Faculty of Art
Originally published on December 15, 2017
[This transcript has been edited for clarity.]
Tristan Grunow: This is the Meiji at 150 Podcast. I’m Tristan Grunow. My guest on this episode is Dr. Gideon Fujiwara, Assistant Professor of Japanese and East Asian History, and the Coordinator of Asian Studies at the University of Lethbridge. His latest publication is “Channeling the Undercurrents: Fūsetsudome, Information Access, and National Political Awareness in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” published in the Summer 2017 issue of The Journal of Japanese Studies. Dr. Fujiwara, thank you for being here.
Gideon Fujiwara: Thank you, Dr. Grunow.
TG: How do you view the position of the Meiji Restoration in the context of global history?
GF: The Meiji Restoration is so interesting to study because you know, I think you find a lot of parallels between the Restoration and socio-political change in other parts of the world. So, I think that you can think of the Meiji Restoration within a larger Age of Revolution, and in fact, recently, I wrote a blog entry for a history blog, a terrific blog: ageofrevolutions.com. One of the editors is my good colleague at the University of Lethbridge Dr. Cindy Ermus. And so, the Meiji Restoration, I mean, in scholarship today, people talk about it as a revolution, as a small revolution or a bloodless revolution and you know, explaining why… or some might say it’s not a revolution.
But I think in a broader sense, it is a revolution because you see a lot of accelerated change in politics and society. And so, Japan from internally obviously, there [were] calls for change, but [there was] also interaction with industrially advanced Western nations and ideas of the Enlightenment, and people reading and learning about the French Revolution and social change elsewhere. You do see similarities in terms of how the people gain a voice, just the industrialization and modern reforms.
So, there are certainly interesting parallels between what’s happening in Japan in the 19th century and elsewhere in the world. But also, I think there’s unique aspects to it in the sense that during this period, we see Japan learning from these Western nations, but adopting, also, Chinese models, Confucianism and the idea of the virtuous ruler for Japan’s sovereign, and also going back to the 7th century of Japan and trying to revive these ancient institutions. And so, I mean if you look at Asia, people often think about Japan and the Thai kingdom, and how their monarchs and their governments sent students to Europe, and learning from these other industrially advanced nations and bringing that knowledge back and being able to ward off imperial threats from outside. Within Asia also, this knowledge helped Japan to modernize and usher in social change – I mean be quicker, say, than China. But of course, we also see the rise of Japan as an imperial power and a colonizing power.
So yes, lots of interesting comparisons made between the Restoration and revolutions elsewhere. I guess one sense in which it’s not a radical revolution is that it’s not really a revolution from below. It’s not that the peasants are rising up and toppling all of the elites, but I mean, we do see these powerful southwestern domains – Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa – leading the charge, and breathing life into the Imperial Court and the teenage emperor, and making him a symbol of this new government. I mean in that sense, there is a uniqueness to it in the sense that it’s other elites toppling the previous elites that were the Tokugawa family. And I mean the emperor himself, the imperial system is an ancient institution that gets revitalized and modernized. So as opposed to the French monarchy being dealt a serious blow and then the creation of the republic there, in Japan, the emperor’s used as a rallying point and a symbol of the change.
TG: I think you’re absolutely right. There’s no storming of the Bastille, as there is in Paris.
GF: Yes, yes.
TG: And then, this narrative of the Meiji Restoration as a bloodless revolution.
GF: Yes.
TG: This touches on one of the big debates about the Meiji Restoration. Is it a rupture in Japanese history or not? Yes, I think we can talk about continuities and maybe some antecedence of modernity during the Tokugawa period, but where do you fall on this debate? Is 1868 a rupture point? Is this a meaningful date in Japanese history? Is this the start of a revolution?
GF: Well, I think there is accelerated change, and I mean, we see calls for change throughout the 19th century, but these calls get louder in 1853 with Commodore Perry’s arrival. But I mean, these are, of course, representing voices of displeasure, anger towards the government and anger towards foreign threats, but the samurai leaders [are] still running the government. So in that sense, it’s not a revolution from below, where the peasants are toppling all the privileged few at the top. So in that sense, there are still continuities, of course.
But also, I was just actually spending the last couple hours at the Rare Books collection, and looking at some Tokugawa maps, you know, and [I’ve] been waiting to see those things, and anytime you can see documents, the real original documents and touch them – not too much, but you know, just enough to get their texture… And I was looking at the maps from 1867-68. Maps that were just created and redrawing the political boundaries of say, Mutsu, Dewa, Tōhoku, Aomori, really noticing the creation of the Aomori Prefecture, which was a product of amalgamating former rival domains, and creating this new political entity. I mean certainly, the people there would feel change and suddenly, the sworn enemies who they had fought a bloody battle with are now fellow members of the same prefecture. So I think that yes, you can certainly see… I don’t know if I’d use the word “rupture,” but certainly accelerated change. And yes, I think that you would see significant differences before and after the Restoration.
TG: You were talking before about how the Meiji Restoration… I mean if we can think about it in the context of these global revolutions…
GF: Yes.
TG: …like the French Revolution… But of course, with the French Revolution, there’s always this popular notion of the grassroots revolution, the storming of the Bastille of course. And people say: “Well in Japan, there is no blood in the revolution. There is no storming of the Bastille.” But then, we do have uprisings: the yonaoshi, the “ee ja nai ka,” uchi kowashi riots. And while I don’t think anyone would say this is the same level of grassroots participation that you see in France, in the same way that the People’s Rights Movement, like you’re saying, pushed the government a little bit. And so, it’s about 2% of the population, I think, that has the right to vote in the first elections, and then finally, in ‘25 is when universal male suffrage is adopted.
GF: Yes, yes.
TG: And so, it’s slow, but it does seem to be pushed by grassroots movements a little bit, so would you put the 1850s peasant rebellions in that same context of the People’s Rights Movement? Or are these completely separate?
GF: I mean I think that those precursors do provide that force. And right from the 1850s, generally speaking, especially with the arrival of the black ships, people’s voices are being more loudly projected right through these yonaoshi movements and rebellions, and also print media. I mean, we know that 1853/1854, there’s a boom in the kawaraban prints, reporting on the arrival of Perry and so, in terms of sheer volume, I mean, those prints are being printed and being consumed. But also, the restrictions on how much can be reported…I mean, these are being rejected and so, people are now more openly reporting on political events. The ‘50s and the ‘60s: people’s voices might have displeasure, calls for change [are] becoming louder, the Tokugawa bakufu having to respond, and then of course, we see the rise of the newspaper.
Recently, my article was published with The Journal of Japanese Studies, and it looks at a different form of informational text: the fūsetsudome, and there’s hundreds of these that appeared across Japan. They’re different from the kawaraban or the nishiki-e in the sense that they’re not as voluminous. We’re talking about hundreds as opposed to hundreds of thousands or maybe, you know, a million. But they’re very important in the sense that they’re capturing very sensitive political documents, and often, you know, they’re sometimes these merchant class commoners that are producing these things. So, it’s sort of like the WikiLeaks phenomenon today happening back in the 1850s, where somehow, these merchant class scholars in the towns are acquiring sensitive political information that just was not accessible previously. And so, we have a rising national awareness of what’s happening politically, and this is also aided by the loosening of the social classes, so greater social mobility: merchants, townspeople are interacting with samurai and getting this information.
And so, people are accessing the information, the government is no longer able to contain the information. Then finally, when the Restoration is carried out, you have the Charter Oath that explicitly says that public discussions will be had and information will be shared and accessed. While this doesn’t mean free speech is completely realized, but I think that slowly, people gain a voice, and then the government is not… I mean, if they do implement policies, there will be resistance. When they introduce universal education, I mean, peasant families are troubled by this because the economic unit of the family in the villages is disrupted, and these poor peasant families have to pay for this education.
So, the process of modern reform and change actually takes time, but yes, you see the samurai elite from the southwest leading this charge. But in terms of the commoners, you do see them mobilized well. You have some armies that are conscripting from all different classes across Japan, but also with the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, the aware, the educated leaders of the movement, but also yes, it does help to mobilize the commoner classes.
TG: Talking about some of the traditions that are brought back in the construction of Japanese modernity after the Meiji Restoration, there is definitely this sense of crisis in Japan (I’d say in the 1860s), and there’s pressure from foreign threats, but then, there’s the internal troubles too: this naiyū gaikan. And like you said, the samurai from Satsuma and Chōshū very effectively wield tradition…
GF: Yes, yes.
TG: …as a way to establish this new regime. And I think Harootunian has called it putting this patina of tradition onto the new Meiji state. Today, you’re going to be talking about the Meiji Utakai ceremony.
GF: Yes.
TG: Is this another example of how the state brings back certain traditions in the construction of modernity perhaps as an invented tradition?
GF: Yes, I think that the Utakai Hajime ceremony is a good example of one of these ceremonies/rituals. This one in particular, the first documented case is said to be the first month of 1267, during the reign of Emperor Kameyama. But of course, waka composition (the composition of waka poetry at the court) had been going on for much longer, from earlier times. But we see in the first few years of Meiji, this ancient tradition that had been practiced exclusively within the court with the imperial family and courtiers, and just within a confined group.
This would be opened up to the public and accepting poems composed by people of the different classes. And this is all part of making the emperor and empress visible to the people, making the emperor and empress the people’s monarchs, and also I mean, it is a part of that larger process, I think, of creating the modern nation and the nation of subjects that would make up Meiji Japan.
Well, Shimozawa Yasumi is a kokugaku nativist scholar from the north, from Tsugaru, and he’s the one that submits this petition to the court to ask that the court accept submissions from commoners, and aiding him is Fukuba Bisei, from Tsuwano domain. He leads the re-establishing of court rites, Shintō rites, he was a tutor to the Emperor Meiji of course. We see these kokugaku scholars versed in the Shintō tradition, wanting to put these ceremonies to the fore and so, in the first few years that the court receives submissions from across the populace, I mean there’s thousands of these poems that are submitted.
And when you read about the changes, there’s a lot of criticism about how the waka are not composed like they traditionally were, following all the conventions at court. But that’s a result of opening up to the public, and making more people able to participate in it. But yes, the Utakai Hajime is certainly a good example of an ancient or an older tradition at least from the medieval times that [is] re-established, re-invented and made into a national ritual based around the court.
TG: It seems like a perfect illustration of all classes high and low will combine their efforts. Like you’re saying, now you have a popular waka poetry…
GF: Yes, yes.
TG: …and everybody in any class – truly egalitarian idea – can now submit and read in front of the emperor, and it really does embody this whole egalitarian spirit of the Meiji Restoration.
GF: Yes, and as I will speak about in the lecture, we look at the experiences of Shimozawa Yasumi in his own domain and the people that he was associating with, the other scholars, and they were not all samurai. You had merchants and you had Shintō priests and you had a female poet/painter within their circle as well, and these were his classmates from at least the 1850s on. These were his fellow poets with whom he exchange poems, and he would also call on these poets to submit poems for his own collection, so there’s an interesting dynamic there, and so, I certainly see his own experiences within his domain and loosen class boundaries that would inform what he does when he submits the petition to the court. But this is obviously happening across different parts of Japan. But it’s still within a certain group that have that access to education, certainly. Yes, it is interesting to see some of this change happening in the latter half of the Tokugawa period, and then we see it further in Meiji.
TG: Talking about commoners, peasants, teachers, women around Japan who are benefitting from education, and using this new education, and becoming more involved in the construction of I think what you say is Japanese modernity, or by resuscitating Japanese traditions, being more involved in political life and public life mirrors what happens in the Popular Rights Movement because you get these village level political associations where people who do go to schools… they are discussing current events in the world, they’re drawing up draft constitutions. Is this just a coincidence? Or is this maybe the poems… we an egalitarian spirit of poetry the same way that we have an egalitarian spirit of constitutions?
GF: That’s an interesting parallel to make. I think that with any of these activists, whether they’re moving for poetry or people’s rights, they knew a certain community locally or they knew the inequalities and their limited access to the vote and education or work opportunities. And so yes, I suppose that becomes their base for action and mobilizing, but I think we can see these calls for change in different areas [for] people’s rights, education, women’s rights, and something like poetry and the pursuit of culture and literature. Yes, you see it there as well.
TG: So at the University of Lethbridge (where you teach), when you teach Japanese history, what are some of the themes that you use to teach your students about the Meiji Restoration?
GF: So, at the University of Lethbridge, I’ve been part of two very exciting initiatives since arriving there about five and a half years ago. One is…well, we created a world history. This is our new intro course, and a good course and a good second alternative to our students (Western civilization being the other one). And the other initiative being the creation of the Asian Studies Minor Program. This happened my second year there, and really, I had great colleagues in History and Asian Studies there, and in all of my courses, I would say yes. So with my world history (History 1200 course)… when I do main themes in East Asian history (the second year level – that’s a history course), of course I’ll cover the Meiji Restoration. Even in the world history course, I do talk about the Meiji Restoration within this larger era of revolutions and creati[on] of nation-states and nationalism. And so, because we’re covering these major events (sometimes ten minutes at a time), I think I’ve talked about the Restoration alongside Canadian Confederation or [the] creation of Imperial Russia. And shortly after the American and French Revolutions, lots have changed, but certainly, I will link it up to themes of revolution, Enlightenment ideals, socio-political change, inequalities, the discriminations faced by women, and looking also at the relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples – so in Japan, the Meiji state (or the Tokugawa state before that) and the Ainu. And then when I look at Canada, there’s a very similar story with the Canadian state and First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities.
So yes, the parallels are many, and I think sometimes actually, it’s really good to teach one of these or to study history in a global perspective because it does bring to the fore some of the bigger themes, and I always try to present the human experience. We’re doing humanities in history, so just the experiences and the struggles and the perseverance and the tragedies, the sufferings, the successes that human beings faced. But also sometimes in the modern period, of course, we have a very powerful state and rising nationalism. So yes, there are certainly many parallels and themes that we could link. We can use the link of [the] Meiji Restoration with the other histories of the globe.
TG: I like that approach of making sure to emphasize the human stories…
GF: Yes.
TG: …and it seems like often times, in zooming out to the global level, we, almost out of necessity, have to reduce everything to big metanarratives that combine comparing Japan to France or something or comparing Japan to the U.S. or Canada. And sometimes, when talking about major changes, primarily from this macro level of political institutions or just waves, it’s very easy to forget that there’s a human impact.
GF: Yes.
TG: So, what are some of the ways you reconcile those two things?
GF: Well, in most of my courses there, I really try to incorporate a lot of primary sources, and the U of L bookstore does a great job of creating these course packs, and so, I’ll put in an order of [maybe] 120-150 pages of primary sources. And those will often help to tell a human story, especially if they are written by the common people – letters or firsthand accounts of events, memoirs.
And of course, within those sources, there are things like the Meiji Constitution and the official, state-produced text as well. But yes, I do try to use those to give voice to the common people: women, men, young people, old [people]. So yes, I hope that those sources give us a look into the experiences of the people, but yes, anytime I teach the history and I do a lecture, I certainly don’t want to be narrating just the history according to the state or the top-down version. But yes, try[ing] to give multiple voices, representations of multivocality. It’s a neat word, but it’s a good approach for history. If you are trying to re-create or reconstruct an event or a time, you want to bring in as many actors and many voices as you can.
TG: One primary source in particular that comes to mind: as central as the Iwakura Mission is in Japanese history, it’s amazing that the diary written by Kume Kunitake is not used more. And it’s been published in English in I think five volumes, giant volumes, and…
GF: That’s a good point, yes.
TG: …I always thought it would be fun to do a class…a global history from the perspective of Kume Kunitake.
GF: Ah, yes.
TG: Because as they go around each place, Kume writes these very fastidious notes about everything that the Iwakura Mission sees. In my own research on street pavements… and so he’s talking about how exactly the streets are being paved in each of the cities they go to. But there’s also a history section of each country. And so, they go around to all the countries of Europe, they go through the United States. There’s even a section where Kume is commenting on race relations in the United States in the 1870s when they go there, and it’s fascinating. Maybe just do a class: world history through the Iwakura Mission…
GF: Why not?
TG: …and read the diary.
GF: That would be a fantastic course, and that would have so much texture. The Iwakura Mission and the Kanin Maru Mission of 1860 as well and read about their experiences of going to San Francisco and being received and all the banquets they’re received at and hearing the champagne cork pop and then thinking gunshot…
TG: Fukuzawa lighting his sleeve on fire?
GF: Exactly. So yes, I mean those are so vivid and telling of people who went out into the world and saw people in a society that were completely new to them – I mean, these distinguished, educated, diplomatic figures acting like children (it’s just their amazement and discovery of new societies). So yes, that would be an interesting course, I think. And yes, I mean there’s memoirs…
In my book manuscript, I’m looking at those changes throughout the 19th century and looking at it from the view of these local intellectuals – many of them poets, painters. They become students of the Hirata school of kokugaku, and they’re viewing their community and Tsugaru, but also the larger changes happening in Japan. And so yes, you certainly get a sense of change from [the] perspective of, in the case of this book, merchant class intellectuals, merchant class poets and scholars who are on [the] one hand, see the Restoration as a new dawn for them, and they’re seeing their revered emperor put to the fore of the stage, and they think this is the start of Shintō’s revival. And it is for the first couple of years, and some of the Shintō priests are involved in carrying out religious reform, which entails persecution of Buddhists, and destruction of Buddhist temples and Buddhist relics in order to establish a dominant state Shintō.
But you also see them grappling with the fact that Japan is now adopting ideas from the West and from China, and that Shintō would not be… I mean it does become a state Shintō, but Meiji Japan does adopt an amalgam of ideas and institutions from the West and China and from ancient Japan. So, I see a community of people who are really grappling and struggling with modernity and understanding how their community is changing and trying to reconcile their values with a world that’s really changing around them.
TG: The Meiji at 150 Podcast is hosted by Tristan Grunow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. This podcast would not be possible without the cooperation of the UBC Centre for Japanese Research and the technical assistance of the UBC Faculty of Arts ISIT. Find out more about the Meiji at 150 Project, including the Meiji at 150 Lecture Series, Digital Teaching Resource and Workshop Series by visiting our website: meijiat150.arts.ubc.ca. Thank you for listening.
*Citation for this episode:
Gideon Fujiwara, interview with Tristan Grunow, The Meiji at 150 Podcast, podcast audio, December 15, 2017. https://meijiat150.podbean.com/e/episode-10-gideon-fujiwara-lethbridge/.
The Meiji at 150 Podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Tristan Grunow, with editorial assistance from Joshua Linkous. Transcripts by Kelly Chan.