"Invented Traditions" in Early Meiji 明治期における「創られた伝統」
Justin Aukema
June 15, 2016
(Perry's "Black Ships" from MIT Visualizing Cultures)
The early Meiji period was, to put it
lightly, a time of tremendous transformations. Due largely to foreign pressure
for trade from the outside and internal economic strife, the Tokugawa
government was brought to the brink of collapse. On July 8, 1853 U.S. Commodore
Matthew Perry sailed into Uraga bay in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture with four
wars ships, and two steam ships, the likes of which had never been seen in
Japan before. The black smoke that the ships belched caused some Japanese
observers to term them the “black ships” (kurofune).
Perry and three-hundred of his men marched ashore for a hastily-readied
audience with Tokugawa officials, where the U.S. Commodore handed over a letter
from President Fillmore requesting, among other things, commercial intercourse,
safe passage for U.S. ships, and help for shipwrecked sailors (Huffman 2010;
Dower 2008).
- See the letters from President Fillmore and Commodore Perry here.
- Also see images and an essay by John Dower on Perry’s visit here.
Six months later Perry returned to Japan
with nine ships and a crew of nearly 1,800 and forced the Shogunate to sign the
Treaty of Kanagawa. Following this, the Townsend Harris came to Japan and set
up camp in Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula. There he negotiated the opening of
more port cities including Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagasaki (Huffman 2010). In
addition, the Tokugawa government was forced to sign numerous “unfair treaties”
(fubyōdō jyōyaku) with other foreign
nations under which, among other things, the foreign countries maintained the
right to extra-territoriality or, that is to say, the privilege of being exempt
from local courts of law.
The bakufu,
meanwhile, was steadily losing its grip on control. In 1862 it was forced to
abandon the sankin kōtai system and,
in response to the “foreign problem” it requested the advice of the various daimyo. Far from aiding its cause,
however, this only served to indicate the central government’s weakness to the
domain leaders. Meanwhile, anti-foreign sentiment had been growing during the
Tokugawa Period under the National Learning (kokugaku) school of
thought and, by the late 19th c. it reached its peak under the sonnō jōi (revere the Emepror and expel
the barbarians) movement. These groups of largely disaffected samurai known as shishi (men of valor) threatened
violence against the Tokugawa regime and even assassinated the bakufu official who negotiated treaties
with foreign countries, Ii Naosuke (Huffman 2010).
On January 3, 1868 troops from Satsuma-han stormed the palace grounds in Kyoto
and installed the fifteen-year-old emperor Mutsuhito as the head of their Meiji
“restoration.” Although Tokugawa Yoshinobu stepped down in response to this,
and many domains returned their land to the throne, some domains still loyal to
the Tokugawa government continued to fight on in an eighteen-month civil war
known as the Boshin War (Huffman 2010).
(The Meiji Emperor, from MIT Visualizing Cultures)
In order to solidify their new and still
precarious rule, as well as to create a government which could “catch up” with
and challenge the West, the Meiji leaders, under the guidance of oligarchs like
Prince Iwakura Tomomi and Itō Hirobumi, devised to borrow from both the new and
the old and create a number of modern “invented traditions.” This section will
highlight three of them in particular.
The first of these related to the
imperial myth. For most of Japanese history, common people had little knowledge
of the emperor or life in the imperial palace. The Tokugawa bakufu had actively attempted to
cloister the imperial family, and it distanced itself from the court. In Meiji,
however, the emperor/imperial court was not only the symbol of the
“restoration” movement, it was the new government’s legitimization to power.
Thus it was imperative that the Meiji oligarchs did everything they could to
propagate their most important symbol. Toward this end they shuttled the
emperor on a six tours (junkō) around
the country, sometimes with as many as 700 retainers in tow (Fujitani 1996).
Next they sought to build an imperial
capital. Initially many leaders like Iwakura Tomomi conceived of making Kyoto
their new capital instead of Edo. This was because whereas Kyoto had a long
history tied to the imperial throne, Edo was rather connected to Tokugawa
history, a point that made many Meiji elites uncomfortable. In this atmosphere,
imperial palace in Tokyo largely fell into neglect and, in fact, it was
abandoned by the imperial family after partially burning down in 1873. Yet in
the 1880s Fukuzawa Yukichi and others proposed that a magnificent
capital/palace was crucial for Japan’s international image. Eventually it was
settled upon that there would, in effect, be two capitals: Tokyo which embodied
the modern, and Kyoto which embodied the perceived/purported “ancient”
traditions associated with the imperial house (Fujitani 1996).
The second related to Shintō. As Helen
Hardacre has noted, for much of Japanese history the word “shintō” was not
commonly used and it had “no independent, autonomous existence” (1989: 5). In
general, the populations’ beliefs were heavily influenced by Buddhism and kami were considered to be lower beings
than Buddhas (15). This changed toward late Tokugawa, however, when kokugaku scholars like Motoori Norinaga
argued to reclaim Shintō as a “pure” Japanese religion untainted by foreign
influence. This argument was convincing for Meiji oligarchs because of Shintō’s
perceived connections to the imperial court ceremonies and ritual. In other
words, propagating Shintō as a national religion served as a tool of
indoctrination in the imperial myth.
In this pro-Shintō climate, Buddhism and
Shintō were decreed to be separate (shinbutsu
bunri) and Buddhist temples were even pillaged and burned (haibutsu kishaku). Moreover, shrines and
other local religions which previously had no connection to Shintō were
incorporated into a national hierarchy of Shintō shrines. This distinguished civic
shrines (minsha) from government
shrines (kansha) like the
Nation-Protecting Shrines (gokoku jinja),
the Yasukuni Shrine, and the Meiji Shrine, which were all situated at the top
of the rank (84).
Belief in the imperial myth and Shintō
were propagated through various laws and measures for education. This is the
third invented tradition of Meiji: the idea of the kokumin. Prior to Meiji, few people considered themselves to be a
part of a “Japanese” nation that had shared values and beliefs. More often than
not, their loyalties instead lay to their family (ie) or local community or, at most, region. Meiji leaders, thus,
felt that the creation of a common kokumin
was imperative to “catch up with” the West and carry out Japan’s goal of
modernization. In their view, the newly-made citizen should not be sullied by
politics, but should instead demonstrate patriotism (aikoku), loyalty (chūsetsu),
and nationalism. Especially important was devotion to the state and the
emperor.
(Presenting the Emperor with the new Constitution, from MIT Visualizing Cultures)
Toward this end, Meiji leaders devised
two important documents to disseminate their ideology. The first was the Meiji
Constitution of 1889. Drafted mainly under the guidance of Itō Hirobumi, the
constitution gave ultimate power to the emperor who was declared to be “sacred
and inviolable” (4) while still creating some democratic institutions such as a
Diet. The second was the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education. The document
incorporated Confucian and Shintō doctrine and was intended to be the basis of
a new civic morality. In the words of Carol Gluck, it was premised on the idea “that
the national education should serve the state” (1985: 103). Claiming to be set
forth by “Our Imperial Ancestors” and “infallible for all ages and true in all
places,” it encouraged people to “offer yourselves courageously to the State”
(ctd. Lu 1997: 344).
(The Imperial Rescript on Education, from the Meiji Jingu Shrine website)
The effectiveness of these invented
traditions and the drive to create a modern kokumin
is observed in the funeral ceremony of the Emperor Meiji. Although when he
was inaugurated hardly anyone knew of him, when he died nearly everyone knew of
him. Gluck has noted the the Meiji emperor by this point had been “credited
with the full achievement of modernity” 215).
Sources
Columbia
University. East Asia for Educators (2009) “Excerpts from the Meiji
Constitution
Columbia
University. East Asia for Educators (2009) “Letters from U.S. President Millard
Fillmore and U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry to the
Emperor of Japan
Dower,
John (2008) “Black Ships and Samurai: Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan
(1853-1854)” MIT Visualizing Cultures.
Fujitani,
Takashi (1996) Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan,
University of California Press.
Gluck,
Carol (1985) Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period,
Princeton
University Press.
Hardacre,
Helen (1989) Shinto and the State, 1868-1988, Princeton University Press.
Huffman,
James L (2010) Japan in World History. Oxford University Press.
Lu,
David John (1997) Japan: A Documentary History. M.E. Sharpe.
