Modern Japan

An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism

James L. Huffman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135634971
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A valuable companion reference Concentrating on the period following Admiral Perry's visit in the 1850's, the encyclopedia examines the historical events, leaders, and societal pressures in the country's recent past that affected Japan's entry into the modern age. Like its companion volume, the encyclopedia covers important political topics, the arts, religion, business, literature, education, journalism, and other major social, cultural, and economic forces. Looks at the emperor and nationalism Emphasizing the close ties that always existed between the emperor system and nationalism, the encyclopedia carefully explores the various forms of nationalism that flourished since the middle of the last century, discusses how hte supernationalism of the beginning of the century ultimately led to World War II, looks at the uniquely Japanese custom of national self-analysis, and examines the country's remarkable postwar market-building economic nationalism. Charts major influences and contemporary concerns The Encyclopedia brings together in a single volume the major themes and currents that influenced and shaped Japan into a modern economic giant. Ranging over the entire spectrum of modern Japanese history, expert contributors provide concise entries on specific episodes and individuals, as well as longer articles on broad topics such as militarism, labor, cinema, censorship, and returning students. The Encyclopedia also examines many of the forces driving Japan today: trade relationships, attitudes towards World War II, the role of national defense, whether to revise the constitution, dealing with unskilled foreign labor, and more. All major entries are followed by an English-language bibliography for pursuing subjects in depth.

A

Abe Isoo (1865–1949)

Early socialist leader who opposed militarist nationalism. Born in Fukuoka and educated at Dōshisha University, he taught from 1903 to 1926 at Waseda University. He helped found many socialist organizations, including Japan’s first officially recognized socialist party, the Shakai Minshūtō (Socialist People’s Party), in 1901; a successor Shakai Minshūtō in 1926; and the Shakai Taishūtō (Social Masses Party) in 1932. He also participated in early labor organizations and served in the Diet (legislature) from 1928 until 1940. Abe consistently insisted on a moderate approach to socialism, even when his peers turned radical. A Christian, he opposed the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and remained a lifelong pacifist, emphasizing Japan’s peaceful traditions and resigning from the Diet in protest as war approached in 1940.

James L. Huffman

Bibliography

Powels, C. H. “Abe Isoo: The Utility Man.” Pacifism in Japan: The Christian and Socialist Tradition. Ed. N. Bamba and J. Howes. Kyoto: Minerva Press, 1978.

Abolition of Domains, Establishment of Prefectures (Haihan Chiken)

In August 1871, the Meiji government abolished the 270 feudal domains (han) and instituted in their places prefectures (fu and ken). A series of mergers in the subsequent months reduced the number of the newly established prefectures to a little more than 40, and set up the basic alignment of the prefectural system that remains today. These mergers left in their wake few marks of the han that had survived the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. The mergers instituted the framework for the centralized modern state, whose massive modernization efforts would continue for generations to come.

The move to abolish the feudal domains, however, did not follow naturally from the fall of the shogunate during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. In the first few years of its existence, the Meiji government, in fact, could not challenge the continuation of the feudal domains, some of which—mainly, Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Saga—provided the bulk of its governmental and military strength. Prior to the summer of 1871, the Restoration leaders could make only modest attempts to make the authority and legitimacy of the imperial government uncontested from within. The most significant attempt was the hanseki hōkan (Petition to Return the Domains to the Emperor). In the spring of 1869, the leaders from Satsuma, Chōshū, and Tosa initiated a move to return their fiefs to the emperor, which was subsequently emulated by the rest of the domains. The key effect of the hanseki hōkan, however, was to make the daimyo the imperial governors of their own domains. There was little indication of the coming of the haihan chiken at this point.

The decision to terminate the domains, then, did not emerge from any continuous or focused effort by the Restoration leaders to centralize political control in the hands of the imperial government. Instead, several complex factors were at work. Among them was the foreign powers’ pressure upon the Restoration leaders to make the imperial government responsible for the administrative and financial affairs of Japan in general. Another was the increasing awareness that the continuation of the feudal domains perpetuated the rivalry among the Restoration leaders within the imperial government, on the basis of their own domain affiliations. Still another factor was the financial collapse of the feudal-domain governments, which removed the possibility of any effective resistance by the feudal domains against the decision to terminate them.

The haihan chiken had many short-term and long-term effects. Former daimyo joined the ranks of the nobility; the imperial government began a systematic interference in local affairs by way of, among others, the centrally appointed governors; interlocal mobility among the populace increased; and a number of reform policies aimed at modernizing the society and the economy were now possible with little or no preferential considerations toward specific localities. The most significant consequence may be found in the fact that the populace in general and the former samurai in particular, who were to make up the pool of political leaders, were freed from the provincial loyalism that the continuation of the feudal domains would have preserved. As one Restoration leader put it, the hainhan chiken was a “second Restoration.”

Michael Umegaki

Bibliography

Umegaki, Michio. After the Restoration: The Beginning of Japan’s Modern State. New York: New York University Press, 1988.

Academy for the Love of One’s Community (Aikyō Juku)

A school dedicated to promoting ultranationalism. The nationalistic activist Tachibana Kōzaburō founded this small school in the city of Mito in 1930, with financial assistance from Ibaraki Prefecture, to teach farming techniques, Japanese history, and national ethics to young people. The school propounded the typical ideas of nōhonshugi (agrarian nationalism), including communal-village rule, eradication of peasant debts, and the Shōwa Restoration. The teachers and students were nonrevolutionary at first, but they soon began to advocate violent activism on behalf of their cause. The 23 Aikyō Juku students provided much of the manpower for attacks on Tokyo power stations during the 1932 May 15 Incident. Tachibana was imprisoned for his role in the episode, which led to the decline of the school and its disbanding in March 1933.

James L. Huffman

Bibliography

Storry, Richard. The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973.

Adachi Kenzō (1864–1948)

Nationalistic leader of the Rikken Minseitō (Constitutional Democratic Party). Born in Kumamoto Prefecture, he spent his early years as a patriotic journalist, promoting revision of the unequal treaties with Western countries, reporting on the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), founding newspapers in Korea, and playing a role in the assassination of Korea’s Queen Min. In 1902, he was elected to the Diet (legislature), where he became known as the “king of elections” for his effectiveness in building the parliamentary strength of the Kenseikai (Constitutional Association) and, later, the Rikken Minseitō. Between 1925 and 1931, he served several times as home minister and minister of communications, maintaining close ties to war industries. In 1931, he helped bring down his own party’s cabinet in the aftermath of the September 18 Manchurian Incident by insisting, unsuccessfully, that the major parties form a joint government to meet the international crisis. Ever an ally of nationalist elements, he left the Minseitō and formed the ultranationalist Kokumin Dōmei (National People’s Alliance), a small party that advocated the creation of a war economy and a Japan-Manchuria economic bloc. Adachi retired from politics in 1940.

James L. Huffman

Bibliography

Berger, Gordon. Parties Out of Power in Japan, 1931–1941. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Agrarian Nationalism (Nōhonshugi)

Utopian, nationalistic philosophy. Throughout the modern period, utopian thinkers rose from time to time to herald the special, superior qualities of traditional rural life and values in Japan, generally as a contrast or antidote to the onslaught of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. Many of the modern proponents of nōhonshugi evoked the late-Tokugawa-era teachings of Ninomiya Sontoku, who emphasized rural self-sufficiency, hard work, frugality, and social harmony. Although some of these ideas advocated formal governmental programs to stimulate rural productivity and undergird modern industry, the majority adhered to the more sentimental, popular form of agrarianism that pitted village against city, Japan against the West, and farming against industry.

Nōhonshugi was a particularly influential doctrine among many of the right-wing nationalists of the 1920s and 1930s. Young soldiers who had lived on Japan’s farms, nearly all of which were devastated by depression during those decades, frequently were drawn by the ideas of men such as Tachibana Kōzaburō and Gondō Seikyō. Tachibana, a native of Ibaraki Prefecture, warned against the evils of materialistic capitalism. He called for the love and cooperation of the ideal village, putting his ideas into practice by creating his own producers’ cooperative. His Aikyō Juku (Academy for the Love of One’s Community) not only taught farming methods and bred patriotism but also provided participants for the bloody May 15 (1932) Incident in which Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated. Gondō, who was of a more theoretical bent, wrote widely, urging the removal of all levels of government intervening between the emperor and the village. Nearly all of the nōhonshugi advocates believed in the supremacy of the emperor and the spiritual superiority not only of the village over the city but of Japan over all other countries. As a way of thought, nōhonshugi largely withered after World War II.

James L. Huffman

Bibliography

Havens, Thomas. Farm and Nation in Modern Japan: Agrarian Nationalism, 1870–1940. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Ain’t It Great (Eejanaika)

Waves of frenzied dancing from the seventh month of 1867 to the fourth month of 1868 following a sudden decline in what had been extraordinarily high food prices, which caught up hundreds of thousands of commoners across domainal boundaries, beginning in the post stations along the Tokyo-to-Kyoto Tokaidō highway near Nagoya and spreading from there west through the villages in Omi to Kyoto and Ise, the northern shore of Shikoku, and as far as Hiroshima; they also spread east to Yokohama and Edo. In each place, the discovery of lucky charms (ofuda) from Ise and other shrines and various Buddhist temples led people to believe that a new world (yonaoshi) saturated with the divine spirit in which they would be liberated from the old status order was in the offing. Houses on which the charms fell offered the dancers food and drink in thanksgiving for this blessing.

At Numazu, a wood-block print turned up among the falling objects bearing the motto “exterminate the aliens,” (ijin taiji), the commoners’ equivalent to the nativist call to “revere the emperor and expel the barbarians” (sonnō jōi). The participants acted out the expulsion of foreigners from Japan’s sacred soil by throwing stones at the unfortunates who happened to get in their way and forecast the downfall of the bakufu by parading a coffin through the streets bearing the posthumous name for Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616). In this joyous carnivallike atmosphere, men dressed as women and women as men, they ate and drank their fill, and they engaged in licentious, rowdy behavior, sometimes threatening to smash up the homes of the wealthy who hesitated to bless them with the appropriate food and drink. Meiji Restoration leader Iwakura Tomomi (1825–83) believed that this popular craze lasted long enough to be useful to the forces trying to bring about an imperial restoration.

Anne Walthall

Bibliography

Wilson, George. “Ee ja nai ka on the Eve of the Meiji Restoration in Japan.” Semiotica Vol. 70, No. 3–4 (1988), 301–319.

———. “Pursuing the Millennium in the Meiji Restoration.” Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition. Ed. Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Ainu

The Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Japan’s second-largest island. Former Ainu habitation of southern Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin Island, and Japanese Honshu also has been documented. Archaeological evidence links the Ainu to the Neolithic Jōmon, who inhabited all of the major Japanese islands in prehistoric times. Linguistic affinities with Altaic or Turkic-Mongolic groups and cultural affinities with Pacific island populations have also been noted. Evidence of early recorded history suggests the gradual incorporation of the Honshu Ainu into the general Japanese population, and evidence of great similarity between Ainu physical features and samurai characteristics has prompted speculation that such assimilation may have followed lines of social stratification.

Traditional Ainu ceremony in Hokkaido. Courtesy Consulate General of Japan, N.Y.

In the post-Columbian era of European exploration and conquest, the Ainu were still a linguistically and racially distinct people, apart from, and independent of, the Japanese, who called the Ainu nation Ezo. The eastward expansion of Russia and the northward extension of Japan precipitated a 400-year encroachment on, and acculturation of, the Ezo population following the Tokugawa assumption of power in 1600. Especially harsh was the treatment of the Ainu following the 1868 consolidation of Meiji rule. Subsequent appropriation of Hokkaido lands, bans on traditional ways of hunting and fishing, forced introduction of agriculture, and other legislation of that era have continued to haunt and embitter the Ainu. Japanese treaties with Czarist and Soviet regimes partitioned the Ainu homeland without Ainu consent or consultation; advocates of Ainu rights consider illegitimate such Russo-Japanese appropriation and exchanges of Ainu territory, the most recent of which precipitated the expatriation of Sakhalin Ainu at the close of World War II. Japanese assimilation policies have been effective for the most part: The Ainu speak Japanese (only a handful of aging native Ainu speakers remain), and most Ainu can no longer be reliably distinguished on the basis of physiology from other Japanese (although many Ainu retain prototypical features).

By the mid-1990s, the Ainu, as a Japanese social group defined by a common ethnolinguistic history, numbered more than 50,000. Since the end of World War II, Ainu intellectuals and political leaders have instilled pride in their people and worked to redress historical wrongs and continued discrimination by government agencies. Ainu groups have increasingly sought relief via the Japanese judiciary, especially in disputes over land use and ecology. The major Ainu-rights organization, the Utari Kyōkai, which has represented the Ainu at the United Nations and other international forums, tirelessly petitions the Japanese government to recognize the need for Ainu representation in the national and prefectural governments and the basic right of the Ainu to be educated in their own language. Ainu pride focuses on Ainu linguistic heritage, which features the elaborate yukar and other less stable oral forms. A movement to revive the language began gaining momentum in the late 1980s. One Ainu author and religious leader, Kayano Shigeru, produced videotape lessons and presented a weekly radio course for learning Ainu from 1989 to 1993, and other Ainu broadcasts continued after that. A member of the Diet (legislature) since 1994, Kayano has pushed for regular Ainu-language television broadcasts; Ainu speech contests and other cultural events have been nationally televised. Although proscribed by the Ministry of Education for the elementary and secondary curriculums, Ainu language studies may be pursued at several major universities in Japan.

Joseph DeChicchis

Bibliography

DeChicchis, Joseph. “The Present State of the Ainu Language.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Vol. 16 (1995), 103–24.

Takakura, Shin’ichirō. The Ainu of Northern Japan: A Study in Conquest and Acculturation. Trans. John A. Harrison. Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1960.

Watanabe, Hitoshi. The Ainu: A Study of Ecology and the System of Social Solidarity between Man and Nature in Relation to Group Structure. Tokyo: Faculty of Scienc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Subject List
• Chronology
• Contributors
• Maps
• The Encyclopedia
• Index