■ What went wrong in Japan's 150 years
Over the past 150 years of modern history, Japan has repeatedly pretended to be a "modern nation." Since the Meiji Restoration, a military dictatorship, not a modern state, has been established. The postwar regime was also a disguised democratic state. Many commentators, especially historians, have debated the "modernity of Japan," but the core phrase "modern Japan was a disguise" is rarely found.
The greatest problem is the war with the United States, which ultimately led to its downfall. "Was the war unable to be stopped?" "Why did the military run wild?" "Why did Japan end up losing the war?" These questions have always been asked by the "state," rarely by the "people." Even if war with the United States had been avoided, the continued existence of the Meiji system, with its supreme imperial power, would have continued the storm of violence that trampled on civil rights in the name of maintaining public order. Overlooking this point, the true nature of Japan's 150 years without a people's revolution remains impossible to understand.
The essence of modern history lies in "popular sovereignty." One strong thread runs through modern Japanese history: the structural flaw that prevented the people, who considered it their duty to change their government as proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence, from becoming the main actors in politics.
When I write this, I hear the counterargument: "Even today, how many genuine republics exist in which the people are truly the main actors in politics?" But we can ignore this, because "popular sovereignty, in which the people are the main actors in politics," is the ethos of modernity. Therefore, to naively, or with some kind of falsifying intent, describe the period after the Meiji Restoration as "the era of modernization," is a revision of history that is trapped by external appearances and ignores the substance of the matter.
The reality of the Meiji Restoration was not the creation of a Western-style civil society. It was the creation of a military state comparable to the great powers, and the people, whether property-owning or property-less, were incorporated as "subjects" who were obligated to conscription, tax payment, and loyalty.
Moreover, these triple obligations were heavier than in the Edo period. During the Edo period, farmers suffered from tax payments, but they were not sent to the battlefield. However, the Meiji state, after abolishing the samurai class, began to equip farmers, townspeople, and artisans with guns and send them to the battlefield as soldiers in the "Emperor's army." This does not mean that samurai no longer existed; rather, the role of the samurai was expanded to include "the entire nation."
Equality of the four classes was a device to homogenize the people for the state and make them easier to mobilize, and was never an idea to liberate the people as political subjects. Japan's 150 years have been a period in which a state without the people has continued to exist, albeit in different forms. Unless we can see through this structure, genuine reform will never occur in Japan.
■ Shoin visited Shozan: The moment when the "original sin" of modern Japan was born
During the Kaei era, when the shock of the arrival of the Black Ships shook the atmosphere of Edo, Sakuma Shozan repeatedly told his students at his private school in Edo, "Conquer the barbarians with the barbarians' methods." Shozan coldly recognized the overwhelming superiority of Western science, technology, and military power. At the same time, however, he had no intention of submitting to the Western powers.
Let us imagine the day when Shozan invited Yoshida Shoin, a young and talented man from Choshu, to Edo. Shoin knocked on Shozan's door without even getting permission from the domain. Sakuma Shozan remonstrated with Shoin, who was eager to expel the barbarians, and undoubtedly said the following:
"We should open the country, but only in order to expel foreigners."
Shoin took these words to heart and later preached the idea of "opening the country, gathering strength, and setting out to expel the barbarians" to young people who would become central figures in the Meiji state, including Yamagata Aritomo, Ito Hirobumi, and Shinagawa Yajiro. What was preached at the Shoka Sonjuku was not the ideals of a Western-style civil society, but rather opening the country to expel the barbarians, enriching the country and strengthening its military, and building a military state.
The " original sin of modern Japan" was born the moment Japan chose a modern state-centered, military-oriented modernity over a modern state centered on the people. The ideological origins of this were Shoin and Shozan.
■ "After we have accumulated national strength" - Toko tells Saigo
Before the Battle of Toba-Fushimi began, Arima Tota and Nakamura Hanjiro, subordinates of Saigo Takamori , visited Iwakura Tomomi , who told them , "Once this battle is over, we must expel the barbarians." Arima conveyed Iwakura's determination to Saigo, who advocated opening the country, and pressed him, " Why are you now opening the country when you have been saying expel the barbarians, expel the barbarians ?" Saigo then admonished them as follows:
"Sonno Joi was a means, an excuse, to overthrow the shogunate. Joi Joi was used to inspire morale (to overthrow the shogunate)."
In 1854, the year after Perry's arrival, the young Saigo Takamori, then 23 years old, visited Fujita Toko, a leading figure in Mitogaku.
Toko's words had a profound influence on Saigo's actions for many years to come. To summarize what Toko said at that time, "Opening the country is inevitable. A new nation with the Emperor at its center should take the lead in this. After we have accumulated national strength, we should face the great powers with dignity," and "Expelling the barbarians does not mean drawing the sword, but rather enriching the country, quelling internal unrest, and building a system that cannot be underestimated by external threats."
Toko did not believe that "Joi" meant "exclusion by force of arms," but rather that "Joi" meant "building up national power and creating a nation that would not be looked down upon by foreign countries. " This was an ideological continuation of Shozan and Shoin's "opening the country for the sake of Joi," and gave rise to Saigo's cold-hearted political view that "Sonno Joi was just an excuse to overthrow the shogunate."
Japan did not simply learn from the West. It learned in order to surpass the West and eventually attack them. The central concern was how to mobilize the people to strengthen the nation. This ideology was premised on the rejection of Western-style civil society, the rejection of popular political participation, and the formation of a militarized state.
Thus, modern Japan began with the goal of building a military nation on par with the great powers, and embarked on a "disguised modernity" in which the people were mobilized for the nation.
■ A country where the "people" were never born - the idea of civil rights was crushed before it could even develop
In Europe and the United States, after civil revolutions, "governments of the people, by the people, for the people" were established.
However, in Japan, the seeds of the people becoming political actors were nipped in the bud before they could even grow. The Chichibu Konminto incident is a symbol of this. Despite the impoverished farmers rising up "to survive," the government suppressed them as a "rebel army."
As the Freedom and People's Rights Movement spread throughout the country, the government launched a thorough crackdown, using the escalating incident as an excuse, fearing that the people would become the main players in politics.
In the Takebashi Incident of 1878, early in the Meiji era, conscripted Imperial Guard soldiers rose up in protest against unfair treatment. However, the government punished them mercilessly and reorganized the military as the "Emperor's Army." This established a system in which the people were treated not as subjects of the state, but as a "resource" to be mobilized for the state.
And here the false image of equality of the four classes is superimposed. Equality of the four classes was merely an equality meant to "enlist equally in the military, pay equally in taxes, and enforce equal loyalty." Heavier chains were placed on the people than in the Edo period.
In Europe and the United States, the bourgeoisie and middle class overthrew monarchies, bound royal power through constitutions, and became the main players in politics through parliaments.
However, in Japan, the state bound the people before they could become political subjects. As a result, there were no "people" in Japan. There were only "subjects."
■ Chichibu Kominto Uprising - The place where the flames of the people's revolution were lit
From spring to autumn, I often travel to Okuchichibu. From the window of the Chichibu Railway, the mountains loom, the air is clear, and it's filled with nostalgic scents.
As you approach Minano-machi, you'll see a monument to the Chichibu Kominto Uprising Site standing quietly on the side of the road. No matter how many times I pass by, it stirs a shiver in my heart. This is because this is the first place in Japan where the people rose up against the state.
On October 31, 1884 (Meiji 17), farmers in Chichibu County rose up in armed revolt, demanding the postponement of debt payments and the reduction or exemption of miscellaneous taxes.
Influenced by the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, they called themselves the "Konminto" (People's Party), and on November 1st of the following year, they took control of Chichibu County, burned loan shark documents and government documents, and established a kind of "commune" in Omiya-go (present-day Chichibu City center).
This uprising was of a different nature to the peasant uprisings of the Edo period. The farmers of Chichibu "tried to change the state in order to survive." However, the Meiji government labeled them a "rebel army." The police and military police struggled, and eventually the Tokyo Garrison's soldiers were sent in, and on November 4th, the uprising was effectively crushed. After the incident, approximately 14,000 people were punished, and seven people, including Tashiro Eisuke, were executed.
Every time I stand in front of the Minanomachi monument, deep in the silence, I can hear the "sound of the people being trampled on by the state." This
was not limited to Chichibu. In Fukushima, Kabasan, Osaka—popular anger erupted all over Japan in the final stages of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement. Yet the government mercilessly suppressed them. This completed a structure in which the people were mobilized
not as subjects of the state, but as a "resource" for the state .
■The Imperial Constitution was a "constitution to bind the people"
The Constitution of the Empire of Japan, which was finally enacted by the Meiji state, is often called "the starting point of the modern constitutional state." However, it can be concluded that this is merely a name. While the constitutions of Britain and France were "chains to bind power," the Imperial Constitution of Japan was designed as chains to bind the people.
The independence of supreme command separated the military from the Diet and the Cabinet, and the supreme power of the Emperor concentrated all state power in the hands of the Emperor. The Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors instilled absolute obedience in military personnel, and the Imperial Rescript on Education instilled the values of loyalty, filial piety, allegiance, and sacrifice in children across the nation.
This constitution was a system that did not treat the people as political subjects, but rather as a ``resource'' for the state.
The triple obligation of conscription, tax payment, and loyalty was now fully institutionalized. The Imperial Diet existed, but it was not a place to reflect the will of the people. The Diet was merely a place to "explain" the will of the nation, and its purpose was to ensure transparency in the issuance of foreign bonds in London, and the voice of the people did not move the nation forward. In this way, the Meiji regime completed a dual structure: a constitutional state on the surface, but a military state in reality.
It was this dual structure that led to the later Sino-Japanese War and the war against the United States, rendered the democratization that followed Japan's defeat a mere formality, and led to the rigidity of politics today.
■The Meiji State's "System of Irresponsibility"
The postwar thinker Maruyama Masao called this structure created by the Meiji state a "system of irresponsibility." While the emperor was placed at the center of the state, that center bore no political responsibility, and the military, bureaucrats, political parties, and media exercised power in the name of "for the emperor."
However, no one takes ultimate responsibility. Responsibility is shifted around and circulated, with no one to stop the state from running wild. Maruyama saw the true essence of Japanese ultranationalism here. It is the result of the state organizing the people as "objects of mobilization" before they had time to develop into political actors.
The people were not the masters of the state but a resource for it, and this structure made the rampage before the war possible and continued in a different form after the war.
The war with America marked the completion and collapse of the Meiji system
December 8, 1941. The moment the Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the idea of "conquering the barbarians" that Sakuma Shozan spoke of to Shoin exploded into the reality of "expelling the barbarians" after about 100 years.
The autocratic government based on the Satsuma-Choshu clans that had overthrown the shogunate was destined to use "the art of the barbarians = modern science" to "expel the barbarians = overthrow the Americans and British." The contradictions contained within this Meiji system finally became uncontrollable and erupted.
It was not a battle for victory. The military cried out "protecting the national polity," politicians chanted "100 million deaths," and the media repeatedly called the "devilish Americans and British." Behind all this lay the fragility of a nation in which the people are not the main actors in politics.
The common people were treated as expendable "resources" on the battlefield, and "dying" was given an extraordinary value. The three heroes who carried out suicide attacks in the Sino-Japanese War were praised for their unparalleled heroism , and in the war against the United States, kamikaze attacks were seen as the ultimate act of patriotism , carried out through death .
The people had no power to stop the war. The Diet had no control over the military. The Emperor, who held supreme power , ultimately approved of the military's wishes , whether he was positive or negative . The people were caught up in a whirlpool of patriotism and self-sacrifice.
On August 15, 1945, the Imperial Rescript announcing Japan's defeat in the war was read out. At that moment, the Japanese people keenly felt the collapse of the Meiji system. However, this was not the end, but the beginning of a new "nation without the people."
■ The postwar period was not the "era of the people."
After the war, Japan appeared to have democratized. The constitution was revised, the electoral system was improved, and freedom of speech was guaranteed. But what was the reality?
On September 30, 1945, Emperor Showa visited General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, and posed for a commemorative photograph with him. Kiyoshi Watanabe, the only survivor of the battleship Musashi, which was sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, saw the photo in the newspaper the next day and felt that "God had been shattered."
"We must cling tenaciously to our war experiences... In any case, if we forget the past and simply follow the orders of leaders blinded by self-interest, we will soon find ourselves in a terrible situation with the United States. This is the character of a country that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then brazenly claims that the attacks were strategically necessary. There is no telling when or how we will be treated again" (173).
The veteran's premonitions about the inhumanity and cruelty of the imperial state and its military proved correct. However, the warnings he uttered from his experiences were not heeded. Half a century later, Japan was hit with a second defeat after the collapse of the bubble economy, the restructuring of Japan by the United States, and the "treatment" of the lost 30 years.
After the war, Japan returned to being a nation whose direction was once again determined by external strategies, before the people became political actors.
The emperor system was preserved, the bureaucracy remained as it was before the war, and the Liberal Democratic Party established sole party dominance under the 1955 system.
Above all, the Japan-US security arrangements have determined the framework for Japan's security and diplomacy.
The postwar period was supported by the voices of war veterans who said, "We've had enough of war," but as that generation disappeared, the postwar period quietly came to an end. Postwar democracy faced its limits as a system before the people could become political actors.
After the end of the Cold War, Japan was remade into a “modern” country.
In the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, Japan abandoned its "postwar" status and underwent a US-led restructuring. The China threat theory was formulated, the Japan-US security arrangements were redefined, the Self-Defense Forces abandoned their "exclusively defensive" policy and were restructured as a complementary force to the US military, and nationalism once again took hold.
The China threat theory is not a "natural occurrence," but a narrative created within the dynamics of international politics. The nationalization of the Senkaku Islands, the South China Sea issue, and the Taiwan emergency—all of these have functioned as devices to once again position Japan as a "frontline nation." The classic thesis of "divide and rule" has become a hegemonic strategy for the United States to "pit Japan against China and rule East Asia."
Meanwhile, the world was changing dramatically. The Global South was on the rise, the BRICS was expanding, and Pax Americana was beginning to waver. But Japan had lost the ability to interpret these changes. Why? Because a nation where the people are not the political actors lacks the ability to respond to external changes.
■ And Japan will sink into a long-term decline
The United States, which defeated Japan in 1945 and occupied the country militarily for seven years, continued to occupy Japan in an invisibly manner even after the country achieved a formal independence in 1952. In particular, the deregulation and restructuring of Japan under the guise of structural reforms imposed by the United States after the collapse of the bubble economy became a "second defeat." Japan can be said to be a nation that has perpetually lost the war.
The 30 years since the reforms have not simply been one of economic stagnation, but of a nation that has lost almost all of its sovereignty and is without its people, coming to its limits.
A declining birthrate, widening disparities, stagnant wages, increased overseas investment by global corporations and their flight from Japan, an explosion of internal reserves, a decline in Japan's share of global GDP and its declining international standing, and a lack of political reform are all inevitable consequences of a nation in which the people are not the main actors in politics . The United States has towered over the Japanese Constitution and manipulated the country as a de facto protectorate.
Japan, a nation that had been permanently defeated in the war, sank into a long-term decline, unable to overcome the structural flaws that had existed since the Meiji era.
■Conclusion - What is Japan?
In the late 1980s, in the midst of the bubble economy, I will never forget an incident that occurred at a certain economic agency.
The assistant section chief was engrossed in watching the Diet session on television. On the screen, the minister in charge was reading out the written responses prepared by the bureaucrats. The next moment, the assistant section chief exclaimed with satisfaction, "Yes, I did it! I read it exactly as I wrote it."
Their expressions showed the conviction that they were the ones influencing politicians.
At that moment, I was reminded to the core of the fact that politics in this country is bureaucratic.
Forty years ago, whenever the administrative vice-minister of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry was asked about the basis for his policy decisions, he would repeatedly say, "That's the will of the party," or "That's what the party says." This was a living example of the prewar governing ethos in which the LDP and the bureaucracy worked together to run the country.
New Diet members who were not former bureaucrats, regardless of party affiliation, were not taking the lead in policy formation, but rather were on the receiving end of lectures from bureaucrats. A Diet member who was supposed to have entered the Diet as a leader of a residents' movement, carrying the will of the people, was speechless when the officials who came to prepare for the next day's Diet questioning gave him an "advance briefing." He seemed intimidated by the bureaucratic machine. This very situation symbolizes the "absence of the people" in Japanese politics.
Japan was at the core of Asia's economic development, known as the "flying geese" model, and its developmental dictatorship model. This is because the developmental dictatorships of South Korea and Taiwan referenced Japan's bureaucracy, industrial policy, and corporate governance after the dissolution of Japan's zaibatsu conglomerates.
Japan's bureaucratic governance structure is not limited to domestic affairs. Behind the scenes, the LDP administration has been supported by the United States and its finance bureaucracy. The Ministry of Finance's policy ideology is ideologically close to that of international financial institutions in Washington, and they share a stance that prioritizes austerity and fiscal discipline. The combination of domestic bureaucratic culture and the international financial order has placed Japanese policymaking under a dual guardianship system, further marginalizing the voice of the people.
After the war, Japan embarked on democracy while still embracing the "spirit of the national polity." The acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was not an inherent embrace of democracy, but merely a "formal acceptance" premised on the preservation of the national polity.
This is what could be called the "Potsdam Acceptance without democracy." This contradiction is the greatest structural problem that has continued to define Japan's postwar political culture.
For whom does Japan exist? A 150-year history of avoiding this question now lies before us.
The series "Modern Japan in Disguise" attempts to reinterpret the 150 years from the Meiji Restoration to the present day from the perspective of a "nation without people," a country that has repeatedly cycled through rock bottom, rise and success, and collapse.
While asking the fundamental question of who Japan exists for, the series unravels the opening of the country to build a military state, the structure of the Meiji regime, the inevitability of war with the United States, the enjoyment of postwar democracy and its hollowing out, the reorganization after the restructuring, and the structure of Japan's long-term decline.
Why does Japan continue to drift? This is where the journey to get to the root of the problem begins.
For the time being, we will explore the basic questions of what kind of country the United States is, which has kept Japan subjugated for such a long time, and what the purpose of its involvement was.
References
Edited by Ito Takashi, Modern Japan, Chuokoron
Masao Maruyama, "Studies in the History of Japanese Political Thought,
" Iwanami Shoten Yuji Shimada, "Thoughts at the
End of the Tokugawa Shogunate," Kodansha Academic Library Katsu Sasaki, "Politics at the End of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Movement to Overthrow
the Shogunate,
" Yoshikawa Kobunkan Akira Tanaka, "Politics and Thought of the Meiji Restoration at the End of the Tokugawa Shogunate," Iwanami Shoten Masahiko Yoshida, "Kings and Conquerors at the End of the Tokugawa Shogunate," Chuo University Press
Shinichi Yamamuro, "Chimera: A Portrait of Manchukuo," Chuoko
Shinsho Yuko Tanaka, "The Imagination of Edo," Chikuma
Shobo Masaru Sato, "The Trap of the State," Shinchosha
Kiyoshi Watanabe, "The Shattered God," Asahi Shimbun