THE RESTORATION OF THE MEIDJI
The great political change which took place in the year 1867-1868 is
generally called the Restoration, in the sense that the imperial power
was restored by this event. In truth, however, the prerogative of the
Emperor has never been formally usurped, and none has dared impudently
to declare that he had assumed the power in His Majesty's stead. All the
virtual potentates, court-nobles as well as Shogun, who, each in his
day, held unlimited sway over the whole country, had been accustomed to
style themselves modestly vicegerents of the Emperor. On the other hand,
the change was more than a mere restoration, for never in the course of
our national history had the resplendent grandeur of the Imperiality
reached the height in which it now actually stands. In this respect the
Restoration of the Meidji can by no means be taken in the same sense as
the two Restorations famous in European history, that of the Stuarts in
1660 and of the Bourbons in 1814. Renovation, perhaps, would be a more
adequate term to be used here than Restoration, to designate this
epoch-making event in our history. We have reconstructed new Japan from
the old materials, the origins of some of which are lost in remotest
antiquity.
If, however, we should consider the range and intensity of the momentous
change which was caused by the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate, it
is rather a revolution than a renovation. Just the same kind of
disjunction which can be perceived in the transition of France from its
ancient regime to the Revolution may also be noticed in the Japanese
history of the transition period, which divides the pre-Meidji regime
from the present status. The difference is that we accomplished in five
years a counterpart, though on a much smaller scale, of what they took
in France nearly a generation to conclude; a difference which may be
accounted for by the absence in our country of many circumstances which
helped to make the French Revolution really a great historical event.
That those circumstances were lacking in our history, however, is by no
means the fault of our nation. No impartial foreign historian would
grudge a few words of praise to the Japanese who achieved the historic
thorough transformation of national life with little or no bloodshed,
when they think of the tremendous difficulties which Bismarck had to
encounter in his grand task of forming the new German empire, and which
even he himself could not overcome entirely.
Then how did this momentous change happen to be achieved by the
Japanese? It appeared a wonder even to the eyes of many contemporary
Japanese. It surprises us, therefore, to say the least, that many
foreigners not well-versed in Japanese history, however intelligent and
otherwise qualified, should have believed almost without exception that
the island nation had something miraculous in its immanent capacity,
which had remained latent so long only from lack of opportunity to
manifest itself. But to the contemplative mind, equipped at the same
time with sufficient knowledge of the historical development of our
country, there was nothing magical in the national achievement of the
Japanese in the latter half of the nineteenth century, though it cannot
be denied that the close contact with the modern civilisation of Europe
at this juncture gave the most suitable opportunity to the people to try
their ability nurtured by the long centuries of their history, and
served efficiently to quicken the steps of national progress to a pace
far more speedy than any we had ever marched before.
In other words, our national progress of these fifty years, whether it
might be apt to be termed hurried steps or strides, was a thing
organized by slow degrees during the long tranquil rule of the Tokugawa.
As to the advancement of the general culture anterior to the Revolution
of the Meidji, I have already touched on that in the previous chapter.
Here I will limit myself to recapitulating the growth of the
nationalistic spirit among the people, which bore as its fruit that
memorable change in the political and cultural sphere of our country.
The tranquillity restored to the country by the powerful dictatorship of
Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, and the multiplication of books, Japanese as well
as Chinese, reprinted in blocks or in type, remarkably enlarged the
reading circle among the people. The liberal education of warriors had
been earnestly encouraged by the Shogunate, mainly for the purpose of
creating intelligent and law-abiding gentlemen out of rough and
adventurous fighters. A great many of the _daimyo_ followed the example
of the Shogunate by founding one or more schools in their own
territories for the education of their own _samurai_, and in these
schools moral and political lessons were given, besides training in
military arts. The _samurai_ were taught to read and understand Chinese
classics, with the purely pragmatic purpose of enabling them to follow
the inexhaustible precepts preached by the Chinese philosophers of
various ages, and at the same time to qualify them to govern the people
according to the political theories of Confucius, when they were put in
some responsible positions in the territorial government of their lord.
The text-books used in this curriculum of education had been, of course,
Chinese literature of the sort which might be called political
miscellanies, that is to say, those works pertaining to morals,
politics, and history. This trio was to Chinese philosophers only the
three different forms of the manifestation of one and the same
principle, for to them politics was an enlarged application of that very
principle, which when applied to personal matters made private morals,
and history was only another name for the politics of the past, as many
European historians still also believe. Their Japanese pupils, however,
took up any one of the trio they fancied, and interlaced it with the
national tradition, each according to his own taste. The metaphysical
element of the Chinese moral philosophy of the Sung dynasty, the time in
which Chinese philosophy reached its high flourishing scholastic stage,
was thus mingled with Shintoism.
Up to that time we had Shintoism imbued with Buddhism. Now having
repudiated the Indian elements out of it, we introduced in their stead
the Confucian philosophy. As the philosophy introduced was that
expounded by Chutse, who was an intense rigorist, the Shintoism
resulting from this mixture was rather narrow and chauvinistic, though
fervent enough to inspire people of education. One of the most
conspicuous founders of this kind of new national cult was Ansai
Yamazaki, who was born in 1619. On account of his hair-splitting
doctrines, tolerating none which deviated the least from his, his
disciples were always in very bitter controversy with one another, each
asserting himself as the only true successor of his master, and
dissension followed after dissension. Many of them were so pigheaded as
to make it a rule not to serve publicly in any official capacity under
the Shogun nor the _daimyo_, and exerted themselves strenuously to
spread their propaganda among the intelligent classes of the people.
Fuel was added to the flame of the national spirit already in a blaze by
the assiduous study of the ancient literature of our country. The old
Japanese literature studied and imitated during the Ashikaga period had
not gone back farther than the Tempyo era. If we except some novels
produced in the prime of the courtiers' regime, such as the
_Genji-monogatari_, the literary works of old Japan highly prized by the
courtiers and enlightened warriors of the Ashikaga were limited to the
anthologies of short Japanese poems by various poets, the oldest of
which was called the _Kokin-shu_, said to have been compiled in 905 A.D.
under Imperial auspices. The _Mannyo-shu_, which is another collection
of Japanese poems, older than those gathered into the _Kokin-shu_, and
to which I referred in my former chapter as the oldest collection of all
of that kind in Japan, though not entirely abandoned, could not cope
with the latter in popularity, being considered as too much out of date.
A few of the commentaries or interpretations of trivial topics sung or
celebrated in the poems in the _Kokin-shu_ had become matters of great
importance in the art of Japanese versification, and had been handed
from one master to a favourite disciple as an esoteric literary secret
not to be lightly divulged to the _hoi polloi_. The resuscitated
national spirit of the early Tokugawa period, however, induced men of
the literary circles of the time no longer to be contented with such
trivialities, and stimulated them to push their researches backward into
the literature still more ancient, that is to say, to launch themselves
upon the difficult task of interpreting those more archaic poems
contained in the _Mannyo-shu_. The foremost of these philologists was a
priest by the name of Keichu, born in 1640 in the vicinity of Osaka. His
celebrated work, the Commentaries on the Poems of the _Mannyo-shu_, is
said to be the first standard hoisted in the philological study of old
Japan by Japanese, a study the inauguration of which almost corresponded
in time with the establishment of durable peace by the Tokugawa
Shogunate. A succession of savants followed in his wake, and the most
noted among them were Mabuchi Kamo and his disciple Norinaga Motooeri. It
was the latter of the two who brought the study of Japanese antiquities
to its highest point in the Tokugawa age.
The time of Motooeri covers the whole of the latter half of the
eighteenth century, for he was born in 1730 and died in 1801 in the
province of Ise. Before him the scope of researches into old Japan had
been limited to the literary products of our ancient poets and
novelists. Though the _Nihongi_ had been talked of by the scholars of
the Ashikaga period and an edition reprinted before the advent of the
house of Tokugawa, that part of the work which had been most widely read
and commented on was its first volume, treating about the age of the
gods and the mythical beginning of the Empire. In other words, the book
had been prized not as an important historical work, but as a sacred
book of Shintoism. It was Motooeri himself who first studied ancient
Japan, not only from the Shintoistic point of view, but also
philologically and historically. Classical literature, which became the
object of his indefatigable research, was not restricted to books of
mythology, but included also the ritual book of "norito," several
collections of poems, and historical works. First of all, however, he
concentrated his efforts upon the study of the old chronicle, _Kojiki_.
He was of the opinion that the _Kojiki_ was more reliable as a
historical source than the _Nihongi_, as it might, according to him, be
easily judged from its archaic phraseology and syntax, in contrast to
the latter, the historical veracity of which must have been surely
impaired by its adoption of the Chinese rhetoric. He made the most
minute, critical study of the text of the _Kojiki_, phrase by phrase,
and word by word. The famous _Kojiki-den_, or "The Commentaries on the
_Kojiki_," is the choicest fruit of his life-long study. In it the
history, religion, manners, customs, in short, all the items concerning
the civilisation of ancient Japan are expounded from the text of the
chronicle itself, frequently corroborated by what is stated in other
authentic sources. He had always in view, and laid great stress on the
fact, that Japan had possessed from her beginning what was to be called
her own, purely and entirely Japanese, quite apart from the culture
which she introduced afterwards from abroad. It was to this unique and
naive state of things in primeval Japan taken as a whole that he applied
the term Shintoism. According to him, therefore, naturalness, purity and
veracity were the cardinal virtues to be taught in Shintoism, from which
he thought not only Indian, but Chinese elements also should be
eradicated. Thus Shintoism was stripped of its religious apparel, with
which it had been invested during the long course of our history, and by
his endeavours it approached again its original status as a simple moral
cult with primitive rituals; but at the same time it gained immensely in
strength, for it now found its main support in the nationality deeply
rooted in the daily life of the ancient Japanese. By him the Japanese
were reminded of their national beginning.
This philological study of ancient Japan owed much, in its early stage,
to the stimulus given by the growth of historiography in the seventeenth
century. This study of and the endeavour to write down the national
history came of course from the political necessity of the time. As
early as the fourth decade of the seventeenth century, the Shogunate is
said to have ordered its court literati to compile the history of our
country from the earliest times, but it was suspended afterwards for a
while. A little posterior to this, a memorable historiographical
institute was initiated by Mitsukuni Tokugawa, one of the grandsons of
Iyeyasu and lord of Mito. For the first time in our country, the
collection of historical materials was undertaken on a grand scale.
Collectors were despatched to many provinces where a rich harvest was
expected. Kyoto and its vicinity were ransacked with special attention.
The material thus rummaged and collected, varying from those of
authentic kinds such as memoirs of ancient courtiers and court-ladies,
chronicles kept in shrines and temples, and documents concerning the
transactions of numberless manorial estates, down to less reliable sorts
of materials such as stories, legends, tales, novels, and various other
writings current in successive ages, had been criticised in their texts
with tolerable scientific conscientiousness. The _Dai-Nihon-shi_, or
"The History of Great Japan," which is the result of the cooperation of
the historians of the Mito school engaged in researches under the
auspices of Mitsukuni and his successors, consists of two hundred and
thirty one volumes, and has taken two centuries and a half for its
completion, the last volume having been published in 1906. In its form
the grand history is an imitation of the _Shih-chi_ by Ssuma-chien of
the Han dynasty, the whole system being divided into the three sections
of the annals of the emperors, biographers of noted personages, and
miscellanies, with various tables. It is by no means a complete history
of Japan, for it comes down only to 1392, the year in which the two
rival houses of the Imperial family were united and put an end to the
long civil war. Moreover, it was only in the middle of the nineteenth
century, that the first two sections were put into print, though as
manuscripts those parts had been finished much earlier. It is not,
therefore, on account of the publication of the history, but of the
researches themselves and their by-products, that the historiography of
the Mito school greatly influenced the rise of the nationalistic spirit
of the Japanese. The long arduous labours of these historians were
consummated in expounding the doctrine that the Japanese nation had
something unique in its civilisation which was worthy to be guarded
carefully and fostered, and that the only bond which could unite the
nation spiritually was fidelity towards its common centre, the Emperor,
whose family had continued to reign over the country since time
immemorial. The history is often criticised as being too pragmatic,
narrow, and subjective, therefore not scientific. If we consider,
however, that even in those countries in the West where the study of
history is boasted of as having reached a high stage of scientific
investigation, most of the historians, if not the histories they have
written, have been also decidedly pragmatic, so that few of them can be
called perfectly objective, then we should not much blame the historians
and the history of the Mito school. That the school was entirely free
from any sort of superstition must also be mentioned as one of its chief
merits. This may be attributed to the rationalistic influence of the
doctrine of Chutse, and the fact that the history was written in
orthodox Chinese shows how these historiographers were imbued with
Chinese ideas. It might be said, however, to their credit that the task
was first undertaken in an age in which the literary language of our
country had not yet become entirely independent of Chinese, and that,
notwithstanding the adoption of that language, in committing the result
of their researches to writing they had never fallen into the
self-deception which might come from sinicomania. Since the inception of
this ever-memorable historiographical undertaking, the town of Mito had
continued to be the hearth of nationalism and patriotism, and thinkers
devoted to these ideas had been very glad to make their pilgrimage from
all parts of Japan to the centre of the pure Japanese culture, and to
converse with these historians of the noted institution. It was indeed
the early groups of these historians who first stirred up the
nationalistic spirit in the later seventeenth century, and their
successors it was who accelerated and most strongly reinforced the
national movement just before the Revolution. No school of learning in
Japan had even been so powerful and effective as that of Mito in
influencing and leading the spirit of the nation.
The torch, however, which had succeeded in giving blissful light to
illumine the whole nation, burned at last the torch-bearer himself with
its blazing flame. Not to mention that the finances of the territorial
lord had been miserably drained by this undertaking, which is said to
have swallowed up about one-third of the whole revenue of the territory,
and therefore proved too heavy a burden for the small income of the
lord. Narrow-mindedness, which is the necessary consequence of rigorism,
tended to nurture an implacable party spirit among the _samurai_ of the
territory educated in this principle. Internal strife thus ensued which
implicated not only the whole _samurai_ but people of all classes. In
short, the territory was divided against itself. Both parties appealed
to arms at last, and fought against each other, until both had to lie
down quite exhausted. So the culture which the historians and the
_samurai_ of Mito raised to a high pitch proved to be disastrous to
their own welfare, yet the good which it did to the country at large
should remain as a glory to those who sacrificed themselves for what
they regarded as their ideal.
We see now that several forces had cooperated in accomplishing the final
unity and consolidation of the nation. In giving the finishing touch,
however, to the task of many centuries, the enigmatic relations between
the Emperor and the Shogun had necessarily to be cleared. Though the
Shogunate had continued to transact the state affairs as if he had been
the sole regent of the Emperor, the legal status of the former had never
been created by any ordinance issued by the latter. No emperor had ever
formally confided his political prerogative to the Shogun. The basis on
which the jurisdictional power of the Shogun had rested was nothing but
the _fait accompli_ connived at and acquiesced in by the Emperor. If the
prestige of the Emperor, therefore, which had once fallen into
decadence, should be revived, the position of the Shogun was sure to
become untenable. The historians of the Mito school tried their best to
make the Emperor the nucleus of the national consolidation. Their
political theory had been strongly influenced by the legitimism
entertained by the historians of the Sung dynasty, and this principle of
legitimacy, when applied to the history of Japan, must have led only to
the conclusion that the only legitimate and therefore actual sovereign
of the country could be none other than the Emperor himself. Needless to
say, such an argument was injurious to the political interests of the
Shogunate, so that it seems very strange that the theory had been upheld
and loudly heralded by these historians who were under the protection of
the lord of Mito, the descendant of a scion of Iyeyasu. It was not, of
course, the intention of the hereditary lords of Mito and their
historians to undermine the structure of the Shogunate from its
foundation. Having been, however, too sharp and fervent in their
argument, they had been unable to rein themselves in, before the
interests of the Shogunate were thereby jeopardised, and as a logical
consequence they brought unconsciously to a terrible catastrophe the
whole edifice of the military regime, in which alone they could find a
reason for their existence.
The spirit of the nation had thus been under the increasing notion that
the coexistence of the sovereign Emperor with the omnipotent Shogunate
would be ultimately impossible, and such a trend of thought had been
highly welcomed in those parts of Japan where militarism had the least
hold. So far, however, it had been the more logical pursuance of a
political ideal, and if no opportunity had presented itself to these
idealists to put their theory into execution, it would have remained for
long the idle vapouring of romantic and irresponsible politicians. That
Japan was saved from this inaction, and that the virile movement in
favour of the revival of the imperial prestige was at last undertaken,
must be attributed to the shock and stimulus which came from without,
that is to say, to the coercion on the part of the Western nations to
open to them our country, which had been so long secluded from the rest
of the world.
Since the so-called "closing of the country" the Japanese had enjoyed a
peaceful national life, undisturbed for more than one century and a
half, and during this period of long tranquillity Japan had been able to
prepare herself for the hardships which she was about to encounter, by
replenishing her national culture and transforming it so as to be able
to take in as much of the Western civilisation as she was in need of,
without fear of thereby endangering her own national existence. But at
the end of the eighteenth century the insistent knocking of foreigners
at the door began to be heard, first at the back-door of the Island
Empire. It was only the Russians who, having already annexed the vast
tract of Siberia, were now ready to make a jump forward, and loitered on
the northern coast of our Hokkaido, called the island of Yezo at that
time. This was the beginning of new national troubles. It was not,
however, the same kind of foreign troubles as those which we had tried
and succeeded in getting rid of in the early days of the Shogunate.
There was no fear now of suffering from the religious intrigues of
foreign missionaries. The danger, if there were any, was purely of a
political nature.
Needless to say, the nation had had no voice in determining the
Shogunate's policy of "shutting up the country", and had not understood
well the merit or demerit of the policy itself, but having been
accustomed for a long time to the isolated national existence, and
puffed up not a little into self-conceit by the growth of the
nationalistic spirit, they were unconsciously induced to believe that
the status they were in must be the only normal condition of the
country. The people at large, though relieved of the overdue influence
of China, yet had a very scanty knowledge of the condition in which
Europe and America were at that time, and did not wish, in the least, to
be deranged by the intrusion, however well-meant, of any foreigner into
their quiet abode, in spite of the utter impossibility of continuing
such a national life _ad infinitum_ in the face of the changed
circumstances of the world, caused by the eastward expansion of various
European nations, and by the rise of a new power on the American
continent, the power which had just acquired access to the shore of the
Pacific. Those who were then at the helm of state, that is to say, the
statesmen of the Shogunate, shared nearly the same opinion with the
nation at large. Not only for the national welfare, but in the interests
of the Shogunate itself, they thought it best to keep up the _status
quo_ as long as possible. Unfortunately, the foreigners who now knocked
at our doors were not unarmed like those who had come two centuries
before, neither were they so humble and docile as the Dutchmen at
Deshima were accustomed to be. In order to keep them off in spite of
their importunate wish to the contrary, we had to provide for
emergencies. So the Shogunate tried to make military preparations, to
defend the country in case of necessity and drive away the intruders by
force of arms. The more, however, the Shogunate tried to arm the nation
against the foreigners, the more difficult it found the task it had in
view. As the result of the long enjoyment of peace, the people had
become inured to ease and luxury, and had lost much of their martial
spirit, of which they had been exceedingly proud as their characteristic
attribute. Moreover, the country having been parcelled out into nearly
three hundred territories, it was very hard for the Shogunate to
mobilise the warriors of the whole empire at its sole command. On the
other hand, the material progress of the Western nations, achieved
during the time of our seclusion, had been really astonishing. The
difficulty of coping with them now became far greater for us than it had
been at the end of the sixteenth century. Notwithstanding these
overwhelming difficulties, the Shogunate persisted in its endeavour to
strengthen the national defences. The martial spirit of the nation was
gradually reawakened, but new internal difficulties were created by thus
mobilising the nation, divided as it was into motley groups. The martial
spirit which the Shogunate aroused was turned against itself, and the
Shogunate proved unable to steer through the crisis at last.
At first the opinion of the educated class of the nation was
conflicting, but a few were eager to see the necessary overthrow of the
regime of the Shogun. The great part gradually concurred in denouncing
the incapacity of the Shogunate to fulfil by itself the task which it
was called upon to accomplish. Still many were in favour of supporting
the Shogunate in order to enable it to carry through its traditional
policy of seclusion. Some advocated even the closer union of the
Shogunate with the Imperial court, which was now beginning to become
again the influential political centre of the nation in opposition to
the power at Yedo, so that there might have been a fear of the two
powers coming into collision. The conclusion, however, of the treaty
with the United States in 1858, and subsequently with other powers,
bitterly disappointed these sincere friends of the Shogunate and
emboldened its adversaries. Hitherto those who had diametrically opposed
the Shogunate were men who had never been in any position politically
responsible. In other words, they were doctrinaires, and not men of
action, so that there could be no serious danger to the Shogunate so
long as they contented themselves only with arguing about national
affairs in highflown language. But the disappointment which the
Shogunate gave to its friends, turned them into sympathisers with the
radical opponents. The danger was thus shifted from foreign relations to
the serious internal question, whether the Shogunate should be allowed
to exist any longer or not. Those who wished for the revival of the
imperial prestige or the overthrow of the existing regime, whatever form
the revolution might take, wielded as their forcible weapon to attack
the Shogunate the denunciation that the sacred Land of the Gods had
been opened to the sacrilegious tread of hairy barbarians, and their
slogan was so persuasive that it led the imperial court at Kyoto to
issue an order urging the Shogunate to repudiate the already concluded
treaties and to return to the time-honoured seclusion policy, a task of
utter impossibility. To this august command from Kyoto, the Shogunate
could but respond very obsequiously, being intimidated somewhat by the
loud clamour of these conservative patriots. Or it may be said that the
military government succumbed to the combined force of the court-nobles
and the territorial politicians. The marriage of the fourteenth Shogun
to one of the sisters of the Emperor Komei, in the year 1861, though
concluded for the sake of the rapprochement of the Imperial court and
the Shogunate, did not prove so serviceable in saving the tottering
edifice of the Tokugawa regime as had been expected. Finding that the
power and the resources of the Shogunate were inadequate to perform the
duty which it had pledged itself to accomplish, Yoshihisa Tokugawa, the
fifteenth and last of the Shogun, resigned all the power he had,
political as well as military, into the hands of the Emperor Meidji, who
had just succeeded his father the Emperor Komei. This happened in
November of the year 1867. A little previous to this the proposition of
the Shogunate to open the port of Hyogo, now Kobe, to foreign trade was
agreed to by the Emperor, a fact which proves how difficult it was to
maintain the out-of-date seclusion-policy. From this it can be seen that
the Shogunate of the Tokugawa fell, after the lapse of two hundred sixty
four years from its beginning, not from lack of foresight on the part of
their statesmen, but solely from loss of prestige.
The prestige of the Shogunate was lost, simply because the system, such
as it was, had become anachronistic in the face of the altered
conditions of the country, which had been steadily progressing during
these centuries. In other words, the Tokugawa Shogunate had been
undermining itself for a long time by having courageously undertaken the
honourable task which it was destined to perform in our national
history, and it collapsed just in time when it had accomplished its
mission. The fall of the Shogunate, therefore, must be said to have
taken place very opportunely. The overthrow of the Shogunate, however,
did not mean the mere downfall of the House of the Tokugawa; but it was
the final collapse of the military regime, which had actually ruled
Japan for nearly seven centuries, and the demolition of such a grand and
elaborate historical edifice as the Shogunate could not be expected to
be carried out without a catastrophe. That catastrophe came in the form
of a civil war, which raged over the country for more than a year.
After the resignation of the last of the Shogun, the new government was
instantly set up at Kyoto, at the head of which an imperial prince was
placed, who had to control all the state business in the name of the
Emperor. The councillors under him were chosen not only from
court-nobles, but also from the able _samurai_ who belonged to the party
antagonistic to the Shogunate. This exasperated the partisans of the
last Shogunate. Though the ex-Shogun had renounced his hereditary rights
as the actual ruler of Japan, he still remained a _daimyo_ even after
his resignation, and as a _daimyo_ he was the most powerful of all, for
he had a far greater number of the _samurai_ under him in his _hatamoto_
than any other of his colleagues. Besides, he had many sympathisers
among the _daimyo_. These vassals and friends of the ex-Shogun were
discontented at the turn which the course of events had taken, and
wished at least to rescue him from a further decrease of his influence.
Induced at last by these followers to try his fortune, the ex-Shogun
asked for an imperial audience, which was refused. Then he attempted to
force his entrance into the city of Kyoto, escorted by his own guards
and the forces of the friendly _daimyo_, and was met by the Imperialist
army, composed of the forces of the lords of Satsuma, Nagato, Tosa,
Hizen, and other _daimyo_, the greater part of whom had their
territories in the western provinces of Japan. At the end of January,
1868, the two opposing armies came into collision at Fushimi and Toba,
villages in the southern suburb of the old metropolis, and the forces
of the ex-Shogun gave way. Yoshihisa hurriedly retreated to Osaka with
his staff, and thence by sea to Yedo, whither the imperial army pursued
him by the land-route.
At Yedo some of the vassals of the Tokugawa could not make up their
minds to submit complacently to the unavoidable lot of their suzerain
and of themselves, and insisted on making their last stand against the
approaching Imperialists by defending the city. But the wiser counsel
prevailed, and the castle was surrendered to the Imperialists without
bloodshed at the end of April. A handful of desperate _samurai_, who
fortified themselves in the precincts of the Temple of Uyeno, the site
of the present metropolitan park, was easily subdued by the
Imperialists. The ex-Shogun, who had been interned at Mito on account of
his having fought against the Imperialists, was released soon
afterwards. By an Imperial grace, a member of a lateral branch of the
Tokugawa was ordered to succeed the ex-Shogun as _daimyo_, and made the
hereditary lord of Suruga. The first phase of the Revolution thus came
to an end.
The country, however, which had once been set astir could not be
pacified so easily. The next to be chastised was the lord of Aidzu, a
_daimyo_ who, remaining faithful to the Shogunate to the last, fought
desperately in the battle of Fushimi and Toba, and retired to his
territory in northern Japan after his defeat. Though he found supporters
among the _daimyo_ of the neighboring territories, the forces of the
Imperialists were in the meanwhile immensely reinforced, for the
_daimyo_ of middle Japan, who had hitherto been neutral, now joined
their colleagues of the south. The war began anew in the middle of June
in the northern part of Honto. The combined forces of the northern
_daimyo_ had to fight against fearful odds, and were successively
defeated. The castle of Aidzu was closely invested, and capitulated at
the beginning of November. The supporters of the lord of Aidzu also
surrendered one after another to the Imperialists. It was soon after
this that the adoption of the name of Meidji, as the designation of the
opening era, was promulgated at Kyoto.
The last chivalrous feat in behalf of the Shogun was performed by the
fleet which belonged to the former Shogunate. Before the Revolution the
Shogunate had kept a fleet consisting of eight ships, commanded by
Admiral Yenomoto, who had received his naval education in Holland. This
was the only navy worthy of its name in Japan at that time. After the
capitulation of Yedo the Imperial Government ordered half of the
men-of-war belonging to the fleet to be given up to itself, allowing the
rest to be kept in the hands of the Tokugawa. The admiral was, however,
too sorrowful to part with his ships, so that a little before the
capitulation of Aidzu, he sailed out with all his fleet from the harbour
of Yedo, and occupied Hakodate, a port at the southern end of the
island of Yezo. But the forces he was able to land were no match for the
victorious Imperialists, who became now quite free in all other
quarters. The harbour of Hakodate was soon blockaded, and the Pentagon
Fortress was besieged and taken. In June of the following year the whole
island of Yezo was subdued, and the new name of Hokkaido was given to
it.
With the surrender of Hakodate the military history of the Revolution of
the Meidji came to its close, but the political transformation was not
yet consummated. What was already accomplished concerned only the
elimination of the Shogun from the political system of the country and
the establishment of the direct rule of the Emperor over the _daimyo_.
The latter, not reduced in number and undiminished in extent of
territories, except a few who had forfeited the whole or a part of their
territories by their resistance to the imperial order, still continued
to hold their hereditary rights over their land and people as in the
time of the Tokugawa. In short, the national question had only been
partially solved, and there remained much to be done before the
attainment of the final goal, the complete reconstruction of the whole
empire. Various important changes necessary for it were put into
practice during the next four years.
In the year 1868, the city of Yedo changed its name to Tokyo, which
means the eastern capital, and was made henceforth the constant
residence of the Emperor instead of Kyoto. This was the beginning of
the new era. In July 1869, the feudal rights of the _daimyo_ over their
territories and people were abolished, after the voluntary renunciation
of their privileges on the part of the latter, who now became hereditary
governors salaried according to the income of each respective territory.
If the Revolution had stopped short at this, then the prestige of the
territorial lords might have still remained almost intact, for they
still resided in the same territories which they had owned as _daimyo_,
and they had still under them standing forces, consisting of their
former _samurai_. The juridical transformation of what they owned as
their private property into objects of their public jurisdiction was a
change of too delicate a nature to manifest to the multitude of the
people a political aspect totally different from that of the time of the
Shogunate. It needed three years more to sweep away all these feudal
shackles. In August of the year 1871 the division of the empire into
territories was replaced by the division into prefectures, which were
far less in number than the territories of the _daimyo_, the
jurisdiction of the hereditary governors was suspended, and to each of
the prefectures a new governor was appointed. The allowances of the
_samurai_, which had still been hereditary, were also suspended, and
their compensation was rendered in form of a bond, with gradations
according to their former income. The new decimal monetary system was
adopted. The Gregorian calendar was adopted. The military service which
had been the exclusive calling of the _samurai_ class was now extended
to people of all classes. The conscription system was introduced after
the examples of the Western countries, and this reform naturally led to
the loss of the privileges of the _samurai_. All people were now made
equal before the law. Japan was at last clothed in quite modern attire.