Meiji Restoration and the Invention of Modern Japan

Thesis

The Meiji Restoration of January 1868 is the original case of modern Asian identity construction and developmental transformation. In the forty-four years between Emperor Meiji’s accession and his death in 1912, Japan transformed itself from a feudal-domain society organised around Tokugawa shogunate authority into a modern industrial state with a national identity, universal education, standing conscript army, constitutional monarchy, and an economy competitive with European powers. The transformation was accomplished by a small group of former samurai reformers acting under the nominal authority of a teenage emperor, in the face of external pressure from the industrialised Western powers and internal resistance from the displaced feudal class. It cost — in the Boshin War of 1868–1869, the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, the sustained repression of political opposition, and eventually in the militarist trajectory that led to the Pacific War — but what it accomplished at the level of nation-building and industrial transformation was unprecedented for a non-Western state in the nineteenth century, and it became the template every subsequent Asian modernisation adapted.

The article’s argument is that the Meiji case shows, more clearly than any other, that national identity is constructed rather than restored. The Meiji reformers explicitly claimed to be restoring imperial rule from the shogunate — the language of “restoration” (ishin) was central to the reformers’ self-presentation — but what they actually did was to construct a modern Japanese national identity that used the emperor as symbolic focus while replacing almost every substantive feature of the pre-Meiji political and social order. The Tokugawa-era feudal domains were abolished and replaced with prefectures under central government administration. The samurai class was legally dissolved. The feudal-era occupational hierarchies were replaced with the modern categories of soldier, farmer, worker, and merchant, and mobility between them was made legal. The pre-Meiji religious complex of Buddhism-Shintō syncretism was disaggregated, with State Shintō elevated to national religion and Buddhism marginalised. Amaterasu-descended imperial cult, standardised Japanese language, universal conscription, standardised education, national ceremonial calendar — all of these were constructed by the Meiji state, in some cases from partial pre-existing raw materials and in some cases from outright invention. What the Meiji reformers restored was the emperor’s political authority. What they constructed was modern Japan.

The context

Japan in 1868 was, on the eve of the Restoration, a society under acute external pressure. Commodore Matthew Perry’s American naval expedition had forced the Tokugawa shogunate to open Japanese ports to Western trade in 1854; the subsequent Ansei treaties (1858) had imposed unequal trading terms and extraterritorial jurisdiction on Western nationals in Japan. The Chinese Qing dynasty’s defeat in the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860) and the subsequent semi-colonial arrangements imposed on China provided the visible cautionary example. Japanese elites understood that Western industrial and military power was sufficient to subject non-Western societies to colonial or semi-colonial status, that Japan was next in line unless it transformed itself sufficiently to resist, and that the Tokugawa shogunate was incapable of the transformation.¹

Internally, the Tokugawa order had accumulated stresses that made it politically vulnerable. The samurai class, whose function as warrior-administrators had been constructed for the pre-modern order, was increasingly redundant to modern administration and increasingly impoverished as the shogunate’s fiscal position weakened. The commercial classes of Osaka, Edo, and other cities had accumulated substantial wealth and had reason to prefer a political order that would recognise their economic function. Certain domains — particularly Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Hizen in western and southern Japan — had built up capacities (military modernisation, foreign contacts, commercial networks) that positioned them to challenge the shogunate. And the imperial court in Kyoto, which had been politically marginal for centuries, provided the alternative source of legitimacy the reformers could invoke.²

The Meiji Restoration was executed by a coalition of samurai reformers from these domains, acting in the name of the emperor. The transfer of political authority from shogun to emperor was formally announced on 3 January 1868. The subsequent Boshin War (January 1868 to June 1869) defeated the shogunal loyalists and consolidated the new government. The teenage emperor Mutsuhito, who took the reign name Meiji, was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo (renamed from Edo) in 1869, and the modern Japanese state began its construction.

The reforms

The Meiji reforms proceeded across almost every dimension of Japanese society in a compressed period of two decades. The full list is extensive; the moves most relevant to the identity-construction argument are outlined here.

The Charter Oath of April 1868 committed the new government to a set of principles that would guide the reforms: consultation across the country in policy-making, freedom for individuals to pursue their vocations, abandonment of “evil customs of the past,” and the pursuit of “knowledge throughout the world.” The Oath was a statement of intent rather than an operational programme, but it established the reformist framework within which the specific reforms would proceed.³

Abolition of the domains, establishment of prefectures (1871). The Tokugawa-era feudal domains, numbering over 250 and each with its own daimyō and administrative structure, were abolished by imperial decree. The daimyō were retired with generous pensions and stripped of political authority; the former domains were replaced with prefectures (initially numbering 302, subsequently consolidated to the current 47) under centrally-appointed governors. This was the single most consequential administrative reform. It replaced the pre-Meiji political geography with a modern territorial administration under central government control.⁴

Dissolution of the samurai class (1873–1876). The Conscription Ordinance of 1873 established universal male military conscription, replacing the samurai as the exclusive warrior class. The Land Tax Reform of 1873 replaced the domain-based tax system with a modern national land-tax system, cutting off the fiscal basis of samurai stipends. The Sword Edict of 1876 prohibited samurai from carrying their swords in public. Samurai stipends were commuted to government bonds. By 1876, the samurai as a legal class had ceased to exist, replaced by a mixed category of former-samurai bureaucrats, teachers, military officers, and (for many) impoverished commoners.⁵

The Fundamental Code of Education (Gakusei) of 1872 established universal primary education as a national requirement. The system was structured on French and American models, with the country divided into education districts, standardised curriculum in Japanese language, mathematics, sciences, and morals, and a network of primary schools that would eventually reach every rural community. Universal primary education was not achieved immediately — the enforcement of attendance was uneven through the 1870s and 1880s — but by 1900 primary school enrollment for the school-age population had reached over 90 percent. Universal literacy in the standardised Japanese language followed within a generation.⁶

State Shintō and the imperial cult. The Meiji government separated Shintō and Buddhism (1868), promoted State Shintō as the political religion of the emperor-cult, and installed obeisance to the emperor at Shintō shrines as a patriotic duty. The Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 established the moral-ideological content that would be recited daily in classrooms and would frame Japanese identity around loyalty to the emperor, filial piety, and service to the state. Buddhism, which had been the state-supported religion under the Tokugawa framework, was administratively downgraded and, for a period in the 1870s, subjected to explicit anti-Buddhist campaigns (haibutsu kishaku). The construction was substantially of a new political religion using selected pre-existing materials rather than the restoration of any historical religious framework.⁷

The Meiji Constitution of 1889 established Japan as a constitutional monarchy on the German model. The emperor was declared sacred and inviolable; supreme political authority was vested in the emperor; a bicameral parliament (the Imperial Diet, with an appointed House of Peers and an elected House of Representatives) was established to legislate under imperial sanction. The constitution was not democratic in any modern sense; the electorate for the House of Representatives was restricted to male property-owners paying substantial taxes, initially about 1.1 percent of the population. But the constitution established the framework of modern constitutional governance in Japan and became the reference point for the pre-war Japanese political system.⁸

Military modernisation. The Imperial Japanese Army was constructed on the Prussian model with German military advisors from 1885. The Imperial Japanese Navy was constructed on the British model with British advisors. Universal male conscription produced a mass army; officer training was systematised through the Imperial Military Academy; military production capacity was developed through state-supported arsenals and shipyards. By the 1890s Japan had a military capable of defeating China (Sino-Japanese War, 1894–1895) and by 1905 capable of defeating Russia (Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905).

Industrial development. Government-supported industrial enterprises were established in strategic sectors (railroads, telegraph, mining, textiles). Foreign expertise was imported to train Japanese managers and technicians. Japanese students were sent abroad to study Western science and industrial practice. By the 1890s, private-sector industrial development — the zaibatsu conglomerates (Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda) that would dominate Japanese industry into the twentieth century — had emerged, often with initial state support. By 1912 Japan had an industrial base competitive with second-tier European powers.

The identity construction

Under all of these reforms, the identity construction proceeded. The Meiji reformers understood that transforming Japan into a modern industrial state required transforming the population from subjects of specific daimyō, temples, and villages into subjects of the Japanese nation. The specific mechanisms of identity construction:

Universal primary education in standardised Japanese. The Fundamental Code of Education produced, by 1912, a Japanese population most of whom had been through primary school and had absorbed the standardised curriculum. The curriculum’s core included the standardised Japanese language (which required substantial linguistic engineering — the pre-Meiji spoken Japanese was fragmented across regional dialects and did not have a fully-developed standard written form), the standardised national historical narrative built around the imperial line, and the moral instruction of the Rescript on Education. Children exiting primary school had, in Anderson’s terms, been imagined into the Japanese national community by state action.⁹

Universal military conscription. The 1873 Conscription Ordinance required all Japanese males (with substantial early-period exemptions that were progressively narrowed) to serve in the imperial army. The service, typically two to three years, brought young men from throughout the country into the same units, forced them to speak the standardised Japanese language, and produced personal networks that crossed the pre-Meiji regional and class lines. The conscription infrastructure was one of the most powerful of the identity-construction mechanisms.

State Shintō and imperial cult. The elaboration of Shintō as a national religion with the emperor as its focus provided the ceremonial and ritual infrastructure of Japanese identity. Every shrine had an imperial connection; every ceremony invoked the imperial line; every classroom had a photograph of the emperor. The imperial cult was not universally accepted (Christian communities, Buddhist temples, and some folk-religious traditions had varying relationships with it) but was universally present in the state’s ceremonial life. It gave Japanese identity a specific religious-political content that was not available before the Meiji construction.

Standardised national historical narrative. The Meiji-era historical scholarship produced the narrative of Japanese national history that would inform textbooks, ceremonial life, and public discourse through 1945. The narrative traced the imperial line from the legendary Jimmu emperor (traditionally dated 660 BCE) through the historical emperors into the present, treated the Tokugawa era as a valuable but insufficient stage of pre-modern preparation, and framed the Meiji Restoration as the recovery of imperial authority that had been temporarily obscured. The narrative was, in Anderson’s terms, the imagined history of the imagined community — constructed, but constructed effectively.

National ceremonial calendar. The Meiji government established a national holiday calendar built around imperial dates (the emperor’s birthday, the anniversary of the Restoration, the National Foundation Day of Jimmu’s traditional accession), religious dates (Shintō festivals), and civic dates (Constitution Day). The calendar structured the shared public time of Japanese life through 1945 and, in modified form, into the post-war period.

The identity construction was successful in a specific sense. By 1912, the Japanese population understood itself as one nation, subject to one emperor, sharing one language, one educational tradition, one military service, one national historical narrative. The pre-Meiji regional and class identities had not disappeared — the Osaka merchant traditions, the Tōhoku peasant culture, the Kyushu samurai memories continued as sub-national identities — but they had been subordinated to the pan-Japanese identity in political operation. When Japan went to war with China in 1894, with Russia in 1904, and (catastrophically) into the Pacific War in 1941, the population that fought was Japanese, not a coalition of regional identities.

The costs and the failure mode

The Meiji construction was accomplished at costs that this series does not minimise.

The Boshin War of 1868–1869 killed approximately 8,000 combatants and produced significant civilian dislocation. The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, led by former samurai resisting the dissolution of their class, killed over 20,000 combatants including Saigō Takamori, one of the original Restoration leaders. Political opposition — the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement of the 1880s, socialist and communist movements of the 1900s and 1910s, the various liberal and progressive movements — was suppressed through a combination of legal restrictions (the Peace Preservation Law and its predecessors), police action, and social ostracism.

The identity construction had, in its specific content, features that produced the catastrophe of 1931–1945. The imperial cult, when combined with the military modernisation and the ideology of Japanese national uniqueness, produced the militarist ideology of the Kwantung Army and eventually of the imperial government under Hideki Tōjō. The Manchurian Incident of 1931, the invasion of China in 1937, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the catastrophic defeat in 1945 were, in significant part, the working-out of ideological content that the Meiji construction had installed. The imperial-Shintō framework was not, in Article 4’s framing, a benign construction; it was a specific construction with specific consequences, some of which produced substantial harm.

Post-war Japan’s reconstruction, examined in the next article, was in significant part the abandonment of the imperial-Shintō framework in favour of a constitutional-democratic framework that could construct Japanese identity without the militarist content. That the post-war construction succeeded is what makes the Meiji case an instructive template rather than a cautionary tale. But the cautionary elements are real. Identity construction under state direction can produce outcomes that the constructors did not anticipate and that later generations must repudiate.

What the Meiji case shows

Three points from the Meiji case are relevant to the Ethiopian argument.

First, that modern national identity is constructed rather than restored. The Meiji reformers used the language of restoration to legitimate their project, but what they actually did was construction. The imperial line existed before Meiji, but its political role as the focus of Japanese national identity was new; the language existed before Meiji, but its standardisation as the medium of national administration and education was new; the population existed before Meiji, but its imagination of itself as one Japanese nation was new. All of this was constructed by state action over four decades. Ethiopia’s identity construction, if undertaken, would proceed on comparable terms.

Second, that construction requires state capacity and sustained political will. The Meiji reformers were a small coalition of former samurai who understood themselves as engaged in a generational project. They built state capacity through the abolition of the domains, the construction of the modern bureaucracy, and the imperial legitimation. They sustained political will through the Restoration coalition’s continued dominance across four decades of leadership succession. Ethiopia’s identity construction would require comparable capacity and comparable will. Neither has been produced under any Ethiopian regime in the modern period.

Third, that construction is not without cost and requires careful choice of content. The Meiji construction chose imperial-Shintō content that produced the militarist trajectory of the 1930s and 1940s. The post-war reconstruction chose different content and produced different outcomes. Ethiopia’s identity construction would face comparable content choices. The imperial-Christian-Amharic content of the pre-1974 imperial identity, restored in 2026, would produce outcomes analogous to what Meiji imperial-Shintō produced in 1945. A different content, drawing from the full range of Ethiopian inheritances and calibrated to the requirements of the modern multi-ethnic state, would produce different outcomes. The choice is real and consequential.

What comes next

The next article takes up post-war Japan under MacArthur and its aftermath: the reconstruction of Japanese identity that abandoned the imperial-Shintō framework and produced the democratic-pacifist Japan of the post-1945 era. The Japanese case, examined across both articles, provides the foundational template for the Asian identity-construction pattern. Part III then takes up the Cold War Tigers, and Part IV takes up Singapore.

---

References

Footnotes

1. On the external pressure and internal context, see Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Harvard, 2000), chs. 8–9. ↩

2. On the Restoration coalition, see W. G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration (Stanford, 1972). ↩

3. On the Charter Oath, see Beasley, The Meiji Restoration. ↩

4. On the abolition of the domains, see Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, ch. 12. ↩

5. On the dissolution of the samurai class, see Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, ch. 13. ↩

6. On Meiji education, see Herbert Passin, Society and Education in Japan (Columbia, 1965). ↩

7. On State Shintō, see Helen Hardacre, Shinto: A History (Oxford, 2016); Sarah Thal, Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods: The Politics of a Pilgrimage Site in Japan, 1573–1912 (Chicago, 2005). ↩

8. On the Meiji Constitution, see Junji Banno, The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System (Routledge, 1992). ↩

9. On the identity-construction mechanisms, see Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, 1985). ↩