by Donald Keene
The proposal contained two important points. The first was the desirability of having legislation discussed in the presence of the emperor, who would personally decide whether it should be adopted. It has often been noted that Meiji religiously attended cabinet and similar meetings, even those not of great importance. The emperor’s dedication to duty, exemplified by his constant attendance at such gatherings, was probably inspired by Motoda. The second point—the need to end hereditary succession to high offices—was not quickly realized.
Motoda’s plan, praised by all who saw it, eventually reached Ōkubo Toshimichi, who was so impressed that he promised to call it immediately to the emperor’s attention. Ōkubo was also looking for a tutor for the emperor and asked the governor of Kumamoto about Motoda’s character. The governor replied that he was unable to say whether Motoda was the best man for the position, but he could certainly vouch for his character. Thanks to this recommendation, Motoda was appointed on June 30, 1871, as the emperor’s tutor. He delivered his first lecture before the emperor on July 21 on the Analects.14 From then on, he delivered twelve lectures each month on the Analects and later on Nihon gaishi.15 Motoda continued to lecture before the emperor until his death in 1891.
When first informed that he had been chosen to be the emperor’s tutor, Motoda was astonished and expressed doubts about his qualifications. He believed he was already too old (at fifty-three) to be an effective member of the government, contrasting himself with men in their early forties like Saigō Takamori, Ōkubo Toshimichi, Kido Takayoshi, and Itagaki Taisuke, who had already made names for themselves in the new government. He suggested younger men for the post, sure that he would disgrace himself if appointed, and he announced his intention of returning to Kumamoto.16 But Shimotsu Kyūya (1809–1883), a domain official whom Motoda respected, interrupted, “You can’t do that. The combination of Motoda’s learning and virtuous behavior with Saigō’s valor will make an unbeatable combination.”17 Such praise made it impossible for Motoda to continue his resistance. He wrote in his diary this account of his first audience with the emperor:
Attired in formal wear, I approached the throne on my knees and, bowing my head to the floor, I worshiped the dragon countenance from outside the Mima,18 then withdrew, still on my knees. This was my first approach to the imperial presence. My mind was filled by turns with awe and joy, and I could not control my profound emotion. When this ceremony was over, I had an interview with the major counselor Tokudaiji Sanetsune and was informed that I had been appointed as the chief tutor [jidoku senmu] to the emperor and that I would receive the treatment appropriate to an official appointed with the emperor’s approval. At first I declined, saying that I was unworthy of this responsibility, but the imperial command had already been issued, and I did not wish to oppose it. I therefore resolutely accepted the command.19
Although some of his contemporaries found Motoda unbendingly conservative,20 he enjoyed the full confidence of the emperor, as well as the admiration of principal figures in the government, who praised him without qualification. ŌkuboToshimichi, who rarely had a good word for anyone, said of Motoda, “As long as this man is by His Majesty’s side, my mind is at ease.” Soejima Taneomi said, “The man who deserves the greatest credit for the magnitude of His Majesty’s moral virtue was Motoda sensei. I would have no choice but to give his name as the subject who contributed most to the Meiji era.”21 Although Motoda is virtually forgotten today, he seems to have exerted greater influence on the emperor than any of the celebrated statesmen who surrounded him.
After becoming the emperor’s tutor, Motoda resumed his interest in practical learning, which for him meant returning to the basic texts of Confucius and Mencius. He insisted that the Way must be sought in the Six Classics22 and nowhere else. He admitted the value of Western scientific learning and technology and urged Japanese to study them in the spirit of kakubutsu, a term found in the Great Learning meaning “an investigation of things.” He was convinced, however, that with respect to human relations, the West had nothing to offer, that guidance could be found only in the Six Classics. He added,
In recent years there have been those who, saying they are fed up with the platitudes of the Chinese classics, delight solely in the novelties of Western books. This in the end is likely to turn into an indiscriminate mania for Western culture, an unspeakable perversion of learning.23
The combination of Eastern morality with Western science, first advocated by Sakuma Shōzan during the late Tokugawa era, characterized Meiji’s attitude, especially in his later years, which probably can be attributed to the influence of Motoda’s teachings as well.
In addition to his lectures in the palace, Motoda wrote essays on subjects such as the national religion,24 but he is best known for his part in the formulation of the Rescript on Education of 1890, which gave great prominence to Confucian ethical ideals and to the principle of chūkun aikoku (loyalty to the sovereign and love of country), a two-word crystallization of Motoda’s political thought.
The emperor’s moral education was traditional, under the guidance of Motoda and others; but his public life was increasingly affected by Western things. His first public appearance before Japanese and foreigners, on April 28, 1870, was during a review of troops,25 an activity not discussed in the Confucian texts he studied. It was apparently at the insistence of Ōkubo Toshimichi, who wished the emperor to act like a modern European monarch, that Meiji emerged from the shadows of his private quarters into the glare of public attention.
The Austrian Baron Alexander de Hubner, who had an audience with the emperor in 1871, reported that a chamberlain had come for him in “a kind of phaeton built in Hongkong, perhaps the only vehicle that the court possesses, for the use of carriages is unknown at the court. The mikado never leaves his palace.” He added in a footnote, “Some months later, on the advice of his reform-minded ministers, the emperor showed himself in a calash before his astonished subjects. This summer (1872), they saw him travel through the streets of Yokohama in a hired carriage. The son of the Gods wore a peculiar European uniform, half sailor and half ambassador!”26
Meiji’s uniform, with its characteristic gold “frogs” spread across the chest, though European in inspiration, amused the Austrian baron. The emperor continued to wear this uniform long after anything similar was to be seen abroad. Every morning he changed from Japanese nightclothes to Western dress, either his uniform or a frock coat, whenever he left the privacy of the inner quarters. Gradually, too, his diet began to include Western food and drink: we know exactly when he first drank a glass of milk and ate beef.27
It was normal for Europeans to deplore the haste with which Japanese discarded their traditional attire and took to wearing Western clothes. Numerous cartoons depict the Japanese wearing ill-fitting Western finery, looking not merely unattractive but comic. However, W. E. Griffis, who had served the daimyo of Echizen through the late Tokugawa period and knew Japan well, disagreed with this view:
In spite of what artists and lovers of the unique and the strange in the Japanese may say, the natives themselves understand human nature and hold the true philosophy of clothes. Their great ambition is to be treated as men, as gentlemen, and as the equal of Occidentals. In their antiquated garb they knew that they or their country would never be taken seriously.
Very soon we saw a change of dress, not only among soldiers and Samurai but among all the government officers and even in the Mikado himself…. It is certain that the laying aside of the Samurai’s garb hastened the decay of the old barbarous customs which belonged to feudalism. In fact, this revolution in clothes helped powerfully in the recognition by the whole world of Japan as an equal in the brotherhood of nations.28
In December 1871, when Meiji visited Yokosuka, a photograph was secretly taken of the emperor and those accompanying him. Although he was attired in formal robes, of the twenty men in his retinue all but three were in Western clothes.29
The customs of the past continued to be given
lip service, but one custom after another was rejected as being unsuitable for a modern nation, and some were even prohibited. For example, the blackening of the teeth and shaving of the eyebrows, traditional in the gembuku ceremony of high-ranking nobles, was prohibited on March 6, 1870. Two months later, testing the sharpness of one’s sword on the corpse of an executed man also was prohibited. Samurai were no longer allowed to reprimand (or even kill) commoners for an alleged trivial offense.30
Meiji adapted quickly to both the use of foreign things and the etiquette to be observed when granting an audience to an eminent foreign visitor. He learned that he was expected to shake hands, to smile (although at first he had trouble remembering this), and to ask his visitors polite questions about matters of no interest. Eager palace officials quickly became familiar with foreign behavior and sought to put visitors at ease. They arranged to have European food served at receptions and, discovering that foreign dignitaries disliked removing their shoes at an audience, had the tatami covered with carpets.31
As early as 1869, in the hopes of relieving foreigners’ nervousness when they saw samurai wearing swords, a proposal to make voluntary the wearing of swords was made. Advocates of change expressed the view that Japanese society had become so peaceful that swords—symbols of the age of unrest and violence from which Japan had happily emerged—were no longer necessary except as ornaments to formal attire. But others sprang to the defense of the sword, which they insisted was the expression of the martial spirit of the imperial country and the seat of the true spirit of the Land of the Gods. They asked rhetorically if anyone who possessed the Yamato spirit would ever discard his swords. These arguments carried weight, and the bill was unanimously defeated.32
Nonetheless, on September 23, 1871, a decree was issued permitting samurai to cut their hair and not wear swords. It also made optional the wearing of dress uniform or semi-dress uniform. Several important members of the government, including Kido Takayoshi, had already cut their hair in anticipation of the decree, and resistance to such signs of modernity and enlightenment seemed to be scant. Even the chamberlains and pages cut their hair.
Despite the claims that law and order had been restored to Japan by the enlightened new regime, the assassinations continued. Anyone who voiced untraditional views lived under the constant threat of being killed, and even the bravest man could not help but feel intimidated, knowing that at any moment he might be felled by an assassin’s sword. Fukuzawa Yukichi felt particularly vulnerable because he was known for his advocacy of “enlightened” opinions. He wrote in his autobiography, “Nothing can be worse, more unsettling, more generally fearful, than this shadow of assassination. No one without the actual experience can really imagine it.” In 1871, when the university he founded, Keiō gijuku, moved to Mita, he had a trapdoor built in his residence to permit him to escape from any would-be assassin.33
The most shocking assassination of the early Meiji era was that of Ōmura Masujirō (1824–1869), a samurai of the Chōshū domain.34 Ōmura learned Dutch at Ogata Kōan’s academy in Ōsaka and later studied Western medicine in Nagasaki. In 1853 he was invited to Uwajima by its daimyo, Date Munenari. By this time, foreign pressure on Japan had mounted, and Ōmura was ordered by the domain to return to Nagasaki to study the construction of warships and navigation. In 1856 he accompanied the daimyo to Edo, where he became a teacher at the shogunate’s bansho shirabesho (Institute for the Investigation of Barbarian Books). He studied English in Yokohama with the American missionary J. C. Hepburn. Gradually he acquired a reputation as an expert in military matters, and after his return to Chōshū in 1861, he set about reforming its army, insisting on the necessity of combat training for both samurai and commoners. During the second Chōshū war (1866), troops Ōmura had trained routed the shogunate forces, and the same troops distinguished themselves during the fighting at Toba and Fushimi that overthrew the shogunate. Later in 1868 he led the forces that demolished the Shōgitai.
After the Meiji Restoration, Ōmura was appointed to the post of hyōbu dayū (minister of war) and, in this capacity, directed his energies to creating a modern army. He was so successful in his efforts that he has often been referred to as the “father of the Japanese army.” The most notable feature of his plans was his advocacy of the conscription of commoners, a development that enraged samurai who believed it threatened their special, privileged position. Ōmura’s attack on the Shōgitai had also earned him many enemies among disgruntled samurai still clinging to the now repudiated ideal of jōi. He had every reason to expect some sort of violence.
In the middle of August 1869, Ōmura traveled to the Kansai region, mainly to establish a school for training noncommissioned officers. He himself was aware of the danger of assassination, as was his friend Kido Takayoshi, who arranged for special police protection. Ōmura had word from an informant that he was being followed by suspicious persons as he traveled about the Kansai, and he took precautions to keep his movements secret; but on the night of October 9, when Ōmura and his associates were relaxing at an inn in Kyōto, a band of eight men, most of them from Chōshū, forced their way in, and a terrible battle in the dark ensued.35 Ōmura was wounded in several places and barely escaped with his life by hiding in a bathtub full of dirty water. His worst wound, on the leg, did not heal, and he was finally taken to a hospital in Ōsaka. He was treated by the celebrated Dutch doctor A. F. Bauduin, who urged immediate amputation. However, an operation could not be performed on a person of Ōmura’s rank without the government’s permission, and the permission was so slow in coming that Ōmura died of his wounds on December 7.36
Ōmura’s assailants were captured and sentenced to death, only to be reprieved at the last moment. As in the case of Yokoi Shōnan, there was considerable sympathy for them, especially among samurai in high places, who shared the assassins’ view that Ōmura’s restructuring of the army was an intolerable affront to their class. The assassins were not executed for a year after the crime.
The next important victim of an assassin was the counselor Hirosawa Saneomi, who was murdered in his house on February 27, 1871. The assailant was never found, and the motive of the crime remained unknown.37 The emperor, greatly distressed by the crime and the slowness of the police in apprehending the perpetrator, issued this command:
The disaster with which the late Hirosawa Saneomi met is evidence that We have shown Ourself to be incapable of protecting Our ministers, and We have let the criminals escape. He makes the third minister to be harmed since the Restoration. This is Our misfortune and a failure of court principles, brought about by the laxness of enforcement of law and order. We profoundly regret this. We charge all in the country to search with the greatest care and to expect the certain apprehension of the criminals.38
It must have been galling for the young emperor to have to admit that despite the immense efforts the Japanese were making to persuade Western nations that Japan was a civilized country where law and order were respected, three men high in the government had been assassinated within the space of two years. Many other assassinations and attempted assassinations during the next thirty years created so unfavorable impression on the Western nations that it was difficult for the Japanese to persuade them to end extraterritoriality.
The Japanese nevertheless continued to make rapid strides toward modernization. Railway and telegraph lines soon extended to many parts of the country, and almost every day saw the introduction of some new Western thing, whether an article of clothing, something to eat, a machine, or a book of photographs. Despite their popularity, these importations could not keep people from yielding at times to the passions that had swayed them during the turbulent days at the end of the Tokugawa period.
Like many of his contemporaries, the young emperor was attracted by the new without repudiating the old, finding a place for both in different segments of his life. He loved Kyōto more than anywhere else, but he realized that the new Japan must make a fresh start away from the traditions of the old capit
al. The son of Emperor Kōmei, who had rejected every aspect of Western civilization, he became the symbolic leader of modern Japan, which boldly took from the West whatever might help it become a modern nation. But he did not neglect to listen to Motoda’s lectures on the unchanging wisdom of the East.
Chapter 22
The chief political event of 1871 was undoubtedly the proclamation of haihan chiken (abolition of the domains and establishment of prefectures) on August 29. On that morning the emperor summoned to the palace leaders of the four domains that had been most actively involved in both the Restoration and the new government—Chōshū Satsuma, Hizen, and Tosa. He expressed gratitude for their advocating the return of registers in 1869 and asked their support for the forthcoming major undertaking, haihan chiken. The minister of the right, Sanjō Sanetomi, read the emperor’s rescript in which he declared it was necessary, in order to protect at home the countless millions of people and to achieve abroad equality with all nations, to extend and unify laws throughout the country and to do away with an institution that by now was significant only in name. The institution was feudalism—the division of the country into domains, each ruled by a daimyo.
The transition from a feudal to a centralized state took place with unbelievable smoothness. On the afternoon of August 29, the emperor sent for the governors of four domains who had proposed a system of prefectures and subprefectures to replace the domains and expressed his pleasure in their recommendations.1 Later that afternoon he summoned fifty-six domain governors (chiji) resident in Tōkyō and informed them by a proclamation (read by Sanjō Sanetomi) of the great change. The daimyos prostrated themselves in token of their submission to the emperor’s edict. The same message was delivered on the following day to representatives of daimyos living in their provinces. On September 1 the minister of foreign affairs, Iwakura Tomomi, reported to the ministers of the different countries that the domains had been abolished and replaced with prefectures.
