It should be mentioned that, in 1869, the Emperor returned to Kioto for a brief visit, in order to perform certain ceremonies at his father’s tomb, and, during his sojourn in the western capital, he married the present Empress, who was a princess of one of the five regent families, from which the highest officers under the Mikado have always been selected, and from which the emperors have habitually chosen their wives.
We have seen that the Emperor had promised to convoke a deliberative assembly. This promise was, at first, kept to the ear, rather than the hope. A so-called Kogisho or Parliament was formed of persons representing each of the Daimiates, and designated for the position by the Daimios. It was a mere debating society, whose function was to give advice to the imperial government. How conservative the advice given by this body was may be measured by the fact that it refused to recommend the abolition of the privilege of hari-kari, or of the custom of wearing swords. This Kogisho lasted only for some months, being dissolved in the autumn of the same year in which it was created.
Soon after the suppression of the feudal system in Japan, the Daimiates, considered as administrative areas, were superseded by Prefectures. At first, the ex-Daimios were appointed Prefects, but most of them were soon found to be unfit for high executive office, and they have been gradually replaced by competent persons drawn from the Samurai class. It should further be noted that the extinction of feudalism imposed some onerous financial obligations. It was decided that each ex-Daimio, and each of the sub-feudatories that had been dependent on him, should receive one-tenth of the income which they had drawn from their fiefs. This income was to be free from any claim for the support of the Samurai who had formed the standing army in each clan. The central government undertook to make all payments to the Samurai for services of any kind. The assumption of this burden compelled the government to borrow $165,000,000. In lieu of the pensions which they had formerly received, lump sums were given to the Samurai, but these were soon squandered, and much poverty and want were eventually experienced by the ex-feudal retainers. Among other remarkable events which took place in 1871, should be mentioned the removal of the ancient disqualification of the eta and heimin, whereby these pariah castes were placed on the same legal footing as the rest of the population. In the following year, the first railway in Japan was opened. This was a line between Yokohama and Tokio. In 1873, the European calendar was adopted, so far as the beginning of the year and the beginning of the months are concerned. The year is still reckoned, however, from Jimmu Tenno, which is 1873 of the Christian era, and corresponds to the year 2533 of the Japanese era. Still employed occasionally, also, is the Meiji year-period, which began in 1868.
From the beginning of 1872, the remodeling of the Japanese system of education was undertaken. In April of that year, the Mikado, Mutsuhito, visited the Imperial College, subsequently to be known as the Imperial University. The new buildings consisted of three wings, each 192 feet long, joined to a main edifice 324 feet in length. The students in this institution soon numbered 350, taught by 20 foreign professors. The foreign language school, in which pupils learned English or some other European language, preparatory to entering the college, presently had 600 students and 20 foreign teachers. For educational purposes, the empire was divided into eight districts, in each of which a university was contemplated, which was to be supplied by 210 secondary schools of foreign languages. It was arranged that the elementary vernacular schools should number 53,000, or one for every 600 persons in Japan. To these elementary establishments were to be deputed native teachers trained in normal schools. Before many years had passed, the school attendance was computed at three millions.
During the year 1872, two legations and three consulates were established abroad. Before long, the number was increased to ten. The Japanese press quickly emerged from the realm of experiment and became a powerful civilizing force. In the course of a few years, ten daily newspapers in the capital and 200 publications in the empire, equipped with metal type and printing presses, began to flood the country with information and awaken thought. In the department of jurisprudence, also, great progress was made. Since the restoration of the Mikado to actual power, revised statutes have greatly decreased the list of capital punishments; the condition of the prisons has been ameliorated; legal processes have been improved from the viewpoint of justice, and the use of torture to obtain testimony has been entirely abolished. Law schools were established, and to accused persons was given the assistance of counsel for their defense. By the year 1874, there had been a great change for the better in the diet, clothing, and hygienic protection of the people. In the year named, there were in the empire one government hospital and twenty-one hospitals assisted by government grants, twenty-nine private hospitals, 5,247 physicians practicing according to the principles and methods of Western science, and 5,205 apothecaries. In 1875, there were 325 students in the medical colleges at Tokio and Nagasaki, and there were some twenty-five foreign surgeons and physicians in the employ of the Japanese government. Public decency was improved and the standards of Christendom approached. The sale of orphan female children to brothel keepers, the traffic in native or European obscene pictures, lascivious dances, the exhibition of nude singing girls, the custom of promiscuous bathing in the public baths, and the toleration of nakedness on the part of the rural coolies were brought to an end. Religious persecution ceased. All the native Christians who had been exiled or imprisoned in 1868-69 were set free and restored to their villages. We note, finally, that, as early as 1876, the fulfillment of the promise made by the Mikado in 1868, that “intellect and learning should be sought for throughout the world,” had been so far fulfilled that 400 foreigners from many Western countries had been invited to occupy posts in the government civil service. In 1870, there had been not ten Protestant Christians in the empire. By May, 1876, there were ten Protestant churches, with a membership of 800 souls. In March of the year just named, Prime Minister Sanjo issued a proclamation abolishing the custom of wearing two swords. This measure, which had been first advocated by Arinori Mori in 1870, now became law throughout the land. It was in August, 1876, that the commutation of the hereditary pensions and life incomes of the Samurai, which previously had been optional, was made compulsory. This act forced the privileged classes to begin to earn their bread. In the same month, the empire was redivided and the 68 Ken, or Prefectures, were reduced in number to 35. It was to be expected that the progressive course of the Mikado’s Ministers would excite some disaffection. There were during this year some insurrections on the part not only of discontented Samurai, but also of the farmers on whom the burdens of taxation mainly fell. It was to redress the grievances of the agricultural class that, in January, 1877, the national land tax was reduced from 3 to 2½ per cent, while the local tax, which had formerly amounted to one-third of the land tax, was cut down to one-fifth. About the same time, the salaries of nearly all the government officers were diminished, several thousand office-holders were discharged, the Department of Revision and the Prefecture of Police were abolished, and their functions were transferred to the Home Department. An annual saving of about eight million dollars was thus effected, and the loss to the Treasury from the curtailment of land taxation was made good. In 1877, however, a great rebellion broke out in Satsuma, instigated by Saigo Takamori, who had been formerly a marshal of the empire. After a contest of some months, the imperial authority was everywhere re-established, and Saigo, at his own request, was beheaded by one of his friends. This insurrection represented the final struggle between the forces of feudalism and misrule against order and unity. The contest cost Japan $50,000,000 and many thousands of lives. In the ultimate treatment of the rebels, the government displayed a spirit of leniency worthy of an enlightened state. Of upward of 38,000 persons tried in Kiushiu, only twenty were decapitated, about 1,800 were condemned to imprisonment, and some 36,000 were pardoned. During the same year, 1877, the cholera broke out in Japan, but, owing to the enforcement of sanitary measures, there were but 6,297 deaths.
The Mikado had now been governing Japan for ten years by means of an irresponsible Ministry. The oath which he had taken at Kioto in 1868 to form a deliberative assembly had never been fully carried out. We have seen that the Kogisho, or advisory body, called into existence in 1868, had been dissolved in the same year. Subsequently, in 1875, a Senate had been established and an assembly of the ken governors, or prefects, held one session. The meetings of the latter body, however, were soon indefinitely postponed. Nevertheless, the era of personal government was drawing to a close. On July 22, 1878, a long step was taken toward representative institutions by an edict convoking provincial parliaments or local assemblies which were to sit once a year in each ken or province. Under the supervision of the Minister of the Interior, these bodies were empowered to discuss questions of local taxation, and to petition the central government on other matters of local interest. There were both educational and property qualifications of the franchise. Each voter had to prove his ability to read and write, and he must have paid an annual land tax of at least five dollars. In October, 1881, the Mikado announced by a proclamation that, in 1890, a Parliament would be established. In June, 1884, an edict was issued readjusting the system of nobility. In the newly created orders of princes, marquises, counts, viscounts and barons, were observed the names of many men who had once belonged to the class of Samurai, or gentry, but who had earned promotion by distinguished services on behalf of their country. Three hundred persons, that may be described as pertaining to the aristocracy of intellect, were thus ennobled on the score of merit. It was expected that out of these newly created nobles would be constituted the upper house, or Chamber of Notables, in the Parliament which was to come into being in 1890. In December, 1885, the triple premiership, the Privy Council and the Ministries, as they had been hitherto established, came to an end. In their place was created a Cabinet, at the head of which was a Minister-President. The old government boards, together with a new board, which was to supervise the post-office, telegraph and railway, were organized in such a way as to discharge many thousand office-holders. All the members of the new Cabinet were men of modern ideas, and such Asiatic features as the government had hitherto retained were now extinguished. By 1886, notable progress had been made in the applications of steam and electricity. Of railroads there were already 265 miles open, 271 miles in course of construction, and 543 miles contemplated. Although these lines were built and equipped on British models, most of the surveying, engineering and constructive work and all of the mechanical labor were performed by natives. The trains and engines were worked by Japanese; such light materials as were made of wood and metal were manufactured in Japan, only the heavy castings, the rails and the engines being brought from Great Britain. The telephone and the electric light were now seen in the large cities, and four cables connected the island empire with the Asiatic mainland. Already the Japan Mail Shipping Company employed a large fleet of steamships and sailing vessels in their coasting trade and passenger lines. We add that, in 1885, the Postal Department forwarded nearly 100,000,000 letters and packages.
The Japanese had, for some time, recognized that education is the basis of progress, and that their efforts for intellectual advancement were seriously impeded by their use of the Chinese graphic system. They perceived that what they needed most of all was an alphabet. In 1884, the Roma-ji-Kai, or Roman Letter Association, was formed in Tokio, and, within two years, had 6,000 members, native and foreign. As their name implies, their purpose was to supplant the Chinese character and native syllabary by the Roman alphabet, as the vehicle of Japanese thought. It was demonstrated that all possible sounds and vocal combinations could be expressed by using twenty-two Roman letters. It was further proved that, by means of the Roman alphabet, a child could learn to read the colloquial and book language in one-tenth of the time formerly required. Scarcely was the Roman Letter Association under way than it printed a newspaper, edited text-books, and transliterated popular and classic texts in the appropriate characters of the Roman alphabet. By an imperial decree, issued in November, 1884, the English language was made part of the order of study in the common schools. Meanwhile, the progress of Christianity acquired considerable momentum. Not only were many converts made by Catholic missionaries, but, by the end of 1885, there were 200 Protestant churches, with a membership of over 13,000. In December, 1885, the Mikado’s Cabinet was reorganized, and, during the next four years, Ito and Inouye were the principal molders of the national policy. In April, 1888, a new body called the Privy Council was created, of which Ito became President, while Kuroda filled the position of Prime Minister. In this body, active debate upon the forthcoming Constitution began in May of the year last-named, and proceeded until February 11, 1889, when the long-awaited instrument was proclaimed. Exactly thirty-five years after the American treaty-ships appeared in sight of Idzu, the Mikado, Mutsuhito, took oath to maintain the government according to the Constitution, the documents defining which he, before an audience of nobles, officials and foreign envoys, handed to Kuroda, the principal Minister of State. On this occasion, for the first time in Japan’s history, the Emperor rode beside the Empress in public. The one blot upon the record of the day was the assassination of the Minister of Education, Arinori Mori, by a Shintoist fanatic.
Let us glance at some of the features of Japan’s fundamental organic law. The Constitution proper consists of sixty-six articles, but, simultaneously with it, two hundred and sixty-six expositionary laws were proclaimed. In the first place, the Mikado’s person was declared sacred and inviolable. In him continued to be concentrated the rights of sovereignty, which, however, he was to exercise according to the provisions of the organic law. A Diet or Parliament was created to meet once a year, and to be opened, closed, prorogued and dissolved by the Emperor. Its debates are public. The Mikado’s Ministers may take seats and speak in either House, but are accountable, not to the Diet, but to the Emperor alone. Bills raising revenue and appropriating the same require the consent of the Diet, but certain fixed expenditures, provided for by the Constitution, cannot be abolished or curtailed without the concurrence of the Executive. To a large extent, the power over the purse is thus withheld from the representatives of the people. The tenure of judges is for good behavior. The Upper House consists partly of hereditary, partly of elected, and partly of nominated members; the combined number, however, of the members of the two last-named classes is not to exceed that of those who hold heritable titles of nobility. The House of Representatives consists of about 300 members, who serve four years. For them there is a property qualification; they must pay annually national taxes to the amount of fifteen yen or dollars. Those who elect them must also pay national taxes to the same amount. Those persons who pay taxes to the amount of over five yen are entitled to vote for members of the local assembly. These numbered, in 1887, about 1,500,000, whereas the electorate of the national House of Representatives numbered only about 300,000. We observe, lastly, that certain fundamental rights were guaranteed to the Japanese people. They have, for instance, the right of changing their domicile. Except according to law, they are not to be arrested, detained or punished. They are also to enjoy the right of freedom from search, the inviolability of letters, freedom of religious belief and the liberty of speech, petition, writing, publishing, association and public meeting within the limits of laws to be laid down by the national Parliament.
The threefold election—namely, for a fraction of the Upper House, for the whole of the national House of Representatives, and for the local assembly—took place in July, 1890. About eighty-five per cent of eligible voters availed themselves of the franchise, and there was a great superfluity of candidates. It turned out at the ballot-box that to be in any way connected with government employment was to invite almost certain defeat, while, on the other hand, few of the old party leaders were chosen as standard-bearers in the new Parliamentary field. We add that, on April 22, 1890, a new code of civil procedure, and the first portion of a Civil Code, were promulgated; since 1881, a new Criminal Code based on the principles of Western jurisprudence has been in successful operation.