Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (45 page)

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 Ky
ō
to more than anywhere else, but he realized that the new Japan must make a fresh start away from the traditions of the old capital. The son of Emperor K
ō
mei, 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—Ch
ō
sh
ū
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, Sanj
ō
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 T
ō
ky
ō
and informed them by a proclamation (read by Sanj
ō
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.

On September 5 when Iwakura visited the acting British minister, F. O. Adams, to inform him personally of the changes, the latter expressed his congratulations for the successful completion of a highly dramatic action. He said it would be quite impossible for a government in Europe to achieve a change of similar magnitude in fewer than several years and without the use of military force.
²

The impetus for returning the registers had come from the domains themselves, but
haihan chiken
was an imperial command imposed on the domains. There might well have been opposition to the destruction of a system that had lasted (with various modifications) since the end of the twelfth century, a system that guaranteed many privileges to the daimyos and their retainers, but not a voice was raised against the imperial command. This was largely the result of careful preparatory planning.
Ō
kubo Toshimichi, one of the chief proponents of the plan, had traveled to Satsuma to obtain the cooperation of Saig
ō
Takamori. Saig
ō
was revered as both the chief architect of the Restoration and a man of unsullied reputation; his advocacy of
haihan chiken
was indispensable and, once obtained, influenced many daimyos who might otherwise have protested.

The need for abolishing the domains had by this time become clear to men like
Ō
kubo as an administrator and to Yamagata Aritomo (1838–1922) as a military man. Yamagata had just returned to Japan after a year in Europe where he had studied different military systems. Although the government seemed not to be menaced by any immediate threat of an uprising, it was obvious that like any other government, it needed military forces to deal with whatever unforeseen crises might arise. William Elliot Griffis said of the government of that time: “Without one national soldier, it possessed only moral power, for the revolution had been carried through because of the great reverence which the Mikado’s name inspired.”
³

The funds available to the government were also so limited that the need for cash had become desperate. The replacement of the domains, which had been more or less autonomous, by prefectures under the control of the central government seemed to reformers the only solution, but it was by no means easy to effect. Not only was it likely that the samurai class would fight for what it considered to be its rights, but the common people, most of them unaware of any higher authority than the daimyo, would hardly oppose a daimyo if he chose not to obey the emperor. The daimyo’s influence was pervasive, touching the daily lives of all who dwelled in his domain.

Griffis was present when the decree abolishing the domains was received in Fukui, the seat of the Echizen daimyo:

Similar scenes were no doubt enacted in many others of the 270 domains, great and small. It is extraordinary that the daimyos, faced with a loss of hereditary privileges and compensated by only titular recognition as governors of the domains where they had reigned, accepted
haihan chiken
so calmly. The Meiji Restoration had shifted the apex of Japanese society without changing its structure.
Haihan chiken
had a far greater impact: close to 2 million people—the samurai class—had lost their income, formerly granted by the daimyos, and were faced with the prospect of permanent unemployment. Several years later they received lump-sum grants of money from the government to compensate for their loss of positions in the hopes they would use the money to start new careers. But most samurai, unaccustomed to trade and other occupations of the new Japan, soon exhausted the money, and many were forced to perform humble, even menial labor.
Ō
numa Chinzan’s poem in Chinese,
Shafuhen
(The Ricksha Man), describes one such samurai. It is in the form of a dialogue between a ricksha man and his customer. The customer speaks first:

“Ricksha boy, why up so early?”

“To wipe the dust from my ricksha.

My customers still haven’t come,

But I got up at dawn to be ready.”

“What did you do in the old days?”

“I was a shogunate retainer with 3,000
koku
.

When I left home I rode in a chair or on horseback,

Proud I was a samurai of high rank.

Today I have forgotten all that;

I gladly carry merchants in my ricksha.

I pull people east, west, south, north,

All day long, for a couple of strings of cash.

My wife and children are waiting for firewood and rice,

And what money’s left I gladly drink up in saké.”
⁵

It is true that many of the samurai class subsequently found employment in government offices, and they continued for fifty years or more to form the backbone of the intelligentsia,
⁶
but some never managed to accommodate themselves to the changes. The former samurai who is reduced to pulling a ricksha (or performing some equally disagreeable labor) is a familiar figure in literature of the time, and it was rumored that young women of the samurai class had found employment in the Yoshiwara brothels.

The emperor’s authority was obviously greatly enhanced by the change. In principle at least, he was now the sole ruler of the entire country, replacing numerous feudal lords, some of whom had governed their domains more or less independently. The change affected him personally, but he probably was even more directly affected by another change that occurred very soon afterward. In the same month as the
haihan chiken
, the Ministry of the Imperial Household and the emperor’s private quarters underwent a major shake-up. Until this time only members of the high-ranking nobility (
d
ō
j
ō
kazoku
) could serve at court, and in keeping with their ancient lineage, it was their practice to cling to precedents and conventions. The emperor’s living quarters were dominated by female officials of the nobility, most of them held over from the previous reign. They were unyielding in their conservatism and used their influence over the emperor to forestall changes.
⁷
Members of the government, even noblemen like Sanj
ō
Sanetomi and Iwakura Tomomi, lamented this situation and attempted to reform it, but practices that had built up over the centuries were not to be altered in a single day.
⁸

Saig
ō
Takamori, who had traveled to T
ō
ky
ō
to support
haihan chiken
, decided that the time had come for change. He insisted that it was essential for “delicate and effeminate old aristocrats” to be replaced by “manly and incorruptible samurai” as the emperor’s mentors. After consulting with
Ō
kubo and Kido, he made a formal proposal to Sanj
ō
and Iwakura, asking for a prompt decision. On August 19 the decision was reached: Yoshii Tomozane (1828–1891), a Satsuma samurai, was appointed as chief of the staff, charged with reforming the Ministry of the Imperial Household and the emperor’s private quarters. The nobleman Tokudaiji Sanetsune, long an advocate of change, was commanded to serve the emperor personally in the capacity of a member of the Ministry of the Imperial Household.