme interest of the old—Japanese civilization lies in what it expresses of the race-character,—that character which yet remains essentially unchanged by all the changes of Meiji. ”

“ With this spirit, as soon as they perceived the superiority of the Western civilization, they set to work to introduce it into their country, just as in the 7th and 8th centuries they had adopted and adapted the Chinese civilization. In 1868, the first year of the era of Meiji, the emperor swore solemnly the memorable oath of five articles, setting forth the policy that was to be and has been followed thereafter by the government. These five articles were:—
1. ”

“ Few achievements of the Japanese have been more remarkable than the suppression of certain religious phenomena. Any complete statement of the religious characteristics of the Japanese fifty years ago would have included most revolting and immoral practices under the guise of religion. Until suppressed by the government in the early years of Meiji there were in many parts of Japan phallic shrines of considerable popularity, at which, on festivals at least, sexual immorality seemed to be an essential part of the worship. ”

“ Men able to remember the events of the Restoration are about as rare in Japan as are those who, in this country, remember the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, which occurred in the same year; and men who played important parts in the Restoration are of course rarer still—as rare, say, as Americans who played important parts in the Civil War. ”

“ But dreamers who talk about preëxistence, and who think differently from common-sense folk, are quite outside of social existence. But—I can do this: You know all about the foreign life of these parts,—the shadows and the lights. You can give me, perhaps, in the course of three years, suggestions for six little stories—based upon the relations between foreigners and Japanese in this era of Meiji: studies of the life of the “open ports.” I should need only real facts—not names or dates—real facts of beauty or pathos or tragedy. ”

“ Among these six eras, the Nara and Heian were richest in religious influences; the Meiji is poorest.
It has been shown already that the supernatural had a large place in the thoughts of the early Japanese, and that for important guidance they relied on divination, omens, ordeals, and portents of various kinds. With the introduction of Chinese civilisation they added to this catalogue the superstitions of Confucianism as well as those of Taoism, and when Buddhism arrived, its teachings accentuated the confusion between the mundane and the supernal. ”

“ The whittled sticks of the Aino, non-conductors of evil and protectors of those who make and rear them, stuck up in every place of awe or supposed danger, have in the slow evolution of centuries become the innumerable flag-poles, banners and streamers which one sees at their matsuris or temple festivals. Millions of towels and handkerchiefs still flutter over wells and on sacred trees. In old Japan the banners of an army almost outnumbered the men who fought beneath them. Today, at times they nearly conceal the temples from view. ”

“ After the advent of Buddhism the keepers of the shrine were called kannushi, that is, shrine keepers or wardens of the god. These men were usually descendants of the god in whose honor the temples were built. The gods being nothing more than human founders of families, reverence was paid to them as ancestors, and so the basis of Shintō is ancestor {83} worship. The model of the miya, in modern as in ancient times, is the primitive hut as it was before Buddhism introduced Indian and Chinese architecture. ”

“ The patriots of the period immediately preceding the Meiji era, known as the "Kinnoka," some of whom lost their lives because of their devotion to the cause of their then impotent Emperor, are accorded the highest honor the nation can give.
The teachings of the Japanese concerning the relations that should exist between parents, and children, and, in multitudes of instances, their actual conduct also, can hardly be excelled. We can assert that they have a keen moral faculty, however further study may compel us to pronounce its development and manifestations to be unbalanced. ”

“ The present day fashion would seem to be of very modern origin indeed. After the 10th year of Meiji (1877) the tea-houses in the Naka-no-chō hit upon the novel idea of putting up white cloths at the entrance and making displays by means of magic-lanterns, but as this made the Yoshiwara practically a dark world it occasioned great inconvenience to the guests. ”