After 150 years, why does the Meiji restoration matter?

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2018/02/economist-explains-1

Overview:

The article explains how Meiji restoration vaulted Japan into the ranks of the world’s great powers and led it to commit the atrocities in war time, a major reason why many Japanese is reluctant to feel nostalgia for Meiji.

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Many Japanese struggle to feel nostalgia for an age of emperor worship

Feb 5th 2018by D.Z. | TOKYO

IN January 1868 some young samurai [（日）武士] and their merchant sympathisers overthrew Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate and with it seven centuries of feudal rule (封建统治). The so-called Meiji restoration (明治维新) was the cue for such rapid industrialisation and modernisation that not even China’s more recent reforms have matched it. The effect was to vault Japan into the ranks of the world’s great powers. Today the government of Shinzo Abe is making much of the anniversary. For the prime minister, the proud story of the Meiji restoration is a lesson in how people should embrace modernity (现代化) and change, while revering (敬畏) tradition. Many Japanese, however, are uncomfortable with this interpretation.

Before American warships showed up in 1853 in Edo Bay (江户湾) and demanded trading rights for their country, Japan had for over two centuries been a closed land. The ships’ arrival laid bare the inadequacy of the samurai warrior class. As Western pressure for trading rights and treaty ports grew, younger samurai bitterly criticised the military government for giving in to it. The hotheads (鲁莽的人) began plotting for change. The slogan with which they launched their coup (争辩) was “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”. For the first part, they called on tradition. They put the imperial line, whose members had for centuries been living as ciphers (有名无实的人) in Kyoto (京都), back into the centre of the polity (政体). They brought the 12-year-old emperor, Mutsuhito (pictured, seated, when older), to Edo, which they renamed Tokyo, or Eastern Capital. He chose meiji (“enlightened”) as the name for his rule. Hence the Meiji restoration.

It was actually a revolution, though. Far from expelling the barbarians, the new leaders embraced everything foreign. The “Charter Oath” (五条御誓文) of April 1868 that formally ended feudal rule decreed (颁布法令) that “knowledge shall be sought throughout the world”. Some 50 officials set off on a tour of America and Europe to learn about administration, trade, industry and military affairs. On their return, and with foreign help, they threw their country into a race to catch up with the West, building railways and roads, pursuing land reform that redistributed the old feudal estates, establishing a Western-based system of education, and building a modern army. In 1889 the Meiji constitution, modelled along Prussian lines, enshrined (铭记) both representative government (代议政府) and reverence for the emperor. Together, these were potent steps (强有力的措施). In 1895 Japan humiliated China, East Asia’s traditional power, in a brief war fought over influence in Korea. In 1905 it did the same to Russia. Japan had previously feared the snuffing out of its independence by Western powers. In the Social Darwinian (社会达尔文主义) parlance (说法) of the day, it risked being served as meat at the Western imperial banquet. After the Russo-Japanese war it ended up joining the high table [（宴会上的）贵宾席].

It all went to Japan’s head. There was no clear break, as there was in Germany with Hitler’s rise to power, between the enlightened Japan that the Meiji reformers built and the militarist one that in 1937 launched into total war. The seeds of Japanese aggression and atrocities (暴行) were sown in the emperor worship and glorification of the armed forces that were essential elements of the Meiji world. This is the unspoken problem with those who, like Mr Abe sometimes, refuse to face up to the wartime past. It risks pulling on a thread to the point where the Meiji narrative of national redemption itself comes into question. And then what is there left to be proud of? Better to burnish the myth. Some conservatives in Mr Abe’s party even miss the Meiji constitution’s putting of family before individual, and emperor before all. Yet many Japanese find little that is nostalgic in an era when women and other groups faced harsh treatment. Mr Abe is the most forward-looking of Japan’s recent prime ministers, keenly aware of the challenges of a shrinking population and a China on the rise. But he struggles to harness Meiji nostalgia to the cause.