Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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historiography as the new works do. One of the obvious results of the advance of

theory is a decline in traditional themes; one has to look hard these days for treat-

ments of military history, bakufu (or Meiji) institutions, diplomacy, industrialization,

constitutional thought, or even the Meiji Restoration itself. Studies of Japan’s early

incursions into Okinawa are also largely lacking, as are works in comparative history –

a puzzli ng fact, given the improved language ability of younger scholars and the

broad applicability of theoretical frameworks such as Orientalism and postcolonial-

ism.

Nowhere is the change more obvious than in the decline of institutional political

history. Central political structures and actors are almost as widely ignored in

today’s monographs as those on the periphery once were. The continuing focus

on power means that elite voices still are heard, but in muted or harsh tones.

Biographies of ‘‘great men’’ are rare, evoking a yawn from publishers (unless

the writer has the name impact of a Donald Keene, whose massive 2002 biography

of the Emperor Meiji reminds us that the old history still has much to offer

us). While the emperor system inspires theoretical works on the invention of trad-

ition, few write about the ins and outs of Edo/Tokyo government, except as

bureaucrats respond to initiatives in the regions. Indeed, students wanting to examine

the evolution of the Tokugawa–Meiji political system still must rely on classics by

Robert Scalapino, Joseph Pittau, and George Akita – all published half a century

ago.

Even the jiyu

minken movements, which once prod uced the richest material

about people on the margins, is largely ignored. Julia Thomas looks at jiyu

minken

thinkers, among others, in her influential consideration of changing concepts of

nature. But aside from side-angle views such as this, the popular rights forces have

lost their voice.

At the same time – and with equal irony – the preoccupation of contemporary

scholars with power relationships means that the na rrative still has little to tell us

about everyday life. Harootunian’s efforts to get Japan scholars to use the ‘‘everyday’’

as a rubric for study ing Japan’s the interwar period notwithstanding, his intellectua-

lization of the word has not resulted in much study of genuine everyday life, or what

Susan B. Hanley calls the sociocultural side of life, in the late nineteenth century.

Hanley provides a provocative start, concluding her examination of Tokugawa ma-

terial culture with a brief look at the Tokugawa–Meiji transition, which concludes that

‘‘it is difficult to see substantial change in the standard of living or the level of physical

well-being during the Meiji period.’’

Changes in Western-inspired European trap-

pings have also provoked some early scholarly forays into daily life: into zoos, travel,

dogs, sports. But the ideologies that underlie most historical narratives have pre-

cluded serious examination of those facets of experience that do not have transpar-

ently political meaning.

Whither the Narrative?

Two possibilities emerge, when one attempts to evaluate the state of late-Tokugawa–

early-Meiji studies today. Hardacre articulated the first at the conclusion of

the Conference on Meiji Studies when she described a ‘‘rejection of grand theory and

master narrative’’ in favor of ‘‘portrayals of multiple actors, conflicting representations,

RESTORATION AND REVOLUTION 149

and fractured identities, to the point that it becomes impossible to distinguish lasting

centers of power and influence.’’

The second argues that there has been no significant

change in the overall narrative of the time, that James McClain encapsulated the still

dominant storyline when he argued in his 2002 synthesis that ‘‘during the 1870s and

1880s new beginnings were to bring to Japan political, economic, and social changes as

revolutionary as those experienced by any country in the world during the last three

centuries.’’

Which is it: the loss of a grand story, or the persistence of that story in the

face of endless challenge?

The truth lies between the two. If one looks at the Meiji story in the sweeping

syntheses, the changes seem more like modulations. More women are present;

economics matter somewhat more than they once did; the Edo/Tokyo government

looks less unified and dominant; the plight of commoners gets a bit more attention.

But the themes discussed at the beginning of this essay – the turn to the West, the

rush to modernity, the centrality of politics and the state, the uniqueness of the

Japanese experience, the focus on progress – remain dom inant. If, on the other

hand, one looks primarily at the articles, dissertations, and monographs that have

appeared since the 1990s, the picture changes significantly. Central politics, the core

of traditional Meiji history, has been overshadowed by studies from the periphery.

Female voices ha ve been joined by those of farmers, rebels, and same-sex lovers. New

sources – architecture, material items, cartoons, photographs, prints – combine with

new ways of readin g those sources to portray the nineteenth century in fresh ways.

Theories regarding modernity, space, time, subjectivity, mimetic imperialism,

invented traditions, and imagined communities bring new understandings even

when researchers examine old topics. And scholars endlessly question the ideologies

of both the narrators and the narrated. If the new theme s and interpretations have not

yet become central to the synthetic histories, it is hard to imagine that many decades

will pass before they do.

If the journalist House had difficulty changing common perceptions about

the Shimonoseki affair of 1863–4, he had a different experience with the nar rative

of modern Japan’s first imperialistic excursion, the 1874 expedition to Taiwan when

Japanese troops routed Taiwanese mountain warriors and laid the foundation

for Japan’s absorption of the Ryu

kyu

Islands. After accompanying the Japanese

expedition, House wrote a book-length report, which firmly set the narrative

line for this affair. People have questioned its accuracy; Chine se and Taiwanese

historians have criticized its assumptions; students of imperialism have attacked his

analysis of Japanese intentions. But at the beginning o f the twenty-first century, his

storyline remained dominant. Not only had his work set the outlines, but his

interpretations had coincided with the story that the power elites (this time, including

the Japanese) wanted to believe. In time, one suspects, House’s narrative will lose its

power to dominate our understanding of the Taiwan expedition – but that will

happen only gradually, after years’ accumulation of new data and fresh interpret-

ations. So too with the story of Japan’s Tokugawa–Meiji transition. The old story still

holds us in its thrall, as it will continue to do until the new studies and interpretations

achieve a mass sufficient to overwhelm it. That, one suspects, will take quite some

time.

150 JAMES L. HUFFMAN

NOTES

I owe thanks to Dennis Frost for extensive comments and helpful discussions about this

chapter.

1 For the story of House’s failure at narrative change, see Huffman, ‘‘Edward H. House.’’

2 Hardacre, ed., New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, p. xxiv.

3 Ibid., p. 11.

4 Indeed, most historians describe the government as inept and inefficient in almost every

decade of every era of Japanese history – a fact that ought to provoke inquiry into whether

scholars are looking in the right places, or asking the correct questions, in analyzing the

sources of energy in Japan’s dynamic past.

5 Hirakawa Sukehiro, ‘‘Japan’s Turn to the West,’’ in Jansen, ed., The Cambridge History of

Japan, vol. 5, The Nineteenth Century, pp. 497–8.

6 Burks, ed., The Modernizers, p. 412.

7 John W. Hall, ‘‘Changing Conceptions of the Modernization of Japan,’’ in Jansen, ed.,

Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization,p.7.

8 Kuwabara Takeo, ‘‘The Meiji Revolution and Japan’s Modernization,’’ in Nagai and

Urrutia, eds., Meiji Ishin, p. 23.

9 Quoted in Albert Craig, ‘‘The Central Government,’’ in Jansen and Rozman, eds., Japan

in Transition, p. 67.

10 Fukuzawa, ‘‘Datsu-a ron’’ (On Casting Off Asia), in Lu, Japan: A Documentary History,

p. 353.

11 Shiga, Nihonjin (Apr. 18, 1888), in Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan, p. 68.

12 Sansom, The Western World and Japan, p. 313.

13 To

yama Shigeki, ‘‘Independence and Modernization in the Nineteenth Century,’’ in

Nagai and Urrutia, eds., Meiji Ishin, p. 29; Gordon, A Moder n History of Japan, p. xii.

14 McClain, Japan, pp. 156–7.

15 Howell, ‘‘Visions of the Future,’’ p. 85 (emphasis added).

16 Hardacre, ed., New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, p. xvii.

17 Beasley and Pulleyblank, Historians of China and Japan, p. 19.

18 Interview (June 9, 2003). He noted Carol Gluck, Harry Harootunian, and Takashi

Fujitani as historians whose work has exerted influence on Japanese historians.

19 Naoki Sakai, ‘‘Translation and Nationalism,’’ in Richter and Schad-Seifert, eds., Cultural

Studies and Japan, p. 23.

20 Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘‘Afterword: Revisiting the Tradition/Modernity Binary,’’ in Vlas-

tos, ed., Mirror of Modernity, p. 288.

21 Ibid., p. 1.

22 Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan.

23 Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period; Bowen, Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan;

Hane, Peasants, Rebels, and Outcastes.

24 Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman, p. 353.

25 Steele, Alter native Narratives in Modern Japanese History,p.1.

26 Lewis, Becoming Apart, pp. 4, 13.

27 Baxter, The Meiji Unification through the Lens of Ishikawa Prefecture.

28 Kornicki, The Book in Japan.

29 Richter, Marketing the Word, pp. 333–4.

30 Henning, Outposts of Civilization, p. 171.

31 Tsurumi, Factory Girls, p. 197.

32 Sharon Nolte and Sally Ann Hastings, ‘‘The Meiji State’s Policy toward Women, 1890–

1910,’’ in Bernstein, ed., Recreating Japanese Women, p. 173.

RESTORATION AND REVOLUTION 151

33 Sand, ‘‘At Home in the Meiji Period: Inventing Japanese Domesticity,’’ in Vlastos, ed.,

Mirror of Modernity, p. 205.

34 Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire, p. 193.

35 Walthall, ed., The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, pp. 45–98. There are no biog-

raphies from the late Tokugawa years.

36 Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery,p.3.

37 Howland, Translating the West, p. 152.

38 Howell, ‘‘Visions of the Future,’’ p. 113.

39 Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism; Perez, Japan Comes of Age; Kume, The Iwakura

Embassy; Schodt, Native American in the Land of the Sho

gun.

40 Fogel, The Literature of Travel, p. 302.

41 Eskildsen, ‘‘Of Civilization and Savages,’’ p. 389.

42 Atarashii rekishi kyo

kasho (Tokyo: Fuso

sha, 2001), p. 176. See Huffman, A Yankee in

Meiji Japan, pp. 132–45, 273–7.

43 Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan; Pittau, Political Thought

in Early Meiji Japan; Akita, Foundations of Constitutional Government in Modern Japan.

44 Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan, p. 179.

45 Hardacre, ed., New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, pp. xxiii–xxiv.

46 McClain, Japan, p. 154.

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154 JAMES L. HUFFMAN

FURTHER READING

A starting point for the Meiji Restoration is Michio Nagai and Miguel Urrutia’s Meiji

Ishin: Restoration and Revolution (Tokyo: United Nations University, 1985), a

collection of conference papers that addresses the event from a variety of perspectives

that are diverse ideologically and theoretically. William G. Steele’s Alternative Nar-

ratives in Modern Japanes e History (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) illustrates the

rich lessons that commoners, woodblock prints, foreigners, and the residents of less-

known locales have to teach us regarding the Restoration years. Perhaps the most

useful work theoretically is Stephen Vlastos’s Mirror of Modernity (Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press, 1998), which includes reflections by leading scholars (Ka

ren

Wigen, Dipesh Chakrabarty, H. D. Harootunian, and Carol Gluck, among others) on

the implications of Hobsbawm’s ‘‘invented traditions’’ for Japanese history.

One of the clearest, most provocative overviews of the Meiji years is David

Howell’s chapter, ‘‘Visions of the Future in Meiji Japan, ’’ in Merle Goldman and

Andrew Gordon’s Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), which argues that the Meiji rulers opted for a

statist vision that imposed harsh conditions on a majority of the populace. His

Capitalism from Within (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) shows that

the growth of capitalism was not dependent solely on Western models and markets.

An incisive examination of the negative impact of Western merchants on Meiji

development is found in the attacks of journalist Edward H. House, recounted and

analyzed in James Huffman’s A Yankee in Meiji Japan (Boulder, Colo.: Rowman and

Littlefield, 2003). For a somewhat idiosyncratic, wonderfully rich example of deep

reading and imaginative sources use to create a traditional biogr aphy, one should turn

to Donald Keene’s Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World (New York: Columbia

University Press, 2002). The best example of comparative work on this period surely

is the volume edited by James McClain, John Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru, Edo and

Paris (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).

RESTORATION AND REVOLUTION 155

CHAPTER NINE

Oligarchy, Democracy, and Fascism

Stephen S. Large

The overthrow of the Tokugawa bakufu necessitated the construction of a new

Japanese state capable of commanding the loyalty of the people and mobilizing

society in the continuing quest for national wealth and power that had begun before

the Meiji Restoration. But the ensuing processes of political centralization, nation-

building, industrialization, and integration into the international order created new

complexities that tested the ability of the imperial state to govern Japan. As time

passed new organized interests had to be accommodated, conflicts between new

classes had to be contained, and radical visions of what kind of country Japan

should become had to be controlled. What is more, the nature and purposes of the

imperial state itself came into question in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century

Japan.

For historians of this period an important issue is how far oligarchic r ule (1880–

1918), political democracy in the era of party government (1918–32), and fascism

(1932–41) constituted successive, albeit overlapping, phases in Japanese attempts to

address ‘‘the fear and problem of ungovernability’’ which arises in all modern states,

particularly late arrivals on the world stage.

Debates about ‘‘oligarchy,’’ ‘‘democ-

racy,’’ and ‘‘fascism’’ in Japan go back a long way, but in the past fifteen years or so

they have been significantly rejuvenated by fresh approac hes, interpretations, and

discoveries of new evidence. My task here is to convey a general sense of the issues at

stake in these debates and their implications for our understanding of modern

Japanese political history.

The Question of Oligarchic Rule, 1880–1918

The term ‘‘Meiji oligarchy’’ refers to the group of seven men who took over from

kubo Toshimichi, Kido Ko

in, and Saigo

Takamori, the original leaders of the Meiji

regime, and dominated the Japanese government for most of the period from the

early 1880s to 1918. They personified to their contemporary critics the tyranny of the

‘‘Sat–Cho

hanbatsu,’’ or the ruling clique comprised of men from Satsuma and

Cho

shu

, the two domains which, together with Tosa and Hizen, had led the move-

ment to restore the emperor. Their earlier rise to key bureaucratic posts in the regime

had enabled them to appoint many of their loyalist comrades from Satsuma and

Cho

shu

to positions of power in local government.

A Companion to Japanese History

Edited by William M. Tsutsui

Yet despite their tightening grip on power both in Tokyo and in the provinces, the

oligarchs were strongly opposed by loyalists from beyond Satsuma and Cho

shu

who,

like the oligarchs, had come from a middle or lower samurai background and who

had likewise fought to restore the emperor. Seeking a share of power these challen-

gers mobilized political parties in the ‘‘movement for freedom and popul ar rights’’

(jiyu

minken undo

) which advocated representative government on the British model,

in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1881 the oligarchs responded by announcing the

establishment of constitutional government and an elected assembly within ten

years. But such was their loathing for the parties that they would only tolerate

‘‘transcendental,’’ non-party, cabinets.

Given their historical significance and the fact that there were seven oligarchs, it is

surprising that so fa r only one, Yamagata Aritomo (1838–1922, from Cho

shu

), the

‘‘father’’ of the Japanese ar my, has been the subject of a full-length and thoroughly

researched biography in English.

Of the other six, Yamagata’s main rival among the

oligarchs, Ito

Hirobumi (1841–1909, also from Cho

shu

), is the best known, espe-

cially for supervising the drafting of the Meiji constitution, promulgated in 1889. By

comparison, Inoue Kaoru (1835–1915, Cho

shu

), Matsukata Masayoshi (1835–

1924, Satsuma), Kuroda Kiyotaka (1840–1900, Satsuma), O

yama Iwao (1842–

1916, Satsuma), and Saigo

Tsugumichi (1843–1902, Satsuma), remain shadowy

figures. What defined the oligarchs as a group – besides their Sat-Cho

origins, their

contributions to the 1868 Meiji Restoration, and their prior experience in bureau-

cratic office – was their entirely informal, but nonetheless very significant, responsi-

bility as genro

(‘‘elder statesmen’’) to advise the emperor on the appointment of

prime ministers. Later, Yamagata’s prote

, General Katsura Taro

(1848–1913,

Cho

shu

) and Prince Saionji Kinmochi (1849–1940) also became genro

. Saionji

continued to advise the emperor on the appointment of prime ministers after all

the other genro

had died out, although in the 1930s the ‘‘senior statesmen’’ (ju

shin,

former prime ministers) partly performed this function.

In the 1890s, the first decade of constitutional government, the oligarchs recom-

mended each other as prime minister with the understanding that power would

normally rotate between the Satsuma and Cho

shu

camps. The one exception was a

short-lived cabinet (June–November 1898) headed by O

kuma Shigenobu, which was

Japan’s first political party cabinet. O

kuma, from Hizen, had been a member of the

ruling circle until his expulsion from the gover nment in 1881 after he had demanded

party cabinets within two years. In 1882 he formed the Kaishinto

party which evolved

into the Kenseito

in 1898 following a merger with the Jiyu

, a party formed in 1881

by Itagaki Taisuke, from Tosa. Save for the army and navy min isters, the ministers in

the O

kuma cabinet, including Itagaki, were members of the Kenseito

. I will mention

this cabinet again shortly but for now, its collapse, chiefly due to clashes between

the O

kuma and Itagaki factions in the Kenseito

, led to Yamagata’s third cabinet

(November 1898–October 1900) and to Ito

Hirobumi’s fourth cabinet (October

1900–June 1901). These were the last cabinets with an oligarch serving as prime

minister. Subsequently, the oligarchs orchestrated the appointment of prime minis-

ters whom they thought they could manipulate. To begin with, for Yamagat a this

meant Katsura Taro

and for Ito

, Saionji Kinmochi who served as president of the

Seiyu

kai party, formed in 1900, from 1903 to 1913. Katsura and Saionji alternated as

prime minister from 1901 to early 1913.

OLIGARCHY, DEMOCRACY, AND FASCISM 157

Now, the oligarchs are generally portrayed by Western histo rians as enlightened

political pragmatists who built the modern Japanese state. The essential features

of this interpretation may be summarized very briefly as follows. First, the key point

about the oligarchs is that by subordinating their personal and political rivalries

to the shared priority of building a ‘‘rich country’’ ( fukoku) and ‘‘strong army’’

(kyo

hei), they provided relative political stability and continuity of leadership in a

period of rapid change.

Second, while the constitutional system they devised was

authoritarian and clearly intended to legitimize their informal rule from behind the

throne, it provided scope for a loyal opposition in an elected lower H ouse of

Representatives that would be balanced by a conservative, appointive upper

House of Peers. They opposed party cabinets, but ‘‘The measure of the enlig-

htenment of the oligarchs is that they themselves accepted the fact of real participa-

tion in the government by the outs as an irreducible minimum for constitutional

government.’’

In this, the oligarchs judged, overoptimistically as it turned out,

that the parties might help to mobilize popular support for the government’s do-

mestic and foreign policies if landed and business interests whose taxes were

essential to these policies were consulted through their party repr esenatives in the

lower house.

Third, when, beginning with the first Diet in 1890, the parties repeatedly opposed

tax increases by using the one significant power afforded them – the power to

block supply, which forced the government to revert to the previous year’s

budget in financing the rising costs of ‘‘wealth and power’’ policies – the oligarchs

(at first Ito

and later Yamagata) saw the necessity of compromises with the parties in

exchange for their cooperation in the Diet. This partly explains the formation of

the O

kuma cabinet in 1898. Ito

reasoned that since the strongest parties had blocke d

the governme nt’s proposal to raise the land tax, they should take of fice and

assume the responsibility for ‘‘wealth and power’’ policies. He also sensed, quite

rightly, that the O

kuma government would soon fall apart. Two years later, Ito

broke ranks with Yamagata, who was ab solutely determined to keep the parties

out of power, and became president of the newly formed Seiyu

kai, to facilitate

the politics of compromise. The parties, in turn, had come to see that working

with the oligarchy was the key to attaining power one day in their own right.

This readiness of the oligarchy and the parties to make constitutional government

viable through the pragmatic politics of compromise led to the alternation

of Katsura and Saionji as prime minister and then to a period, from 1914 to 1918,

of ‘‘covert party government,’’

reflecting the increasing influence of party leaders.

If Yamagata symbolized the past, Hara Kei (1856–1921), who succeeded

Saionji as president of the Seiyu

kai in 1914, was the face of the future. By

1918, Hara was a very experienced politician, having developed the Seiyu

kai as a

political force while serving as home minister in three previous cabinets. Thus, the

transition from oligarchic rule to party government, which occurred with Hara’s

appointment as prime minister in September 1918, was the logical outcome of earlier

trends.

Fourth, in their prime, the oligarchs had sought ‘‘uncontested control of decision-

making. In this they were wonderfully successful.’’

By 1900 they had constructed a

modern, rational, and highly efficient central bureaucracy, based upon rigorous civil

service examinations and an orderly system of promotion, which was deliberately

158 STEPHEN S. LARGE