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The Meiji Restoration Era, 1868-1889

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by James Human

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Editor's Note: This article was originally written for Japan Society's previous site for educators,
"Journey through Japan," in 2003.
Change was the currency of the Meiji era (18681912). From the day the teen-aged Mutsuhito
claimed power on January 3, 1868 in a relatively tranquil coup called the Meiji Restoration (after
his reign name) until his death forty-ve years later, Japan experienced an evolution so rapid that
one Tokyo expatriate said he felt as if he had been alive for 400 years. An isolated, feudalistic
island state in 1850, Japan had become a powerful colonial power with the most modern of
institutions when Meijis son, the Taisho emperor, took the throne in 1912. Both the sources of
these changes and the way in which they made Japan modern provide the material for one of
human historys more dramatic stories. They also laid the groundwork for the turbulence of
Japans twentieth century.
Sources of the Meiji Restoration
To understand the dynamism of the Meiji years, one must begin with the factors in the Tokugawa
era (16001868) that made Japan a unique and sophisticated nation. The rst thing about which
historians often comment is the periods stability. Founded by the warrior Tokugawa Ieyasu at the
conclusion of centuries of samurai warfare, the Tokugawa bakufu (tent or military government)
ruled for more than 250 years in the city of Edo (todays Tokyo), during which time the most
serious ghting consisted of localized peasant riots. The Tokugawa created a centralized feudal
system in which more than 200 domains or han maintained scal and military autonomy, while
their lords served an authoritarian government in Edo. Even the Europeans, who had participated

in some of the sixteenth century conicts, were tightly controlled in these years, with most of
them excluded from Japan altogether and the Dutch alone allowed to maintain a limited trading
presence at Nagasaki, nearly 1,000 miles away from the capital. It is hardly surprising that
observers refer to this period as the pax Tokugawa.
Undergirding this political stability were unusually high levels of political and educational
sophistication that would make rapid, peaceful change possible in the decades after the
Restoration. Though critics talk about the inexibility and ineciency of the Tokugawa
government, the political system nonetheless ranked among the worlds most eective in tying
more than 30 million people together and stimulating an energetic national life. Perhaps the most
eective feature of that government was the alternate attendance (sankin kotai) system that
required most of the 250 domain lords to spend every other year in Edo, serving the shogun, and
thus stimulated not only national consciousness but an extensive system of roads (for the travel of
the lords large retinues), towns (for their lodging), trade, and cultural diusion.
The system also encouraged the growth of important national institutions. Thousands of schools
tied to temples, government oces, and private scholars gave Japan a literacy rate of perhaps 40
percent for boys and 10 percent for girls in the early 1800s, ranking it near the top of the world.
They also provided a leadership class committed to the Confucian ideal of public service. Industry
and trade ourished, even as the samurai class and the Tokugawa government languished
economically, giving Japan high levels of capital accumulation. And the culture of the cities was
among the most innovative in the world, producing a combination of woodblock prints, kabuki
theater, novels, haiku poetry, fashion fads, and lending librariesmuch of it tied to the geisha or
female entertainers who presided over each citys entertainment quarters. Scholars have noted
that Japan in the early 1800s ranked near the worlds forefront in almost every quantiable level
of development.
At the same time, a set of specic developments (historians would call them contingencies) made
late-Tokugawa Japan ripe for change. Many of the countrys leaders grew quite interested in the
ways of the West, as they began learning about the industrial revolution and the imperialist
adventures that were bringing countries from China to the Philippines under the European sway.
At the same time, American and European seaman began visiting Japans ports after the early
1800s, seeking an end to the countrys isolation policy. And perhaps most important, the balance
between Tokugawa and domain governments began shifting, with large and distant domains such
as Satsuma (in southern Kyushu) and Choshu (on western Honshu) experiencing political and
economic growth even as the shogunate sunk ever more deeply into a kind of inexibility caused
in part by old age. Thus, while many regions of the country were full of energy and increasing
self-condence in 1850, the Edo government was in decline, staed by cautious bureaucrats
described by one young ocial as wooden monkeys.
In this mix, the Tokugawa decision to open Japan to foreigners in 1854, in compliance with
American demands, touched o one of Japans most tumultuous periods. With newly arrived
Westerners demanding trade, showing o new customs (including the scandalous tendency of
women to accompany men to public events), practicing the forbidden Christian religion, and

taking sides in Japans political disputes, the countrys political life changed irrevocably.
Opposition to the Tokugawa arose from several quarters. At one level, lower-ranked samurai
called shishi or men of spirit began agitating for the ouster of the Westerners almost as soon as
Matthew Perry and his followers had been admitted. They were too much on the outside to topple
the government, but their terrorist acts disrupted the tranquility of political centers in ways that
had not been seen for centuries. More directly threatening to the Tokugawa were the growing
challenges after the late 1850s from establishment scholars and political leaders of major domains.
The shogunate reacted as aggressively as any regime-under-attack might be expected to, but by
the mid-1860s, Choshu was in the hands of an anti-Tokugawa administration, and by late 1868,
Shogun Tokugawa Keiki concluded that the best way to preserve order was to resign as shogun
and create a system in which he likely would share power as the chief among a council of leaders.
His scheme failed, however, and on January 3, 1868, a coup dtat in Meijis name brought to
power a group of young, visionary samurai from the regional domains.
The Transition to Meiji, 18681877
The government that came into being in 1868 had three overriding characteristics: its leaders were
young; its policies were pragmatic; and its hold on power was tenuous. The emperor in whose
name the new governors ruled was just seventeen years old; the major samurai power-holders
from Satsuma and Choshu domains ranged in age from the upper 20s to the senior Saigo
Takamori, who was just 41; and Iwakura Tomomi, the most important nobleman in the leadership
clique, was 43. By Japanese leadership standards, these men were mere juvenilesunbound by the
networks and mores of traditional leadership. This, perhaps, is what made them so pragmatic;
they developed policies without the restraints of ideology or customor of any overriding vision
of where Japan should go. Confucian tradition discouraged commerce, but they moved Japan as
forcefully and quickly as possible into the world of international commerce. Whereas they once
had supported the idea of national seclusion, sometimes fanatically so, now they made the West
their model and pursued internationalization with a vengeance. Samurai and nobles all, they
abolished the class and status systems and disbanded the feudal domains. One of their central
slogans, kuni no tame (for the sake of the country) said it all: their overriding commitment was
simply to national strength, regardless of what customs or ideologies had to be violated in the
pursuit of that goal.
The tenuousness of their power was illustrated by the Boshin War, a violent conict between the
new regime and the Tokugawa followers, which raged for a year and a half after the Restoration.
Though the coup often has been called bloodless, and though the carnage was indeed lessened by
Keikis surrender in February 1868, thousands of his supporters resisted in a civil war that left
more than 8,000 dead by the time the ghting ended in Hokkaido in June 1869. It was little
wonder that journalists predicted the imminent collapse of the Meiji government well into the
1870s.
All of this meant that the rst Meiji years were characterized by a seat-of-the-pants, try-thistry-that style of governing. A charter oath, issued in April 1868 promised to unify the classes
and seek knowledge from around the world in order to strengthen the emperors rule. No one

seemed, however, to know just what that meant initially, as the government grappled with
inadequate revenues, challenges from imperialist nations, threats from the regional domains,
conspiracies by disgruntled samurai across the nation, and a complete lack of precedents for the
organizational structures the modern era demanded. One result was that the government structure
was reorganized repeatedly in the rst years. Another was that membership in the leadership
faction kept shifting. Still a third was that policies were revised often. At the same time there was
a single, clear direction: toward centralization, solidarity, and involvement in the broader world.
And always there was a commitment to making Japan a modern nation, accepted as an equal by
the world powers.
Internationalization showed up in two ways. First, the new leaders studied Western models with a
zeal born of deep fear that weakness might invite invasion. They sent missions to the West,
including a 50-member group headed by head of state Iwakura Tomomi in 18711873, to negotiate
and to study institutions such as banking, schools, political systems, and treaty structures. They
also dispatched young people to study in European and American educational institutions. And
they brought hundreds of Westerners, called yatoi (or, in some scholars telling, live machines)
to Japan every year until the late 1870s, to teach English, build railroads and buildings, create an
educational system, edit newspapers (for foreign consumption), and teach science. The result was
an urban craze for things Westerneverything from mens haircuts to drinking milk, from the
solar calendar to ballroom dancingthat made city life heady.
Second, the movement onto the international scene made treaty revision one of the governments
central goals. The treaties of the 1850s had limited the taris Japan could charge on imports to an
average of about ve percent and had required that foreigners who committed crimes in Japan be
tried in the courts of the foreign consulates (a system called extraterritoriality). Beside being
humiliating, the restrictions deprived Japan of both sovereignty and tari revenues, money
desperately needed for modernization programs. As a result the government sought endlessly to
secure fairer treaties during the 1870s. The British consistently blocked reform, however, and
extraterritoriality was not ended until 1894, tari limits until 1911. The treaties thus served as a
constant reminder of just how important modernity and power were to Japans success in the
international arena. Without being regarded as modern, Japan would not be taken seriously by
Britain and the other imperialist powers; without strength, it could not challenge the foreign
gunboats.
The movement toward centralization was illustrated partly by a raft of new regulations: the 1871
decision to replace the semi-feudal domains with modern prefectures, the issuance in 18721873
of laws to create a military draft and to require three years of school for all boys and girls, and the
standardization of a land tax. It was illustrated more dramatically by two major crises, both
centering on the role of the old samurai class. In the rst, the Crisis of 1873, the leadership faction
was rent asunder by a bitter foreign policy dispute. After Japanese diplomats in Korea had been
spoken to rudely by Korean ocials, the state council decided to send Saigo Takamori as an
emissary to demand an apology, realizing fully that such a mission could precipitate war. When
progressive ocials, who had been abroad with Iwakura, heard about the plans, they were aghast
not so much at the idea of war as at the potential cost. They managed through intensive

maneuvering to get the decision reversed, and the popular Saigo quit oce in a rage, taking a
number of followers with him. The result was a leaner government, and a less popular one.
The second crisis, the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, was even more serious. After the government
had abolished the samurai class in order to save the huge cost of paying annual stipends to every
member of the class, a civil rebellion broke out in the southwestheaded by Saigo. The results
were devastating, on every level. Word that Saigo was leading the rebellion sent shudders through
the country. Former samurai everywhere questioned the governments policy of using a
commoner army to ght the rebels. And the cost was staggering: eight months of bloody ghting,
millions of yen, 10,000 men injured, more than 6,000 deaths, and a powerful sense of national
loss. Historically, however, the Satsuma Rebellion marked a positive watershed for the Meiji
government. With Saigos defeat, the country was unied as it had not been since the Restoration;
the governments legitimacy was established; the transitional decade was over.
Creating a Modern System, 18771889
Few would have considered the Restoration era complete, however, until a new political system
was in place, a system approved as modern by the international powers. Only after creating the
new structures noted above and defeating the recalcitrant samurai could the rulers focus their
energies in that direction.
Before looking at that process, however, a word must be said about the impact of the many
changes on the countrys broader populace. If the new system was hard on the traditional samurai
class, it was devastating for vast numbers of people: the shermen, the rickshaw pullers, the
construction workers, miners, prostitutes, and newspaper sellers who made the rapid changes
possible by doing the hardest work and receiving the least remuneration. The largest such group
lived in more than 60,000 villages, where some 28 million farmers (out of a population of 35
million in the late 1870s) provided the country not only with its food but with the bulk of its taxes.
The cost of modernizing and expanding the government was placed overwhelmingly on land
taxes, which meant that farmers had to bear the brunt, either through direct taxation or in the
rents they paid to landlords. When the governments scal retrenchment led to depression in the
early 1880s, rice and silk prices plummeted, and bankruptcies soared, pushing many into
destitution and thousands into local uprisings against the system. Another group hurt by
modernizing policies were Japans factory workers, particularly the tens of thousands of girls and
women who were forced by poverty into working in the expanding silk and cotton factories. Their
willingness to work under inhuman conditions for pittance pay helped Japan compete on the
world market; it also produced surprising amounts of resistance, with workers absconding,
engaging in work stoppages, and even striking.
A more positive result for the general populace was the diusion of new ideas and practices into
every nook of society. The 1870s saw former samurai in the northeast oend the Buddhist spirits
by beginning to eat meat; they saw the rise of barbering and dairy-farming in the Tokyo region;
they saw the spread of railroads, modern postal networks, re-resistant brick buildings, a
banking system, public schools, language institutes, modern hospitalsin short, every modern

institution known in the worlds most progressive cities. The arts also changed, as Western style
painting took root. Novels and ction became increasingly popular, though complex
characterization would have to wait until late in the century to become the norm. And literate
Japanese by the tens of thousands began reading newspapers. While it would take several more
decades for modernity to penetrate the countryside, cities were literally transformed by the drive
toward international respect and domestic centralization in this rst Meiji decade.
The driving force in all of this lay with the government during the early Meiji years, but one of
that forces most exceptional features was the role of private, popular groups in shaping the
political evolution. Indeed the drive toward creating a constitutional systemwhich everyone
agreed was the essential characteristic of a modern statewas fueled by a constant, erce
struggle between popular and ocial forces. (Refer to the Enactment of the Meiji Constitution.) In
the mid-1870s, for example, a vigorous movement for freedom and rights (jiyu minken undo),
led by both former samurai and commoners, stirred the national political life mightily with rallies
and petition drives demanding a national assembly, a constitution, and broader participation in
the government. When a nancial scandal prompted massive protests against the government in
1881, the ocials responded in part by promising that a constitution would be granted within a
decade. And when Japans rst political parties were created in response to that promise, the
government seriously set about the task of drafting that constitution.
The political intensity quieted in the mid-1880s, but not the drive toward constitutional
government. Ito Hirobumi, one of the youngest Restoration leaders and now a dominating force in
ocial circles, led a group to Europe to study political systems, then headed a task force that
created several new institutions (including a peerage, so there would be a pool for selecting a
House of Lords) and drafted Asias rst national constitution. His models and chief advisors were
German statists, and when the constitution was promulgated on February 11, 1889, it placed
sovereignty solely in the emperor and gave Japan a relatively weak legislature and a strong,
transcendent cabinet, with the prime minister appointed by the emperor. But the impact of the
freedom and rights forces was apparent in the constitution too, because it also assured limited
freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, gave the legislature veto power over the budget, and
created an independent judiciary. It was, in short, a middle-of-the-road document that placed
Japan in the mainstream of the world powers politically. Papers from London to Shanghai hailed
the arrival of constitutional government in Asia, while commoners across the nation celebrated
with reworks and speeches this evidence that the Meiji Restorations promise had been fullled.

The Restoration Legacy

Though dramatically changed, Japan would not have been called modern yet in 1889 by most
observers. The two post-Restoration decades had, however, planted all of those seeds that would
mature into full-edged modernity and imperialistic vigor at the beginning of the twentieth
century. At least three legacies of the Restoration decades merit discussion.
The rst is nationalism. The rise of nationalismoften called the most important feature of the
late 1880s and early 1890sshowed up in many ways: in the widely-heralded pride over the
constitution, in the issuance in 1890 of the Imperial Rescript on Education, a stirring document in
which school students regularly recited their loyalty to country and emperor, in the increasing
public discussions by young writers of Japans greatness. One of the most articulate vehicles for
the new nationalism was a journal named simply Nihon (Japan), launched the day the constitution
was promulgated, for the express purpose of reviving the unique spirit of the Japanese people.
The seeds of the new national pride lay in the early-Meiji soil, when the government had worked
so hard to make the entire populace aware of their Japaneseness, creating national holidays,
making the emperor both sovereign and high priest, sending Tokyo newspapers to every part of
the country, instituting compulsory education and military service. By the twentieth century, the
nationalism would become worrisome, as it propelled Japan into aggressive actions abroad. At the
end of the Restoration period, however, people saw it merely as an eective means of getting
people to support the states drive to modernity and power.
The second departure of the 1890s was the rising importance of military aairs in national life. In

1894, Japan launched its rst major foreign war since the 1500s (and its second foreign war ever),
thrashing China in the Sino-Japanese War and beginning its experience with empire by securing
Taiwan as a colony. A decade after that, it defeated Russia, one of the European powers, setting
the stage for colonies in Korea and Manchuria. And with those wars, the army and navy became
central actors in nearly every national decision, major factors in the countrys political and
economic life. Again, the early Meiji years had set the stage. One of the earliest slogans of the
Restoration era was fukoku kyohei (rich country, strong army); in 1872 Japan had begun drafting
men into the army; and in 1874, it had sent 3,000 troops to Taiwan, for a short, victorious
engagement with aboriginal groups who had killed some 54 shipwrecked Okinawans. The nation
also had begun the acquisition of territory in these years, taking over the Ryukyu Islands to the
south in 1879, three years after negotiating with Russia to gain control of the Kuril Islands to the
north. All of these were relatively minor episodes, but they conrmed a fundamental approach.
Convinced that military strength alone would assure respect and security in an imperialist world,
the early-Meiji leaders had set the nation on a course toward military might, a course that would
make war and empire central facets of national policy by the turn of the century.
The third legacy of the Restoration years was the march to modernity. Most students agree that
the period between the Sino- and Russo-Japanese Wars saw a genuine mass society emerge in
Japans cities. These were the years that gave Japan its rst major industrial takeo, the period
that produced mass-circulation newspapers, department stores, publicly treated water systems,
social and class divisions, moving pictures, wristwatches, safety razors, increasingly popular
public intellectual debates, and beer hallsall the trappings of modern, urban society. (See SinoJapanese War.) And they were the years in which commoners, called minshu, began to take an
active part in the nations public and political life. To say that this development represented a
mere speed-up of the early Meiji programs is to state the obvious. When the Charter Oath
promised in 1868 to seek knowledge from around the world, it set Japan on a course of studying,
emulating, adaptingand nally surpassingpeoples everywhere, a path that would bring the
Restoration era to fulllment, even as it launched Japan into the more troubling arena of
colonialism and empire.

Related Links:
Timeline of Religion and Nationalism in Meiji and Imperial Japan
Timeline of Modern Japan

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