Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia · CHAPTER 5 ·
Meiji Constitution and modernisation
Chapter 5 of Remaking the State: Meiji Japan 1600–1912 and Post-Soviet Russia 1964–2000: “Building the Meiji State”
Between 1877 and 1894 Japan’s leaders built a modern state in sequence, economy and army first and a constitution after. The Iwakura Mission studied the West, state factories such as the Tomioka silk mill were sold to the zaibatsu, and the constitution was promulgated on 11 February 1889.
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The map above is the world of Japan, February 1889 — The constitution; Ryukyu annexed.
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BRIEF EXPLANATION — THE ESSENTIAL ARGUMENT
With the old order gone, Japan’s leaders spent two decades building the institutions of a modern state, and they built them in a deliberate sequence: first the economy and army that would make Japan strong, and only then a constitution to fix how power would be shared. They learned above all by looking abroad. The Iwakura Mission, a delegation of government leaders sent to study the West, something like a modern fact-finding tour, spent 21 months in the United States and Europe from 1871, and the government hired foreign engineers, teachers and lawyers by the hundred. The state founded model industries such as the Tomioka silk mill and built railways, then in the 1880s sold most of its factories cheaply to a few business houses. These became the zaibatsu, family-run conglomerates that owned banks, mines and shipping lines together, something like a modern holding company. The finance minister Matsukata Masayoshi restored a sound currency after 1881 through deflation, a deliberate fall in prices achieved by shrinking the money supply, and falling prices ruined indebted farmers, some of whom rose in revolt at Chichibu in 1884.
Political participation came last and on the government’s terms. A popular movement for “freedom and people’s rights” demanded an elected assembly, and in 1881 the leaders promised one by 1890. Itō Hirobumi studied constitutions in Berlin and Vienna, and the constitution of 11 February 1889 was presented as a gift from the emperor. The emperor remained sovereign and commanded the armed forces, ministers answered to him, and the elected lower house of the Diet, the new parliament, could refuse new budgets without choosing the government; in 1890 only about 1% of the population could vote for it. The Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890, a moral decree read aloud in every school much like a national pledge, taught every child loyalty to the throne. On the map the Ryukyu kingdom, today’s Okinawa, turns red in 1879, settlers fill Hokkaido, and an iron spine of railway runs from Tokyo to Kobe. Japan’s leaders granted a constitution so that they, and no one else, would set the terms of participation.
The full story
Japan’s builders were a small, stable group who learned systematically from abroad, and that combination explains much of their success. The Iwakura Mission of 1871–73 took about half the government’s leaders, including Ōkubo Toshimichi, Kido Takayoshi and the young Itō Hirobumi, on a tour of America and Europe. It failed to revise the treaties and returned convinced that Japan needed factories, schools and laws before it could demand equality. The government employed foreign experts, sent students abroad and copied selectively: a navy on British lines, an army on French and later German lines, and schools on American and French models. After Ōkubo was assassinated in 1878, power passed to a circle later called the genrō, the elder statesmen, an unelected inner council something like a permanent board of senior partners, among them Itō, Yamagata Aritomo and Matsukata. They took turns as prime minister for thirty years, which gave the state a continuity of purpose that few governments in transition enjoy.
The state led the economy at first and then handed it to private owners, and the costs of that strategy fell on farmers and young women. Railways, telegraphs and model factories such as Tomioka were built with public money. Inflation after the war of 1877 forced a change of course. From 1881 Matsukata pursued deflation, cutting spending, raising taxes, founding the Bank of Japan in 1882 as a central bank and withdrawing paper money, so rice prices roughly halved in some regions between 1880 and 1884. Indebted farmers lost their land, and in November 1884 thousands of silk farmers in Chichibu rose in arms. The government then sold most of its enterprises, often below cost, to houses such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi, the future zaibatsu, conglomerates that combined banks, mines and trade much like a modern holding company, while private cotton mills, staffed mainly by teenage girls on contracts arranged by their families, drove the industrial boom of the late 1880s. Pollution from the Ashio copper mine poisoned the farms along the Watarase River. Growth was real, and it was paid for largely by people with no vote.
The constitution channelled demands for participation into a design that kept power with the emperor’s advisers. Former samurai, members of the abolished warrior class, such as Itagaki Taisuke of Tosa built a movement for an elected assembly from 1874 through newspapers, lectures and parties. In 1881 the government expelled its most liberal member, Ōkuma Shigenobu, and promised a constitution by 1890, then expelled hundreds of activists from Tokyo in 1887. Itō created a cabinet in 1885 and wrote the constitution with German advisers. The emperor was declared “sacred and inviolable”, the army reported to him directly, and the lower house of the Diet, the new parliament, was elected by men over 25 paying at least 15 yen in direct tax. Yet the Diet could reject the government’s budget, which forced the genrō to bargain with elected politicians through the 1890s. On the map, the same years show the state’s reach widening, from Shuri Castle in annexed Ryukyu, today’s Okinawa, to Sapporo, capital of a Hokkaido taken from its native Ainu.
DEEP EXPLANATION — EVIDENCE & INTERPRETATION
Designing a constitution to contain participation
The Meiji constitution was written to make Japan look like a modern constitutional state while keeping real power with a small circle around the throne. Itō studied in 1882–83 with the jurists Rudolf von Gneist in Berlin and Lorenz von Stein in Vienna, who advised a strong monarchy, and the German lawyer Hermann Roesler helped draft the text. Article 3 declared the emperor sacred and inviolable, and Article 11 gave him supreme command of the army and navy, a clause that later allowed the military to claim independence from the cabinet. Historians such as George Akita have shown, however, that the Diet’s power to refuse a new budget was real, since a rejected budget only allowed the previous year’s spending, which could not keep pace with Japan’s ambitions. Within a decade the oligarchs were negotiating with the parties, and in 1900 Itō founded a party of his own. The document contained participation in 1889 and also gave it a foothold, so its legacy pointed both towards the party governments of the 1920s and towards the military’s escape from civilian control in the 1930s.
Did the state build Japanese industry?
The economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron argued that late-developing countries need the state, or large banks, to substitute for the private capital and skills they lack, and Meiji Japan is often presented as his best example. The detailed record is more mixed. Thomas C. Smith showed that most government factories lost money and were sold in the 1880s at prices well below their cost, which suggests that the state was a poor manager of factories. Its decisive contributions lay elsewhere: in railways, telegraphs, ports, a stable currency, a banking system, commercial law and compulsory schooling, which lowered the cost of doing business for everyone. The most dynamic industry of the period, cotton spinning, was private: the Osaka Spinning Company, founded in 1882 with the backing of the banker Shibusawa Eiichi, ran its machines day and night and showed the profits that private mills could earn. The state acted as a pathfinder and builder of infrastructure, and private firms then supplied most of the growth.
Who paid: mill girls, farmers, the Ainu and Ryukyuans
The costs of Meiji growth fell most heavily on people outside the political nation. E. Patricia Tsurumi’s study of textile workers shows girls recruited from poor villages, living in company dormitories, working twelve hours or more and falling ill with tuberculosis; in 1886 women at the Amamiya silk mill in Kōfu walked out over longer hours, the first recorded strike in Japanese industry. Farmers carried the land tax and the deflation of the 1880s, and tenancy spread as indebted owners sold their fields. On the frontiers the costs were heavier still. In Hokkaido the state classified Ainu hunting and fishing grounds as public land, banned customs such as women’s tattoos, and settled tens of thousands of farmers and soldier-colonists; the Ainu became a small minority in their homeland. In Ryukyu, annexed in 1879, Tokyo preserved old taxes and institutions for decades to avoid unrest, and Okinawans first sent members to the Diet only in 1912. The state’s centre grew stronger partly by pressing harder on its margins.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
The Iwakura Mission taught that strength must come first. The mission set out in 1871 to begin revising the unequal treaties and was told politely that Japan’s laws and institutions were not yet acceptable to the Western powers. Its members saw factories in Manchester, railways in America and Bismarck’s Germany, and they returned believing that a strong economy and army had to come before equality. That conviction set the order of the reforms that followed.
Inflation forced financial discipline. The government paid for the Satsuma Rebellion largely by printing paper money, and by 1880 prices were rising fast and the currency was losing credibility. Matsukata Masayoshi, finance minister from 1881, chose deflation: higher taxes, lower spending, a central bank and convertible notes. The policy stabilised the yen and the budget, and it pushed many farmers into debt and tenancy, which is why Chichibu’s silk farmers rose in 1884.
A popular movement demanded a voice. Former samurai, rich farmers and urban journalists built the Freedom and People’s Rights movement after 1874, holding meetings and drafting dozens of private constitutions. By 1880 petitions for an assembly were arriving in Tokyo from every region. The movement could not take power, yet it made a constitution unavoidable, and the oligarchs chose to write one themselves before their critics could write it for them.
Treaty revision required a legal order the West would accept. Western governments refused to give up extraterritoriality until Japan had codes of law and courts that met their standards. A written constitution, a cabinet, a criminal code and a civil code were therefore instruments of foreign policy as well as domestic ones. Each institution the oligarchs built also served as evidence in Japan’s case for equality.
THE TURNING POINT
The constitution, 11 February 1889. The promulgation is the hinge because it fixed the rules of Japanese politics for more than half a century, until 1947. It made Japan the first Asian state with a lasting written constitution and an elected parliament, which helped persuade Britain to give up extraterritoriality in 1894. It also wrote into law the ambiguities that would matter later: a sovereign emperor who did not govern, ministers responsible to him alone, and armed forces answerable to no civilian. The ceremony itself, held in the new palace in Western dress, showed the state’s intention to look modern while remaining in control.
What it changed
Treaty revision became possible. In July 1894 Britain signed a treaty agreeing to end extraterritoriality from 1899, and the other powers followed. The new constitution, cabinet system and legal codes had given the West the institutional evidence it demanded. Full control of tariffs followed in 1911, completing the escape from the unequal treaties that had begun with Perry’s ships.
Parties won a foothold in the state. From the first Diet in 1890 the elected lower house fought the cabinet over the budget, and the oligarchs found they could not govern without some cooperation from the parties. The franchise widened in 1900 and again in 1919, and in 1925 all adult men gained the vote. The limited parliament of 1890 became the seed of the party governments of the 1920s.
A state ideology entered every classroom. The Rescript on Education of 1890 was read aloud in schools on national holidays, and pupils bowed before the emperor’s portrait. In 1891 the Christian teacher Uchimura Kanzō was forced from his post after hesitating to bow deeply enough before the Rescript. The ideology of loyalty to the emperor, taught to a literate conscript nation, would be mobilised in the wars that followed.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Was the Meiji constitution a step towards democracy or a device to prevent it?
The case that it prevented democracy is strong: it was granted from above without any assembly’s approval, it made the emperor sovereign and ministers answerable to him, it gave the vote to about 1% of the population, and its clause on supreme command let the army escape civilian control in the 1930s. Yet the case that it advanced democracy is also real. The control that the Diet, Japan’s new parliament, held over new budgets gave elected politicians leverage, the oligarchs had to bargain with parties within a decade, and the electorate grew until all men could vote in 1925. Historians such as Carol Gluck show that the same document supported both an ideology of obedience and a lively public politics. A good answer argues that the constitution was designed to contain participation and that, once participation had legal channels, it grew beyond its designers’ intentions. The lesson that transfers is that institutions created to limit change can become the means by which later generations demand more of it.
An interesting fact
The youngest member of the Iwakura Mission was a six-year-old girl, Tsuda Umeko, one of five girls sent to be educated in the United States at government expense; her father, Tsuda Sen, a former shogunate interpreter turned agricultural reformer, had volunteered her. She lived with an American family in Washington, returned to Japan in 1882 barely able to speak Japanese, and later studied biology at Bryn Mawr College. In 1900 she founded a school for women that became Tsuda University, and in 2024 her portrait appeared on Japan’s new 5,000-yen banknote.
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