One blog post stated, " If we can quickly cure the 'fever'—the emperor cult—and restore sanity, there is still hope for salvation . If this fever persists like a boiled frog in a pot, dwelling on the idea of 'reverence for the emperor and patriotism,' which is essentially 'traitorous ideology,' the Japanese people will naturally perish." This is a very apt description. The Emperor Truth Cult, which was established through the Meiji Restoration and the enactment of the Imperial Constitution in 1890, has held the Japanese people captive, like a frog stared down by a snake. The modern emperor system served as the undeniably strong core of the Meiji regime, but collapsed just over 50 years after the enactment of the Imperial Constitution. However , the cult, which was supposed to have disappeared with the signing of the surrender treaty against the United States on September 2, 1945, has continued to exist under a new design: the symbolic emperor system . The signing of the Japan-US Security Treaty, a chronic affliction in modern Japan, was personally requested by Emperor Showa, fearing the spread of communism, to John Dulles and Rockefeller III. Indeed, the idea of respect for the emperor and patriotism essentially became an idea of treason.
Naturally, ordinary Japanese people had to wait until Japan's defeat in 1945 before they could enjoy personal liberation and freedom. While people have always suffered from oppression and exploitation by those in power, the Meiji regime's insistence on reverence for the emperor and patriotism was particularly bizarre. The forced patriotism of "repaying one's country's kindness" expanded and morphed into the idea of "kamikaze" (special attack) attacks, which called for " living for the eternal cause ." The suicide bombings, carried out by a total of approximately 3,000 aircraft , were "glorified " as "serving one's country for seven lives." Vice Admiral Ōnishi Takijirō, founder of the Kamikaze Special Attack Forces, once said, "God will grant victory only when all Japanese people are fully committed to the kamikaze spirit." These words became the ultimate cry for the deaths of 100 million people, and they were the words that brought the Japanese people to the brink of annihilation in the decisive battle for the Japanese mainland.
At the end of the Edo period, British Minister to Japan Alcock returned to Edo by land, avoiding sea travel and firmly asserting his treaty-enshrined right to travel domestically. In response, the patriots , enraged by the idea that " Japan, the Divine Land , had been defiled by barbarians," attacked the British Embassy at Tozenji Temple in Takanawa, Edo . Their reverence for the Emperor and expulsion of foreigners was revived during the war against the United States. The spirit of the kamikaze attacks overlapped with the pro-imperial ideology of the late Edo period, which was obsessed with expulsion of foreigners. This is why, in my previous article, I argued that the war against the United States marked the completion of the Meiji regime. Westernization policy, or modernization, was merely a temporary sheathing of the sword in order to catch up. Once Japan had acquired military power that matched or even surpassed the Western powers, it would attack them. This was the essence of the policy of enriching the country and strengthening the military, which was adopted after the opening of Japan to the world during the Meiji Restoration. The war against the United States should be seen as a revival of the expulsion of foreigners, or the Great Expulsion of Foreigners.
The "respect for the Emperor and patriotism" craze that supported the height of insanity in the war against the United States, strictly speaking, only dates back to the enactment of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, a mere 50 years. Until the Meiji Constitution was enacted, the general public had little awareness of the Emperor. According to Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, a historian of the Imperial Japanese view, in 1846 , when the idea of reverence for the Emperor and expulsion of foreigners began to gain momentum, " when Emperor Kokaku, the Emperor's predecessor, passed away, almost no one knew about it. The music that had stopped when the Shogun died was still going strong as usual, even the scholar of Japanese literature at Kashima Shrine didn't know about it." In 1873 , during the Meiji era, conscription was enacted to build an army for the Emperor . The second and third sons of farmers, who had no idea what the Emperor meant and no interest in him, rebelled violently, leading to a succession of uprisings. In particular, the Takebashi Incident of 1878, in which nearly 300 Imperial Guard artillerymen, dissatisfied with the extremely low rewards given to soldiers compared to officers after the Satsuma Rebellion, rose up in revolt, shocking the very core of the clan-controlled government.
In addition to the Satsuma Rebellion and the Takebashi Incident , the Freedom and People's Rights Movement was gaining momentum, causing widespread unrest within the fledgling military. The Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors was drafted in 1882 to quell this unrest and establish a moral foundation. "I am the supreme commander of you soldiers," the Emperor declared, demonstrating his supreme command. He instructed soldiers to "consider the orders of your superiors to be my orders." He preached the five virtues of loyalty, courtesy, bravery, integrity, and frugality, and commanded absolute obedience to the Emperor. The content of the rescript is a direct reflection of the Confucian and Neo-Confucian ideas of loyalty and filial piety, a premodern philosophy that did not transcend the virtues of bushido. While military uniforms and equipment were Western-style, the mindset was that of a warrior. This blend of Japanese spirit and Western learning fully demonstrates the premodern, or rather, non-modern, nature of modern Japan.
The feudal government prepared to draft a constitution and establish a national parliamentamid the oppression of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement. In 1884,the Chichibu Konminto Incident occurred, a prime example of an "escalation of events" that occurred under the influenceof the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, which became a major rebellion involving several thousand peopleSome members of the civil rights faction began to become radicalized, believing that "in order to establish a national parliament, it is necessary to overthrow the oppressive government by force."The so-called "escalating incidents" of the Akita Incident in 1881 , the Fukushima Incident in 1882 , and the Takada Incident in 1883 were cases in which the clan-controlled government used the radical civil rights activists' claims of government overthrow as an excuse to suppress the civil rights movement. This was followed by the Gunma Incident and the Kabasan Incident in 1884 , bringing the clan-controlled government to its greatest crisis. Emperor Meiji issued an "imperial edict establishing the National Diet" in October 1881 .
Itō Hirobumi traveled to Europe in 1882 to draft a constitution and establish a national parliament. This was right in the midst of the civil rights movement. Yamagata Aritomo suppressed civil rights ideas with the 1882 Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors and the 1891 Imperial Rescript on Education, while Ito suppressed the civil rights movement with the constitution and the establishment of a national parliament. The Imperial Constitution, enacted in 1890, was the exact opposite of the so-called modern constitutions of Western countries, which prohibited the abuse of power by royalty, aristocrats, and clergy and established civil rights. This was because it suppressed the rights of the people and proclaimed the supreme power of the Emperor. The feudal government proclaimed to the world that this apparent constitutionalism had adopted a constitutional system similar to that of developed Western countries. This was a deception and the greatest fraud in the history of Imperial Japan. Many civil rights activists were absorbed into the Imperial Diet, the House of Representatives, and the civil rights movement came to an end.
Some researchers suggest that although the Freedom and People's Rights Movement came to an end in the 1890s, its influence continued to linger beneath the surface, like a 'subterranean stream,' leading to postwar popular movements. So how should we evaluate these postwar popular movements in 2025? The anti-Ministry of Finance demonstrations did not continue.