The politics of the Meiji empire

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Meiji Restoration and the revolution that followed it was essentially imperial in character. In the so-called Age of Empires, it seemed very natural to the political and military elites that their new imperial state should also have an empire of its own, like the Great Powers of the West whose empires had already spread their tendrils throughout Asia. It was with this kind of thinking in mind that Yamagata Aritomo, fresh from his trip to Europe, endeavoured to build a powerful Japanese navy, in imitation of the navy of the greatest imperial power of the day, the small island nation of Great Britain.

Although Saigo Takamori’s plans for an invasion of Korea in the early 1870s were thwarted by the genro (who cut short the Iwakura Embassy in Europe in order to prevent it), and by Yamagata

Aritomo in particular, the government’s objection to the plan was not its imperial ambition but rather the method and rationale of the venture. Indeed, in 1876 Yamagata himself argued that Korea was an essential part of Japan’s ‘zone of advantage’ and that its relative weakness (as a less modern society)

both made it vulnerable to Japan’s regional ambitions and to the ambitions of the West, which in turn constituted a vulnerability for Japan itself. It was imperative, he argued, that Korea should fall into Japan’s sphere, since it was certain to fall to someone. 

With this kind of imperial competition in mind, and conscious of Japan’s new power on the regional stage, Japan imposed the Treaty of Kanghwa on Korea in 1876. The process was almost a precise duplication of the way that Commodore Perry had imposed the Treaty of Kanagawa on Japan just twenty years earlier, and its terms were similarly exploitative. Until Korea modernized, Yamagata and others argued that it was not worthy of an equal treaty. Hence, throughout the 1880s Japan sent

emissaries to Korea to advise it on how to modernize its education system, its economy, and its political structure, just as Japan was receiving similar advice from Europe.

The situation in Korea was very complicated, not least because of the traditional competition between Japan and China for influence over the peninsula. The Treaty of Kanghwa as well as the presence of so many Japanese advisors aggravated the Chinese rulers as well as many Korean people. In Japan, opinion leaders attempted to reconcile the apparent hypocrisy of Japanese foreign policy through recourse to the rhetoric of Pan-Asianism: Japan was helping Korea to help itself, as an Asian brother helps another under threat from the West. Nonetheless, violence against the Japanese emissaries in Korea was not infrequent, until finally in 1894 there was a full-scale uprising against foreign influence. The Tonghak Rebellion, which was partially a religious movement, partially popular xenophobia, and partially anti-Japanese in sentiment, undermined stability in Korea to such an extent that the leaders called for military aid from their traditional patrons, China, in order to restore order. Greatly offended by this, and under the pretext of defending their zone of advantage, the Japanese sent troops of their own into Korea, where they came into conflict with the Chinese. The result was the first Sino-Japanese War of modern times. 

Thanks to the modernization drive instigated by Yamagata Aritomo, the Japanese army was vastly superior to that of its giant neighbour. In addition, in pursuit of a ‘British Empire for Japan’, Japan had built an impressive navy; for the first time in history it enjoyed naval parity with China, and technological superiority. The outcome of the war was a clear victory for Japan, whose privileged position in Korea was therefore confirmed. Moreover, as compensation for the war, Japan

claimed the island of Taiwan (Formosa), the small but strategically  important Liaodong peninsula on the Chinese mainland, and a huge cash indemnity from China.

During the same period, unionization and ‘friendly societies’ started to gain in popularity, and support for a fledgling socialist movement began to appear. A Social Democratic Party was founded in 1901, but was instantly banned. The movement radicalized into anarchism and communism under the leadership of activists like Kotoku Shusui and Katayama Sen, who would eventually be executed for High Treason in 1911. The orthodoxy of Japan’s nation-building project, even in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War, never embraced the political left, since it threatened to challenge the one emblem that held the whole Meiji state together: the figure of the emperor himself.

Hence, the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912 was a real turning point in modern Japanese history. Meiji had overseen the unification of Japan into a single nation-state, and then the modernization of that state into one that could stand equally with those of the West as an imperial power. However, at the time of his death, Japan was already witnessing the start of a new phase of politics, as popular opinion turned against the militarization of the state and sought to forge Japan into a genuinely participatory democracy. Political parties became more coherent and more focused on issues, rather than simply clubs that parliamentarians joined. Indeed, in the year of Meiji’s death, the leader of the Seiyukai  party, Hara Kei, succeeded in forcing a stalemate with the military about its new budget. Not even the elder statesman Yamagata Aritomo could resolve the situation in favour of the military, and this ushered in a

period that has come to be known as the ‘politics of compromise’.

Hara would go on to become Japan’s first commoner, party-based prime minister in 1918.