Japan's Turn to the West

CHAPTER 7 JAPAN'S TURN TO THE WEST Although Japan was never a "closed country" in the sense that sakoku literally implies, it did awaken from two hundred years of substantial "national isolation" in the last half of the nineteenth century to devote its full energy toward the realization of one goal - the establishment of a modern nation-state. This effort itself is better evidence of Japan's "turn to the West" than anything else, for the concept of a modern nation-state had yet to manifest itself in any non-Western country. In economic terms, a modern nation-state is a state that has experienced an industrial revolution; in social terms, it is a state with a centralized political system under which popular participation is structured through the parliamentary institutions of a constitutional order. By any measure, such characteristics of a state are thoroughly Western in nature and origin. These distinguishing characteristics were not to be found in the To- kugawa bakuhan state. Nineteenth-century Japanese society was pre- industrial, and its economy was based on forms of production that depended on animate rather than mechanical sources of power. A large bourgeoisie did exist to carry on commercial and financial enterprise, but it was excluded from participating in political decisions. The Toku- gawa political structure was composed of a bureaucracy, representing feudally privileged classes that operated within a system that reconciled theoretically incompatible elements of feudalism and absolute shogunal "monarchy." Despite Japan's high level of cultural homogenity - or perhaps because of it - the concept of a people as a "nation" that partici- pated actively in the affairs of a "state" was unknown. Confronted by an apparently superior "civilization" represented by the states of Europe, the Japanese confronted tasks of achieving modernity - making themselves into a "nation" and a "state" - following the opening of their country (kaikoku). To that end they had to create a central government, train bureaucrats to run the state, institute an army and a navy based on universal conscription, orga- nize a legal system, foster capitalism, abolish feudal privilege, imple- 432 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 JAPAN'S TURN TO THE WEST 433 ment the "equality of the four status groups," consolidate a system of education, and reform their customs. The individual who was perhaps most responsible for formulating these goals and was central to their execution in early Meiji years was Okubo Toshimichi (1830-78), a Satsuma leader who held real political power during the first decade of Meiji rule. Compared with his Choshu colleague Kido Takayoshi (Koin, 1833-77), Okubo was more conservative and less willing to sacrifice tradition in the quest for modernization. At the seashore near Osaka one day, Okubo gazed despondently at a clump of tree stumps - all that remained of a pine grove famous for its beauty - that had been leveled as a consequence of the policy of "foster industry and promote enterprise" (shokusan kogyo), of which he himself was the leading proponent. Feeling the need to admonish the prefectural governor responsible for this insensi- tive act, Okubo composed the following poem: The pines at Takashi beach in spite of their renown, could not escape the ravage of historic tidal waves.1 Even for Okubo, however, the policy of "civilization and enlightenment" (bummei kaika) that Japan had adopted remained synonymous with Westernization. In an apparent belief that the Western powers were pure and simple embodiments of civilization, he wrote that "at present all the countries in the world are directing all their efforts toward propagating teachings of 'civilization and enlightenment,' and they lack for nothing. Hence we must imitate them in these respects."2 A revealing anecdote about the process by which the Meiji constitution was formulated points by extension to the larger question of preconditions within Japanese society that affected, assisted, and chan- neled the process of appropriating the Western example. In 1883, Ito Hirobumi, the chief architect of the future constitution, led a delegation to Europe to study its various national constitutions. Because the Meiji government had already more or less decided to model its new constitution on that of Prussia, ltd and his delegates first visited the jurist Rudolf von Gneist (1816-95) m Berlin to seek his advice. Gneist's advice was cool and discouraging. He told them that several years earlier Bulgaria, one of several newly independent 1 Nihon shiseki kyokai, ed., Okubo Toshimichi monjo, vol. 9 {Nihon shiseki kyokai sosho, vol. 36) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1969), p. 347. 2 Okubo Toshimichi, "Seifu no teisai ni kansuru kengensho," in Okubo Toshimichi monjo, vol. 3, p. 11. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 434 JAPAN'S TURN TO THE WEST and semiindependent countries that developed in the Balkans after the Russo-Turkish War, had asked for assistance in framing a constitution. Though all of Gneist's colleagues were hampered by a lack of knowledge about conditions in that country, one legal scholar had volunteered to go there to produce a constitution within six months' time, an offer that brought scornful amusement. True to his word, however, the man made good his boast. But upon his return to Berlin, he had provoked loud laughter among his colleagues with the quip, "After all, how long does it take to gloss over a bronze vessel with gold paint?" Gneist went on to advise his Japanese guests as follows: I am most grateful that you have chosen to come all the way to Germany on your mission. Unfortunately I know nothing of Japan, and have never studied it. Let me first ask you about Japan, about the relationship between ruler and ruled, its manners and customs, about the sentiments of its people, and about its history, etc. Clarify all these things for me first, and then I will think about them and provide you with an answer that might be of some assistance to you.3 In short, Gneist began by bluntly admonishing Ito that only those nations possessing a minimum degree of latent potential, that is, a certain level of cultural advancement, were capable of creating a truly meaningful constitution. To undertake such a task before acquiring the requisite capacity would merely result in an elaborately embel- lished piece of paper. Gneist then insinuated that in Japan's case the drafting of a constitution might very well be meaningless. This brusque reply was thoroughly disheartening to Ito, the repre- sentative of a small, backward, East Asian country who stood face to face with a European civilization that was at the zenith of its power and glory and that was convinced of its own superiority as none other in recorded history had been. How could the words of a famous Berlin jurist fail to ring true in both East Asian and European ears? Yet if as Gneist asserted, a constitution, the framework of a modern nation-state, "is more a legal document," if indeed it is "the manifesta- tion of a people's spirit and the measure of a nation's capacities," then the fact that a modern nation-state did emerge in nineteenth-century Japan indicates that something in the "relationship between ruler and ruled," the "manners and customs," the "sentiments of its people," and its "history, etc." facilitated the creation of a new form of state based on the Meiji constitution. To put it differently, this process, and 3 Yoshida Masaharu, "Kempo happu made," in Oka Yoshitake, ed., Kindai Nihon seiji-shi (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 286-7. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 BOOKS 435 indeed the rapidity, of Japan's Westernization indicates that the gap between Japan and the West at that time was entirely bridgeable. Japan's "turn to the West" had to be carried out in two separate dimensions: (i) the importation and assimilation of modern ideas and institutions on a technical, formal level, such as Gneist's constitutional "legal document"; and (2) the adaptation of an indigenous, traditional culture and institutions to bring out their latent potential, in Gneist's terms, "the national spirit and capacities." THE MEDIUM OF BOOKS: FIRST AWARENESS OF MODERN WESTERN CIVILIZATION Dutch studies Tokugawa society was culturally creative and produced much that we now consider "traditionally Japanese," but Japan was not by any means intellectually self-sufficient during its period of national isolation. Intellectual activity during the Edo period can be broadly classi- fied into three categories: (1) Confucianism, which had a distinguished pedigree and possessed great prestige; (2) Japanese learning (koku- gaku), which arose in mid-Tokugawa times as a reaction to the sinocentrism that then prevailed in scholarly circles; and (3) Dutch studies (rangaku), whose emergence was signaled by the translation into Japanese of a Dutch translation of a work on anatomy by the German doctor Kulmus, referred to as Tafel Anatomia, which was completed in 1774 by Sugita Gempaku and his colleagues. Dutch studies sprang up as an adjunct to medicine and gradually spread to other areas, such as language study, astronomy, geography, physics, chemistry, and military science. Although they appeared on the aca- demic scene relatively late, Dutch studies had wide currency by late Tokugawa times, and the awareness of some Dutch studies specialists of the need to reconsider the system of national seclusion played an important role in bridging the intellectual gap between the West and Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. It is significant that two of these three principal fields of Tokugawa learning derived from China and the West and were alien in origin. Japan remained in contact with China and Holland, the cultural home- lands of Confucianism and Dutch studies, throughout the Edo period, although to be sure the degrees of contact differed greatly.

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