The country, however, which had once been set astir could not be pacified so easily. The next to be chastised was the lord of Aidzu, a daimyo who, remaining faithful to the Shogunate to the last, fought desperately in the battle of Fushimi and Toba, and retired to his territory in northern Japan after his defeat. Though he found supporters among the daimyo of the neighboring territories, the forces of the Imperialists were in the meanwhile immensely reinforced, for the daimyo of middle Japan, who had hitherto been neutral, now joined their colleagues of the south. The war began anew in the middle of June in the northern part of Honto. The combined forces of the northern daimyo had to fight against fearful odds, and were successively defeated. The castle of Aidzu was closely invested, and capitulated at the beginning of November. The supporters of the lord of Aidzu also surrendered one after another to the Imperialists. It was soon after this that the adoption of the name of Meidji, as the designation of the opening era, was promulgated at Kyoto.
The last chivalrous feat in behalf of the Shogun was performed by the fleet which belonged to the former Shogunate. Before the Revolution the Shogunate had kept a fleet consisting of eight ships, commanded by Admiral Yenomoto, who had received his naval education in Holland. This was the only navy worthy of its name in Japan at that time. After the capitulation of Yedo the Imperial Government ordered half of the men-of-war belonging to the fleet to be given up to itself, allowing the rest to be kept in the hands of the Tokugawa. The admiral was, however, too sorrowful to part with his ships, so that a little before the capitulation of Aidzu, he sailed out with all his fleet from the harbour of Yedo, and occupied Hakodate, a port at the southern end of the island of Yezo. But the forces he was able to land were no match for the victorious Imperialists, who became now quite free in all other quarters. The harbour of Hakodate was soon blockaded, and the Pentagon Fortress was besieged and taken. In June of the following year the whole island of Yezo was subdued, and the new name of Hokkaidô was given to it.
With the surrender of Hakodate the military history of the Revolution of the Meidji came to its close, but the political transformation was not yet consummated. What was already accomplished concerned only the elimination of the Shogun from the political system of the country and the establishment of the direct rule of the Emperor over the daimyo. The latter, not reduced in number and undiminished in extent of territories, except a few who had forfeited the whole or a part of their territories by their resistance to the imperial order, still continued to hold their hereditary rights over their land and people as in the time of the Tokugawa. In short, the national question had only been partially solved, and there remained much to be done before the attainment of the final goal, the complete reconstruction of the whole empire. Various important changes necessary for it were put into practice during the next four years.
In the year 1868, the city of Yedo changed its name to Tokyo, which means the eastern capital, and was made henceforth the constant residence of the Emperor instead of Kyoto. This was the beginning of the new era. In July 1869, the feudal rights of the daimyo over their territories and people were abolished, after the voluntary renunciation of their privileges on the part of the latter, who now became hereditary governors salaried according to the income of each respective territory. If the Revolution had stopped short at this, then the prestige of the territorial lords might have still remained almost intact, for they still resided in the same territories which they had owned as daimyo, and they had still under them standing forces, consisting of their former samurai. The juridical transformation of what they owned as their private property into objects of their public jurisdiction was a change of too delicate a nature to manifest to the multitude of the people a political aspect totally different from that of the time of the Shogunate. It needed three years more to sweep away all these feudal shackles. In August of the year 1871 the division of the empire into territories was replaced by the division into prefectures, which were far less in number than the territories of the daimyo, the jurisdiction of the hereditary governors was suspended, and to each of the prefectures a new governor was appointed. The allowances of the samurai, which had still been hereditary, were also suspended, and their compensation was rendered in form of a bond, with gradations according to their former income. The new decimal monetary system was adopted. The Gregorian calendar was adopted. The military service which had been the exclusive calling of the samurai class was now extended to people of all classes. The conscription system was introduced after the examples of the Western countries, and this reform naturally led to the loss of the privileges of the samurai. All people were now made equal before the law. Japan was at last clothed in quite modern attire.
CHAPTER XIV
EPILOGUE
Japan of the past fifty years since the Revolution of the Meidji may be said to have been in a transition period, although we do not know when nor how she will settle down after all. As a transition period in the history of any country is generally its most eventful epoch, so our last half century has been the busiest time the nation has ever experienced. Not only that. We were ushered into the wide world, just at the time when the world itself began to have its busiest time also. The opening of the country at such a juncture may be compared to a man in deep slumber, who is aroused suddenly in the dazzling daylight of noon. Moreover, Japan has had another and not less important business to attend to, that is to say, she had to trim herself, and complete her internal reconstruction, a task which may not perhaps come to its completion for a long time to come. Excitation must be the natural outcome to anybody placed in such a position. Japan has over-worked indeed, and is yet working very hard. She has achieved not a little already, and is still struggling to achieve more. If we would try to describe the history of Japan during these fifty years, we should have more to tell than the history of the preceding twenty centuries. That is not, however, possible in the scope of this small volume. Another reason why we need not expatiate on this period of our national history is because it is comparatively better known to foreigners than the history of old Japan, though we are not sure that it is not really misunderstood. The root, however, of the misapprehension of Japan of the Meidji era lies deep in the misapprehension of the history of her past, for one who can understand rightly Japan of the past, may not err much in comprehending Japan of the present. I will not, therefore, describe in detail the contemporary history of Japan, but will content myself by giving merely a cursory view of it.
It was none but the samurai, the mainstay of feudal Japan, who brought about the momentous change of the Meidji, and it was the samurai of the lower class, who acted the chief part in the Revolution. The savants, however they might have proved useful in fanning the nationalistic spirit among the people, were after all not men of action. Only the samurai, when permeated with this spirit, could effect such a grand political change. There may be no doubt that the samurai undertook the task for the sake of the national welfare, and most of all not to restore the already rotten régime which had once existed before the advent of the Kamakura Shogunate. But this evident truth was known neither to the court-nobles, who dreamt only of seeing their past glory recovered, nor to those idealists of ultra-conservative trend, who sincerely believed that the history of nearly twelve centuries might be simply ignored and the golden days of the Nara period be called back into life once more. The latter strongly urged the personal government of the Emperor and the restoration of the worship of the national gods to its ancient glory, while the former strove to recover the reins of government into their own hands. It was the result of their compromise, that the political organisation of the Taïhô era was formally revived, though with not a few indispensable modifications. Think of the statute of eleven hundred seventy years before recalled to reality again, and of a country, governed by a such a petrified statute, entering the concourse of the nations of the world in the nineteenth century. How comical it would have been if such a retrogression had been allowed to proceed even for a generation? The first to be disappointed were the court-nobles. The expectation of the ultra-conservatives was also far from being fulfilled. The country was in urgent need of a new legislation conformable to the new state of things, and the restored statute was soon found to be utterly inadequate to serve the purpose. The quixotic movement of the bigoted Shintoists to persecute Buddhism, which led to the lamentable demolition of many Buddhist sculptures and buildings of high artistic merit, was to subside as soon as it was started, for it was now the age of complete religious toleration, which was extended even to Christianity soon afterwards.