An Introduction to the History of Japan

by Katsuro Hara

CHAPTER XIII

THE RESTORATION OF THE MEIDJI

The great political change which took place in the year 1867-1868 is generally called the Restoration, in the sense that the imperial power was restored by this event. In truth, however, the prerogative of the Emperor has never been formally usurped, and none has dared impudently to declare that he had assumed the power in His Majesty's stead. All the virtual potentates, court-nobles as well as Shogun, who, each in his day, held unlimited sway over the whole country, had been accustomed to style themselves modestly vicegerents of the Emperor. On the other hand, the change was more than a mere restoration, for never in the course of our national history had the resplendent grandeur of the Imperiality reached the height in which it now actually stands. In this respect the Restoration of the Meidji can by no means be taken in the same sense as the two Restorations famous in European history, that of the Stuarts in 1660 and of the Bourbons in 1814. Renovation, perhaps, would be a more adequate term to be used here than Restoration, to designate this epoch-making event in our history. We have reconstructed new Japan from the old materials, the origins of some of which are lost in remotest antiquity.

If, however, we should consider the range and intensity of the momentous change which was caused by the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate, it is rather a revolution than a renovation. Just the same kind of disjunction which can be perceived in the transition of France from its ancient régime to the Revolution may also be noticed in the Japanese history of the transition period, which divides the pre-Meidji régime from the present status. The difference is that we accomplished in five years a counterpart, though on a much smaller scale, of what they took in France nearly a generation to conclude; a difference which may be accounted for by the absence in our country of many circumstances which helped to make the French Revolution really a great historical event. That those circumstances were lacking in our history, however, is by no means the fault of our nation. No impartial foreign historian would grudge a few words of praise to the Japanese who achieved the historic thorough transformation of national life with little or no bloodshed, when they think of the tremendous difficulties which Bismarck had to encounter in his grand task of forming the new German empire, and which even he himself could not overcome entirely.

Then how did this momentous change happen to be achieved by the Japanese? It appeared a wonder even to the eyes of many contemporary Japanese. It surprises us, therefore, to say the least, that many foreigners not well-versed in Japanese history, however intelligent and otherwise qualified, should have believed almost without exception that the island nation had something miraculous in its immanent capacity, which had remained latent so long only from lack of opportunity to manifest itself. But to the contemplative mind, equipped at the same time with sufficient knowledge of the historical development of our country, there was nothing magical in the national achievement of the Japanese in the latter half of the nineteenth century, though it cannot be denied that the close contact with the modern civilisation of Europe at this juncture gave the most suitable opportunity to the people to try their ability nurtured by the long centuries of their history, and served efficiently to quicken the steps of national progress to a pace far more speedy than any we had ever marched before.

In other words, our national progress of these fifty years, whether it might be apt to be termed hurried steps or strides, was a thing organized by slow degrees during the long tranquil rule of the Tokugawa. As to the advancement of the general culture anterior to the Revolution of the Meidji, I have already touched on that in the previous chapter. Here I will limit myself to recapitulating the growth of the nationalistic spirit among the people, which bore as its fruit that memorable change in the political and cultural sphere of our country.

The tranquillity restored to the country by the powerful dictatorship of Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, and the multiplication of books, Japanese as well as Chinese, reprinted in blocks or in type, remarkably enlarged the reading circle among the people. The liberal education of warriors had been earnestly encouraged by the Shogunate, mainly for the purpose of creating intelligent and law-abiding gentlemen out of rough and adventurous fighters. A great many of the daimyo followed the example of the Shogunate by founding one or more schools in their own territories for the education of their own samurai, and in these schools moral and political lessons were given, besides training in military arts. The samurai were taught to read and understand Chinese classics, with the purely pragmatic purpose of enabling them to follow the inexhaustible precepts preached by the Chinese philosophers of various ages, and at the same time to qualify them to govern the people according to the political theories of Confucius, when they were put in some responsible positions in the territorial government of their lord. The text-books used in this curriculum of education had been, of course, Chinese literature of the sort which might be called political miscellanies, that is to say, those works pertaining to morals, politics, and history. This trio was to Chinese philosophers only the three different forms of the manifestation of one and the same principle, for to them politics was an enlarged application of that very principle, which when applied to personal matters made private morals, and history was only another name for the politics of the past, as many European historians still also believe. Their Japanese pupils, however, took up any one of the trio they fancied, and interlaced it with the national tradition, each according to his own taste. The metaphysical element of the Chinese moral philosophy of the Sung dynasty, the time in which Chinese philosophy reached its high flourishing scholastic stage, was thus mingled with Shintoism.

Up to that time we had Shintoism imbued with Buddhism. Now having repudiated the Indian elements out of it, we introduced in their stead the Confucian philosophy. As the philosophy introduced was that expounded by Chutse, who was an intense rigorist, the Shintoism resulting from this mixture was rather narrow and chauvinistic, though fervent enough to inspire people of education. One of the most conspicuous founders of this kind of new national cult was Ansai Yamazaki, who was born in 1619. On account of his hair-splitting doctrines, tolerating none which deviated the least from his, his disciples were always in very bitter controversy with one another, each asserting himself as the only true successor of his master, and dissension followed after dissension. Many of them were so pigheaded as to make it a rule not to serve publicly in any official capacity under the Shogun nor the daimyo, and exerted themselves strenuously to spread their propaganda among the intelligent classes of the people.

Fuel was added to the flame of the national spirit already in a blaze by the assiduous study of the ancient literature of our country. The old Japanese literature studied and imitated during the Ashikaga period had not gone back farther than the Tempyô era. If we except some novels produced in the prime of the courtiers' régime, such as the Genji-monogatari, the literary works of old Japan highly prized by the courtiers and enlightened warriors of the Ashikaga were limited to the anthologies of short Japanese poems by various poets, the oldest of which was called the Kokin-shû, said to have been compiled in 905 A.D. under Imperial auspices. The Mannyô-shû, which is another collection of Japanese poems, older than those gathered into the Kokin-shû, and to which I referred in my former chapter as the oldest collection of all of that kind in Japan, though not entirely abandoned, could not cope with the latter in popularity, being considered as too much out of date. A few of the commentaries or interpretations of trivial topics sung or celebrated in the poems in the Kokin-shû had become matters of great importance in the art of Japanese versification, and had been handed from one master to a favourite disciple as an esoteric literary secret not to be lightly divulged to the hoi polloi. The resuscitated national spirit of the early Tokugawa period, however, induced men of the literary circles of the time no longer to be contented with such trivialities, and stimulated them to push their researches backward into the literature still more ancient, that is to say, to launch themselves upon the difficult task of interpreting those more archaic poems contained in the Mannyô-shû. The foremost of these philologists was a priest by the name of Keichû, born in 1640 in the vicinity of Ôsaka. His celebrated work, the Commentaries on the Poems of the Mannyô-shû, is said to be the first standard hoisted in the philological study of old Japan by Japanese, a study the inauguration of which almost corresponded in time with the establishment of durable peace by the Tokugawa Shogunate. A succession of savants followed in his wake, and the most noted among them were Mabuchi Kamo and his disciple Norinaga Motoöri. It was the latter of the two who brought the study of Japanese antiquities to its highest point in the Tokugawa age.

The time of Motoöri covers the whole of the latter half of the eighteenth century, for he was born in 1730 and died in 1801 in the province of Ise. Before him the scope of researches into old Japan had been limited to the literary products of our ancient poets and novelists. Though the Nihongi had been talked of by the scholars of the Ashikaga period and an edition reprinted before the advent of the house of Tokugawa, that part of the work which had been most widely read and commented on was its first volume, treating about the age of the gods and the mythical beginning of the Empire. In other words, the book had been prized not as an important historical work, but as a sacred book of Shintoism. It was Motoöri himself who first studied ancient Japan, not only from the Shintoistic point of view, but also philologically and historically. Classical literature, which became the object of his indefatigable research, was not restricted to books of mythology, but included also the ritual book of "norito," several collections of poems, and historical works. First of all, however, he concentrated his efforts upon the study of the old chronicle, Kojiki. He was of the opinion that the Kojiki was more reliable as a historical source than the Nihongi, as it might, according to him, be easily judged from its archaic phraseology and syntax, in contrast to the latter, the historical veracity of which must have been surely impaired by its adoption of the Chinese rhetoric. He made the most minute, critical study of the text of the Kojiki, phrase by phrase, and word by word. The famous Kojiki-den, or "The Commentaries on the Kojiki," is the choicest fruit of his life-long study. In it the history, religion, manners, customs, in short, all the items concerning the civilisation of ancient Japan are expounded from the text of the chronicle itself, frequently corroborated by what is stated in other authentic sources. He had always in view, and laid great stress on the fact, that Japan had possessed from her beginning what was to be called her own, purely and entirely Japanese, quite apart from the culture which she introduced afterwards from abroad. It was to this unique and naïve state of things in primeval Japan taken as a whole that he applied the term Shintoism. According to him, therefore, naturalness, purity and veracity were the cardinal virtues to be taught in Shintoism, from which he thought not only Indian, but Chinese elements also should be eradicated. Thus Shintoism was stripped of its religious apparel, with which it had been invested during the long course of our history, and by his endeavours it approached again its original status as a simple moral cult with primitive rituals; but at the same time it gained immensely in strength, for it now found its main support in the nationality deeply rooted in the daily life of the ancient Japanese. By him the Japanese were reminded of their national beginning.