Japan - The Tokugawa status system | Britannica

Japan - The Tokugawa status system | Britannica



The Tokugawa status system

Thus, the bakuhan system was firmly solidified by the second half of the 17th century. The establishment of a strict class structure of warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants (shi-nō-kō-shō) represents the final consummation of the system. Distinctions between the statuses of warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants were strictly enforced, but the distinction between the samurai and the other three classes was especially strict. Forming barely 7 percent of Japan’s total population, warriors levied taxes on the farmers, who formed more than four-fifths of the population and who thus provided the economic foundation of the system. Symbolizing their dominance of society by force of arms, samurai wore two swords; by law, the other classes were forbidden to wear them, thus carrying the policies of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi to their logical conclusion. Concern for strict status differentiation was evident even in family relationships, as absolute obedience was demanded from members of the family toward the house head (kachō). Among the family members, the status of women was especially low, and the idea of danson-johi (“respect for the male, contempt for the female”) was prevalent.

The establishment of the Tokugawa regime created a need for legitimation, a new worldview, and a system of ethics to support it. Neither the Shintō nor the Buddhist ideologies of the earlier medieval society was adequate. But the ideas of Neo-Confucianism, especially of the Sung dynasty Chu Hsi school (Shushigaku)—which had been well-known to political and ethical thinkers since the 13th century—provided an intellectual rationalization for the status-oriented social structure of the bakuhan system. Shushigaku appealed especially to the feudal rulers because, among the various schools of Confucianism, it was the most systematic doctrine. Fujiwara Seika is regarded as the father of Tokugawa Neo-Confucianism, lecturing even to Ieyasu himself. Seika’s student, the Chu Hsi scholar Hayashi Razan, served as advisor to the first three shoguns. He established what was to become the official Confucian school, which provided philosophical guidance to the shogunal house and high bakufu officials throughout the period. Razan is said to have had a hand in the drafting of all bakufu official documents and in the formulation of bakufu laws. His political ideas—as seen in such works as Honchō hennen-roku (“Chronological History of Japan”) and Honchō tsugan (“Survey History of Japan”), completed by his son Gahō—provided a historical justification for the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, based upon the concept of tendō (“way of heaven”). Tendō essentially took on the connotation of the Chinese term t’ien-ming (“mandate of heaven”; Japanese: tenmei), and Razan and other Confucian thinkers provided an explanation and justification for changes in rulers through the process of gekokujō (overthrow of superiors by inferiors) of the Sengoku period. But the role of Chu Hsi political-ethical thought in Tokugawa times was to repudiate the revolutionary idea of gekokujō by stressing the legitimacy of Ieyasu’s new regime, emphasizing instead the idea of kenshin (“devotion,” or “loyalty”), linking this to Confucian moral concepts. Razan stressed the Chinese idea that, just as there is order between heaven and earth, there needed to be order between rulers and subjects. Thus he argued that the separation of the four classes of society was in accord with the teachings of Confucius. The two central moral ideals of Confucianism were chū, or “loyalty,” and kō, or “filial piety.” But in contrast to China, Tokugawa thinkers like Razan placed more emphasis on chū as a support for feudal lord-vassal relations than on kō, which was a family ethic. Chu Hsi studies opposed the new worldview and logic introduced by Christianity, which gave more importance to God than to the ruler-subject relationship, and also bitterly criticized the other-worldly aspects of Buddhism, which had been the ideology of the medieval era. Orthodox Chu Hsi thought was a perfect conservative philosophy of statecraft that valued loyalty and order above all else.

Japanese thinkers of the 17th century could hardly have been expected to fully ingest a foreign political philosophy already several hundred years old, and challenges to orthodox Chu Hsi thought were many. Some argued for a return to the original teaching of Confucius himself, emulating a reform movement already under way in China. The philosophy of yet another Sung thinker, Wang Yang-ming, also held a special place in Confucian circles in the early Edo period. Wang Yang-ming studies (Ōyōmeigaku in Japanese) were characterized by a strong subjective idealism but, at the same time, were quite practical since they emphasized the unity of thought and deed. Virtue had to be not only cultivated in the abstract but practiced as well. Nakae Tōju, often regarded as the father of Japanese Wang Yang-ming studies, was so earnest in performing virtuous acts that he was called the sage of Ōmi. One of his followers, Kumazawa Banzan, who criticized the growing autocracy in the politics of his day, transformed Wang Yang-ming studies from a means for individual spiritual training into a method for political reformation.

Commerce, cities, and culture

By reducing Ōsaka Castle and quelling the Shimabara Rebellion, the Tokugawa regime brought to an end the period of violence and ushered in an era of unprecedented domestic peace. As a result, commerce was promoted and cities developed. Widespread commercialization occurred in the latter half of the 17th century, centred in the Kinki region, where productive capacity was the most advanced. Now the nationwide farming populace (hyakushō) of independent landowners, although subject to heavy taxes and various kinds of labour services, sought the means to enjoy a better standard of living. In addition to their primary efforts as cultivators, they reclaimed new lands and produced various commercial crops and handicraft goods for sale in the city and town markets. Among these commercial crops were cotton and rapeseed oil in the Kinki region and silk in eastern Japan. Communications and transportation also developed for the circulation of such goods, thanks to the earlier efforts of various daimyo to maximize production in their domains and to the increased mobility caused by the sankin kōtai system. As a result of the development of commerce and communications, new-style merchants such as wholesalers and brokers to handle commercial crops came to the fore, and powerful financiers also appeared.


There was a massive growth of urban centres in the first half of the Edo period, mainly represented by the castle towns of the various daimyo. These daimyo, numbering some 250 for most of the period, were allowed by the bakufu to have but one castle, and thus there was a move to pull down other castles and concentrate the samurai of each han in a capital castle town. These castle towns gradually came to acquire the character of commercial cities, as some farmers abandoned the countryside and merchants emerged to serve the needs of the burgeoning urban population. Purely commercial cities and post towns (towns along highways) also arose throughout the country as part of this massive urbanization. While most cities averaged between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, many had populations exceeding 100,000. The three main cities of Edo, Ōsaka, and Kyōto, under the direct control of the bakufu, were especially developed. When its warrior inhabitants are included, Edo in the early years of the 18th century had a population of more than one million and thus became one of the largest cities in the world.

The early and mid-Edo periods produced many remarkable figures in the fine arts and crafts. Perhaps the three artists most representative of the culture were Ihara Saikaku in ukiyo-zōshi (“tales of the floating world”) genre novels, Chikamatsu Monzaemon in jōruri (“puppet play”) drama, and Matsuo Bashō in haiku poetry. All three flourished during the Genroku era (1688–1704), the name more broadly denoting a golden age of cultural development roughly 50 years long during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Saikaku was an Ōsaka townsman who first aspired to write haikai—humorous renga (linked-verse) poetry from which the more serious haiku was derived—and for more than 30 years he was active as a haikai composer. He was especially skilled at yakazu haikai, a competition to compose as many haikai as possible within a fixed period of time that derived its name from a popular arrow-shooting competition (yakazu). Saikaku set a new record by composing 23,500 haikai in a single day and night—one verse every four seconds. By 1682 Saikaku largely had given up haikai, however, and began to write ukiyo-zōshi, producing about 20 masterpieces in succession, beginning with Kōshoku ichidai otoko (1682; The Life of an Amorous Man). The ukiyo-zōshi developed out of the so-called kana-zōshi (storybooks written in kana script) into a more thoroughly urban commoner’s form of literature after the latter had themselves replaced the previous otogi-zōshi (“fairy-tale books”) in popularity. The unique urban spirit of the age can be seen in the word ukiyo, which had meant “sad world” in Buddhist terms during medieval times. Written with a different Chinese ideogram in Edo times, it now came to mean “floating world” and implied pleasure—specifically from the pleasure quarters of the great Edo cities. Saikaku consistently attempted to create an accurate depiction of the human desire for love and profit. His works offer sharp criticism of the Edo samurai as men so bound by social status and moral principles that they could not live a free life.


Matsuo Bashō became closely attached to haiku (although the word itself was not coined until the 19th century) and fashioned it into a popular form of poetry. Bashō was born into a warrior family, but after becoming a rōnin he devoted himself to the development of haiku as a literary form. Bashō found the existing haikai style unsatisfying. He began writing hokku (17-syllable opening verses for renga) as separate poems, developing a new style called shōfū or “Bashō style.” Bashō proclaimed what he called makoto no (“true”) haiku, seeking the spirit of this poetic form in sincerity and truthfulness. He also introduced a new beauty to haiku by using simple words. Bashō essentially grafted the aristocratic conceptions of medieval poetry onto the more mundane feelings of Tokugawa urban culture, creating a highly popular poetic form. Rather than repudiating tradition, Bashō’s haiku brought it to completion.

About the turn of the 17th century, the Jōrurihime monogatari (a type of romantic ballad), which drew on the traditions of the medieval narrative story, was for the first time arranged as a form of dramatic literature accompanied by puppetry and the samisen (a lutelike musical instrument). It continued to develop until the three great masters—Takemoto Gidayū as narrator, Chikamatsu Monzaemon as composer, and Tatsumatsu Hachirobei as puppeteer—made jōruri into a highly popular Tokugawa performing art, enjoyed by all classes of society.

Chikamatsu, like Bashō, came from a warrior family. Chikamatsu, a prolific writer, wrote more than 80 jidaimono (historical dramas) and 20 sewamono (domestic dramas focusing on urban society), both for jōruri. He also wrote more than 30 kabuki plays. The chief theme running through Chikamatsu’s works is the idea of giri (“duty”), which is to be understood not so much as feudal morality enforced from above but rather as the traditional consciousness of honour and dignity in one’s motives and of social consciousness in human relations. The compositions of Chikamatsu’s later years seek the motif of tragedy in the fact that this giri, while proof that people have humanity, cannot be thoroughly achieved because of their immorality and lack of principle. Giri is constantly in conflict with ninjō (“human feelings,” especially love), and this tension provides the drama in many of his works. Beginning with his Shinjū ten no Amijima (1720; The Love Suicide of Amijima), the leading male and female characters in his sewamono dramas are unable to resolve the contradictions between giri and ninjō in this world and so die by shinjū (a suicide pact between lovers) in order to realize their love in a future life. While Buddhist elements can be detected in these tragic endings, they also graphically capture the unresolvable contradictions that faced townspeople in Genroku society.


interior of a Kabuki theatre

Besides the licensed quarters for prostitutes, theatrical districts also flourished in the Genroku era. Kabuki drama also developed in the early Edo period. Okuni kabuki, named for the female dancing troupe led by Izumo Okuni, became popular at the turn of the 17th century and is conventionally regarded as the origin of this dramatic form. Other troupes imitated her work, developing into yūjo (“prostitutes’ ”) kabuki, run by brothel owners. Ultimately, women were banned from kabuki, and actors and prostitutes separated into distinct quarters. A further development was the wakashū (“young-man style”) kabuki, in which the young men were also available as sexual partners; this also was prohibited because of widespread homosexuality. All kabuki was banned following the death of the shogun Iemitsu in 1652. It was allowed once again, but only after substantial reform, in which even women’s parts were played by adult males (who were distinguished from the wakashū by shaved forelocks). Kabuki now developed from its previous dancing-act form into a theatrical form centred on a dramatic plot with realistic acting. In western Japan (Kyōto and Ōsaka), the style that emerged was called wagoto (“tender business”), which had a pronounced comical element and concentrated on love; by contrast, the popular form of Edo kabuki was aragoto (“rough business”), which focused on the rash actions of historical heroes. This Edo form of kabuki seemed to suit the rowdy elements of society; indeed the word kabuki itself (using different Chinese ideograms), meaning “inclined,” was first used by wild gangs of outrageously dressed young men called kabukimono.

Despite the popularity of these new theatrical forms, traditional arts of nō drama, the tea ceremony, and flower arrangement also reached new stages of development in the period. The tea ceremony (cha-no-yu) in particular became popular and was practiced not only by the shogun and daimyo but also by the newly risen merchants, who used their wealth to become eager collectors of famous antique tea-ceremony utensils. As the tea ceremony became popular, many schools emerged, most notably the Sen-ke (Sen house), the school of Sen Rikyū. The art of the tea ceremony came to be monopolized by the house heads of the various schools, fostering the development of the “profession” of tea master. This “house head” (iemoto) system also spread to flower arrangement and to other arts and became a distinguishing feature of the Edo period. One result of this segmentation into tradition-conscious schools was that it inhibited further development of these artistic forms. Often, it was only by breaking away from the iemoto that innovation could proceed.


writing box decorated with cranes in reeds

Distinctive development also occurred in the fine arts and crafts. Ogata Kōrin, for example, brought decorative painting to its highest stage of perfection, bequeathing to posterity many splendid masterpieces in gold lacquer (maki-e) and other media. Techniques of dyeing and weaving were also improved in the Edo period. In Kyōto, Miyazaki Yūzen developed the splendid techniques of yūzen-zome (a rice-paste batik method of dyeing), and the weaving and decorating of the traditional kimono became even more colourful. In Edo, drawing in traditional styles was further developed by Hishikawa Moronobu, who not only depicted the usual courtesans and actors but also vividly portrayed various aspects of the lives of ordinary people. But Moronobu’s real contribution was to develop the Chinese technique of wood-block printing to produce the ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) style, which met a growing popular demand. Many great Edo-period artists—e.g., Andō Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai—developed the ukiyo-e genre into a unique Japanese art form. Famous centres of pottery production also flourished at various places throughout the country, some ancient, like Seto, but others, like Hagi, stimulated by the influence of Korean potters captured during Hideyoshi’s invasions.

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Both the old ceremonies of the imperial court and the various forms of warrior etiquette developed by the successive bakufu were codified, studied, and even extended to the common people, helping to shape manners throughout the country. Indeed, Japanese customs in dress, food, and housing became established and somewhat standardized during the Edo period. Even eating habits changed from two to three meals a day; in the cities rice became the standard food, and a rich variety of cakes and sweets were consumed by urban dwellers.

The weakening of the bakuhan system

As Japan entered the 18th century, the bakuhan system began to show signs of weakness. The finances of both the bakufu and the han were theoretically based on a rice-producing economy, in which administrators endeavoured to levy taxes to be paid in kind, mostly in rice, centred on the annual crop. Rice and other crops were then transported to the great central cities of Edo and Ōsaka, where they were exchanged for money. The extremely diverse economic and social life of these cities was based upon a money economy in which people and produce were constantly exchanged. This activity radiated outward to the various daimyo castle towns and, inevitably, into the countryside as well. Thus, even the rural areas of Japan were increasingly drawn into a monetized economy, and peasants everywhere paid part of their taxes in money. If commercial development had been largely a phenomenon of the cities in the 17th century, in the 18th and 19th centuries it spread to the hinterlands of Japan, where small-scale producers of goods, distributors, and even retailers appeared. Inevitably, it meant the rise of some wealthy members of the rural populace, who used their wealth to invest in land and commercial ventures and to “ape their betters” in the cities in both custom and culture. Few farmers, however, prospered through producing commercial goods, and the majority of peasants remained impoverished. Rural villages were characterized by a few wealthy farmers, a majority of small-scale independent landholders, and a growing number of impoverished tenants. Many small-scale farmers, squeezed by the demands of commercial development, were forced to part with their lands and fell into tenancy.


Thus, as the commercial economy extended into rural villages, social divisions arose among the farmers. Tax collection became unstable, and many warriors—whose stipends, still calculated in koku, depended upon taxes paid by the farmers—found themselves in serious financial difficulty. Despite the general improvement of agricultural technology and the spread of such knowledge through manuals and handbooks among an increasingly literate populace during the Edo period, productivity was uneven; and in many areas, and especially during certain eras, periodic crop failures and famines, exacerbated by excessive taxation, resulted in people starving or fleeing their villages. The abandonment of cultivated land also became conspicuous. As noted above, the samurai class had long since taken up normal residence in the cities. With the development of the urban way of life, they now incurred increasing expenses, despite a spate of bakufu and domain exhortations to practice frugality. Living on fixed incomes, many became greatly impoverished. At times, both the bakufu and the domains tried to suppress commercial production as a means of alleviating the suffering of their vassals; but this met with great resistance from merchants and affected the self-sufficient economy of the farmers as well. It was, in any event, a hopeless effort, given the scale of commercial development nationwide. When attempts to restrict production failed, bakufu and han administrators encouraged such production, seeking to supplement their finances by monopolizing the farmers’ commercial goods and selling them themselves. Thus, on top of excessive taxes, farmers also were sometimes deprived of the profits of their commercial goods.

Ultimately, such rural conditions led to major outbreaks of violence. Stratification of rural villages—a growing gap between wealthy and poor farmers—tenancy, the inability of many to survive the harsh realities of commercialization, and exploitation by feudal lords forced some peasants into uprisings (hyakushō ikki). Even in early Edo times, there were localized demonstrations against daimyo for excessive taxation, but from the 18th century peasant protest became increasingly violent and widespread. Some uprisings were directed at local lords, some were more widespread, and some were directed not at feudal warrior overlords but at wealthy peasant landlords and village headmen who also had become exploitative. Meanwhile, economic conditions in the cities—to which frustrated peasants often fled seeking a better life—were hardly better. While many wealthy merchants enjoyed luxurious lifestyles in cooperation with warrior rulers, the city poor, driven to the edge of starvation by the rising prices of rice and other commodities, often rioted, plundering and destroying rice shops and pawnshops.



Political reform in the bakufu and the han

The second half of the Tokugawa period is characterized by continual political reforms made by the samurai overlords in response to this ongoing economic crisis. Such reforms began with the Kyōhō Reforms instituted by the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (ruled 1716–45). Yoshimune proved adept at personnel matters. He swept out officials favoured by his two predecessors and appointed new officials to posts in finance and rural administration in order to increase government efficiency. In general, he reaffirmed the influence of the fudai daimyo, the traditional stalwart supporters of the regime, whose power had been undercut under Tsunayoshi and Ienobu. Besides consulting a group of about 20 personally selected advisers, he periodically set up a complaint box to gain new information, especially on such matters as corruption and bribery. The thrust of his reform efforts, however, came in the area of general economic policy and the bakufu’s own finances. As an emergency policy, Yoshimune ordered the daimyo to make rice contributions (agemai), which he then allotted to the hatamoto to supplement their stipends. More characteristic was his effort to increase tax yields by opening new lands to cultivation and revising the method of taxation. His attempt to control the falling price of rice earned him the name of “the rice shogun.” But when the price of rice rose sharply in a great famine in the 1730s, the common people of Edo attacked the wholesale rice dealers who had cornered the market. This was the first such riot in Edo. Yoshimune’s reforms focused heavily on currency reform. He successfully revalued and standardized the currency and also brought regulation into the chaotic and disruptive world of Edo’s money changers. His economic reforms enjoyed no small success. By 1744, the year before his retirement, the receipts of the bakufu both in total land taxes and in tax receipts reached their highest level for the entire Edo period. Yoshimune’s reforms also expedited the legal process, ameliorated punishments, and were published in a collection of laws (Kujikata osademegaki). For such reasons, Yoshimune was regarded as the restorer of the bakufu. His success, however, was possibly due to the fact that the urban and rural disturbances had not yet become that grave, while the coercive power of the bakufu was still quite strong.

Under the rule of Yoshimune’s son Ieshige, control of government by attendants of the shogun—which Yoshimune’s strong personal rule had prevented—was revived. Chamberlains (soba-yōnin) who handled communications with the senior councillors (rōjū), gained strong powers of authority as his spokesmen when they won the shogun’s confidence. One such man was Tanuma Okitsugu, who rose from chamberlain to be senior councillor under Ieshige’s son, Ieharu, the 10th shogun. Tanuma and his associates accepted bribes, and he was criticized by an opposition group for corruption. But Tanuma was nonetheless an active reformer who further developed some of Yoshimune’s programs. Though cognizant of the problems posed by merchants and the spread of a commercial economy, Tanuma chose not to suppress the activities of big-city merchants but rather used them to promote production; while advancing the development of the commercial economy, he sought to control it. His decision to force commercial and industrial guilds, or kabu nakama, into monopolistic associations and to demand licensing fees seems to have been aimed not so much at gaining contributions for the bakufu treasury as much as to establish control over the circulation of commercial goods, linking the city guilds with village producers. Tanuma, too, was concerned with a monetized economy, especially the problem of money lenders. He tried—unsuccessfully—both to control the issuance of unbacked promissory notes and to issue a new silver coin, the value of which was calculated in terms of gold. He was widely criticized by the people for issuing large amounts of debased coinage that caused a rise in prices; yet it was a rational attempt to establish a gold standard in place of the confusing practice of using silver in western Japan and gold in the east.

Tanuma’s rational and progressive political attitude is best revealed in his attempt to develop Ezo (present-day Hokkaido) as a bulwark against the southward advance of the Russians; he even considered trading with Russia. Various natural disasters occurred in his time, however, and peasant protests rose to more than 50 per year during the 1780s. A great eruption of Mount Asama in 1783 was followed by a widespread famine during the Temmei era (1783–87), in which large numbers of people starved to death. An uncommon number of crop failures, fires, epidemics, and droughts reconfirmed peoples’ sense of divine displeasure with the performance of the ruler. The protests of the farmers were now most often directed against wealthy members of the village community. In 1787 large-scale riots threatened Edo, Ōsaka, and other major cities. Tanuma had already been dismissed as senior councillor the previous year, and Matsudaira Sadanobu, grandson of Yoshimune and the daimyo of Shirakawa domain (in modern Fukushima prefecture), was selected as his successor. But Tanuma’s supporters in the bakufu sought to prevent Sadanobu’s appointment, and for more than six months the political situation remained a complete vacuum. The outbreak of peasant violence, however, was enough to drive Tanuma’s supporters from office, and Sadanobu was appointed senior councillor.

Sadanobu is renowned as the initiator of the Kansei reforms (1789–1801). He rejected Tanuma’s administration and instituted a policy of retrenchment in the spirit of Yoshimune’s reforms half a century earlier. To combat the frustration against Tanuma’s regime, Sadanobu sought to restore morale, revive the economy, and reinvigorate the social system. He set out to reduce the high prices in the great cities and had a fund established in Edo called shichibu tsumikin (70 percent reserve fund); knowing that land and house rents were high in the shogun’s capital because of the heavy taxes levied on its landlords, he reduced this tax and set aside 70 percent of it for relief for the poor. To relieve the hardships of the bakufu retainers, he took emergency measures to cancel the debts of the hatamoto to the Edo merchants who handled the exchange of their stipends. Again following Yoshimune, Sadanobu—himself skilled in several martial arts—urged the samurai to devote their energies to practice of the martial arts. The farming villages, which were the foundation of the bakuhan system, had been devastated in the Temmei famine of the 1780s. Sadanobu encouraged officials to bring land back into cultivation and to increase the population of the villages by such measures as granting parcels of land to vagabonds. Those who had left villages for seasonal work in cities were given money to return to agricultural productivity. Infanticide and abortion were widely used as means of limiting family size, both to maximize wealth and to avoid starvation, and pregnant women were thus watched over in order to increase the farming populace—so that tax revenues from that sector would rise. But effective control of agriculture depended largely upon competent officials, and, despite heroic efforts to root out incompetence and avarice, Sadanobu had recurrent problems dealing with corrupt and ruthless local officials.

Sadanobu was a firm admirer of Chu Hsi studies, and he believed that government must be conducted on the basis of Confucian benevolent rule. In the mid-1790s, he prohibited all teachings except those of the Chu Hsi school at the Shōheikō, the bakufu official college headed by the Hayashi family. He even instituted a five-level examination system for promotions among bakufu officials who were trained at this shogunal academy.

While Sadanobu was senior councillor, a Russian envoy, Adam Laxman, landed at Nemuro in 1792 and requested trade relations. Although the bakufu rejected the Russian proposal, Sadanobu ordered that plans be drawn up immediately for a coastal defense system centred on Edo Bay (now called Tokyo Bay), while he himself inspected the coastline of Izu, Sagami, and Bōsō. At Sadanobu’s resignation in 1793 these plans were scrapped, but the bakufu councillors of this era were the first to react to the threat of foreign nations advancing on Japan, which now could be heard through the wall of national seclusion. Sadanobu’s reforms appear to be an overreaction to Tanuma’s administration, and, whereas people at first welcomed them, antipathy gradually increased. Within the bakufu Sadanobu had his enemies. Some Tanuma supporters remained in bakufu posts through his early years; in addition, the ōoku (women’s quarter, the shogun’s harem), disliked him since he had purged some women who had become involved with Buddhist priests. Ultimately, he lost the confidence of the shogun Ienari and resigned.

In conjunction with the bakufu programs, reforms were carried out within the various daimyo domains. A distinctive feature of han reforms at this time, however, was that they tried to apply stronger regulations and control over the commercial economy of the farmers.

Ienari was restrained by Sadanobu’s strict political reforms, but, when the latter left the bakufu council, the shogun was able to relax. Even so, Ienari was not completely free while the councillors who had supported Sadanobu’s reforms were still alive. During the period 1804–31 these men died one after another, and the bakufu government became lax once again. Mizuno Tadaakira, a senior councillor with acute business acumen, rose to power as a personal attendant to Ienari. But he and other high officials seemed as addicted to bribery as earlier regimes, and the corruption of the bakufu increased considerably. On the surface things seemed peaceful, but underneath the stagnation of the feudal system became even more grave. Even in the villages of Kantō, the seat of the bakufu, disturbances continued apace. The bakufu therefore set up an office called the Kantō Torishimari-deyaku (“Supervisors of the Kantō District”) to strengthen police control of the area, and it ordered the villages of Kantō to form associations to assist this office. But the impetus to reform had faded, as almost a century of bakufu efforts to deal effectively with vastly changed socioeconomic conditions had proved ineffective: many samurai “rulers” lived in poverty, while officially despised merchants became incredibly wealthy; the number of tenants soared as the gap between rich and poor farmers widened; commercialization proceeded far beyond the understanding as well as the control of the regime; rural and urban unrest threatened the stability of society; and now the ominous spectre of a foreign threat loomed on the horizon.

The growth of the northern problem

In the early 1800s foreign relations, which national seclusion policies had been designed to avoid, became a pressing problem for the bakufu, and the situation in Ezo became especially worrisome. In 1804 another Russian envoy, N.P. Rezanov, visited Japan—this time at Nagasaki, where the Dutch by law were allowed to call—to request commercial relations. The bakufu refused Rezanov’s request, and during the next three years Russians attacked Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Earlier in 1804, the bakufu had taken eastern Ezo away from the jurisdiction of the Matsumae domain in northern Honshu and placed it under its direct control, and in 1807 the bakufu also took direct control of both eastern and western Ezo for defensive purposes. In 1808 the English warship Phaeton made an incursion on Nagasaki, and three years later the Russian naval lieutenant V.M. Golovnin landed on Kunashiri Island, where he was arrested by bakufu authorities. When these various incidents were resolved, peace continued for a time in the northern regions; the bakufu relaxed its precautions, returning all Ezo to the control of the Matsumae domain in 1821. In the south, English ships often appeared in Japanese waters after the Phaeton incident, and the bakufu failed to adopt a consistent policy. In 1825, responding to a proposal by Takahashi Kageyasu, Edo authorities promulgated the Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships (Ikokusen uchiharairei), which also enjoined coastal authorities to arrest or kill any foreigners who came ashore. This was also known as the ninen nashi or “no second thought” law. It was never fully carried out because of opposition by a number of officials, including Matsudaira Sadanobu. In 1842, upon hearing the news of China’s defeat in the Opium War, the bakufu responded to foreign demands for the right to refuel in Japan by canceling that order and adopting the Order for the Provision of Firewood and Water (Shinsui kyūyorei). While attempting to preserve the iron law of seclusion to the bitter end, bakufu policy was thus inconsistent, driving foreign ships away at one point and treating them with leniency at others. And it proved to be utterly powerless when it was faced with the full weight of foreign pressure later in the 1840s.

New learning and thought

Underlying this weakening of the bakuhan political system was an ideological crisis, the result of many new movements that took place in scholarship and culture. The mid-Tokugawa period, roughly the 18th century, as discussed above, was a time of considerable unrest. Samurai leaders of bakufu and han alike sought to grapple with the disturbing fact that the great peace envisioned as resulting from policies of rigid class separation, national isolation, and agricultural self-sufficiency was being undermined by unintended economic changes released by those policies themselves. In the area of thought, the ideological foundations of Edo rule—orthodox Chu Hsi philosophy—came into question. Ironically, the ideal of “the investigation of things” inherent in Chu Hsi philosophy encouraged speculation that inevitably led to questioning Chu Hsi orthodoxy itself. And many of those who were led into such speculation were not samurai but commoners.

Heterodox Confucian schools

Already in the second half of the 17th century the scholars of the kogaku (“study of antiquity”) school criticized Chu Hsi studies and advocated a return to the original ideals of Confucianism. Two of the most important thinkers articulating this view were Itō Jinsai and Ogyū Sorai. Sorai, acknowledged to be the seminal thinker of Edo times, was especially concerned with the contradictions between social theory and reality. Critical of the rise of merchants and farmers at the expense of the samurai, he tried to find a way to revive the deteriorating conditions of warriors. In his work Seidan, for example, Sorai insisted that the main reason for the financial distress of the warrior class in both the bakufu and the domains was that warriors had moved to the cities, where they were at the mercy of a monetary economy. If they would return to the villages, they could be self-sufficient once again, and other orders of society—especially the peasants—would respect them. The proper relations between the classes could thus be restored. Kogaku critics of orthodoxy were hardly alone. Various other schools of Confucianism arose, such as setchūgaku (“eclectic school”) and kōshōgaku (“positivistic school”). Conflict between the various schools became fierce, and the authority of Chu Hsi studies grew weak, which explains Sadanobu’s prohibition of heterodox studies during the Kansei reforms. The bakufu attempted to reinvigorate Chu Hsi orthodoxy by prohibiting all other schools of Confucianism in the college of the bakufu, but the attempt was destined to failure. Confucianism, both Chu Hsi orthodoxy and other types, now spread widely throughout the provinces, especially with the establishment of domain schools (hankō) for the education of the domain samurai. Beginning in the 18th century, but continuing until the end of the Edo period, domains one after another opened such schools to train their warrior-administrators in both civil and military skills. Thus, learning and culture arose in the domains, accompanied by a growth of scholarship with local colouring. Among such schools, the Kaitoku-dō in Ōsaka became famous as the “townspeople’s university.” This school was founded cooperatively by Confucian scholars and wealthy merchants in 1724, and samurai and merchants sat together to hear lectures. Perhaps the best-known and most unique thinker to come out of the school was Yamagata Bantō.



Shintō and kokugaku

The intellectual vitality of the 18th century was not limited to Confucianism. New currents also appeared in Shintō, which, often mixed with Confucianism and Buddhism, served as the ideology of popular education. The Confucian scholar Yamazaki Ansai, who had urged samurai to cultivate themselves thoroughly so as to better lead the people, also formulated a Shintō ideology with a distinctly Confucian bent, called the Suika form of Shintō. Anzai was only somewhat atypical of Edo thinkers: born in Kyōto, he became a Zen monk but later returned to lay life and embraced Confucianism. After years of teaching Confucianism, he studied several forms of Shintō—notably Watarai and Yoshida—before formulating his own syncretic Shintō ideals. In the later Tokugawa period popular interest in Shintō grew progressively stronger, centred especially on faith in the shrine at Ise, which became the focus of mass pilgrimages. This popularity was spurred by public lectures that explained Shintō in terms easily understood by the common people; furthermore, Watarai Nobuyoshi, Anzai, and others decoupled Shintō from its previous amalgamation with medieval Buddhism, explaining it from a Confucian perspective. Ishida Baigan developed a religious tradition called Shingaku (“Heart Learning”), which articulated a “way” for townsmen and farmers. An amalgamation of ideas from the three teachings of Confucianism, Shintō, and Buddhism, Shingaku held forth a code of self-cultivation that valued performance of one’s tasks; in so stressing a prudent and disciplined lifestyle grounded in the value of work, Ishida’s ideas have sometimes been regarded as a Japanese version of the “Protestant ethic.”

Kokugaku (“national learning”) also arose from a similar social background. Kamo Mabuchi focused on a study of Japan’s most ancient poetry anthology, the Man’yōshū, and other ancient writings, urging a return to ancient ways before Japan had been “defiled” by foreign ideas, such as Confucianism and Buddhism. By studying the ancient language of Japan’s oldest classic, the Kojiki (“Records of Ancient Matters”), Mabuchi’s pupil Motoori Norinaga tried to explicate Japan’s ancient system of morality, called kannagara no michi (“way of the gods”). Another important figure in the kokugaku stream was Hirata Atsutane. Atsutane accepted Norinaga’s explanation of Fukko (“Restoration,” or “Revival”) Shintō and regarded Japan as the centre of the world; as an adherent of the belief in Japan as a divine country (shinkoku), he strongly advocated reverence for the imperial house. Hirata’s thought, along with the Confucian-inspired loyalism of the Mito school, provided the ideological underpinnings of the “Sonnō jōi” (“Revere the Emperor! Expel the Barbarians!”) movement of the last years of the Tokugawa period.

Western studies

The study of modern European science, termed yōgaku (“Western learning”) or rangaku (“Dutch learning”), also attracted the attention of curious scholars, especially as the regime began to lose its efficacy. A great stimulus to the concrete development of Western studies was provided by the publication, in 1774, of the Kaitai shinsho (“New Book of Anatomy”), a translation by Sugita Gempaku and others of an anatomical book imported from the Netherlands. Thereafter, Western studies became increasingly dynamic, focusing primarily on medicine. But as the systemic crisis grew more severe, many scholars of Western studies began to criticize the seclusion policy, arousing the ire of the bakufu. For example, several rangaku scholars criticized the bakufu plan to attack an American merchant ship. The resulting persecution of Watanabe Kazan, Takano Choei, and other scholars by bakufu officials in the so-called bansha no goku incident dealt a serious blow to Western studies in Japan. Thereafter, as consciousness of the foreign threat grew stronger, adherents of Western studies placed heavy emphasis on the study of military technology.

Other philosophers also appeared who repudiated feudal society. Andō Shōeki rejected the stratified society established by rulers as no more than a fabrication, preaching in its place a “natural society” in which all were equal. In his Shizen shin’eidō (c. 1753), Shōeki portrayed an ideal society in which all people equally engaged in farming, without social distinctions or exploitation. While Shōeki may be considered exceptional in the degree of his criticism of the society, others developed critical antifeudal worldviews that were directly or indirectly influenced by empirical science and Western studies. Miura Baien of Kyushu called his learning jōrigaku (“rational studies”); it contained a dialectical method of thought that, rejecting the fixed “way” of orthodox Neo-Confucianism, saw the world as being constantly in flux. The naturalist Hiraga Gennai, from the Takamatsu domain in Shikoku, rejected the restricted life of the warrior; he became a rōnin and moved to Edo, where he thought and acted freely. As an advocate of the idea that Japan prevent the outflow of gold and silver by promoting domestic production and exchanging these products for foreign goods, Hiraga agreed substantially with Tanuma Okitsugu’s desire to promote the production of various goods. Hiraga was employed by Tanuma and sent to Nagasaki. While experimenting with such things as dynamos and thermometers, Gennai gave full play to his genius by cultivating sugarcane and carrots, producing Dutch-style pottery, and surveying and developing mines in various provinces of the country. He also produced a number of significant works as a dramatist.


Two other noteworthy scholars of the late 18th and early 19th century were Shiba Kōkan and Yamagata Bantō. An artist who began within the Kanō school tradition and then studied ukiyo-e with Harunobu, Kōkan was widely influenced by Dutch studies and Western rationalism in general. He is known as the pioneer of etching in Japan; but in his writings, Kōkan also criticized the Tokugawa status system on the ground that the emperor and the beggar were similar human beings, thus insisting on human equality. Bantō was chief manager for a wealthy Ōsaka merchant and a noted student of the Kaitokudō, discussed above. In his work Yume no shiro (“Instead of Dreams”), he reconstructed Japanese history in the age of gods on the basis of natural science.

Growth of popular knowledge

The common people of the Tokugawa period, both urban and rural dwellers, by the very fact of their integration into a nationwide economic system of some technological sophistication, were increasingly reared in a world of empirical knowledge; and their self-awareness as human beings rose accordingly. At the outset of the period only a handful of upper-class farmers, such as the shōya or nanushi, or urban merchants were literate; by the end of this period, with the exception of the very lowest class, farmers were all at least partly literate. This spread of literacy was to some extent facilitated by the diffusion of temple schools (terakoya), the educational organs of the common people. In any case, there was a marked growth in popular knowledge over the two and half centuries of Tokugawa rule. As an example, “village conflicts” (murakata sōdō) became more fierce in the later part of this period, as the farmers sought to censure the improper acts of village officials and to make the village more democratic. Leadership in these conflicts was often taken by middle- and lower-class farmers, demonstrating how far peasant self-consciousness and sociopolitical sophistication had progressed.



Religious attitudes

Despite official hostility toward systems of thought and belief other than Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism nonetheless retained a strong influence over the lives of the common people. For example, the medieval sects of Jōdo, Jōdo Shin, Zen, and Nichiren made striking advances during the Edo period, if only because their temples were guaranteed privileged status by the implementation of the terauke (“temple certificate”) system of the bakufu. Besides their previous roles conducting funeral rites and other more strictly “religious” functions, they now were charged with the official state functions of registering citizens and conducting the census. As they were thus exceedingly closely connected to the daily lives of the people, the continued existence of Buddhist temples was guaranteed. Though hardly a new phenomenon, more people in Edo times tended to engage in what was termed genze riyaku—i.e., they prayed for happiness during their lifetime, such as for commercial prosperity or restoration of health—rather than wait for happiness after their death, as had been more common in medieval Buddhism. In response to these practical desires and needs, temples conducted various ceremonies and concocted other means to increase their income. Two of the most important such ceremonies were kaichō (“displaying temple treasures”) and tomitsuki. Kaichō consisted of allowing the people to worship a Buddhist image that was normally kept concealed and not generally displayed. Gradually this ceremony came to be performed by transporting the image to other cities and villages for display. Tomitsuki was an officially authorized lottery, and in Edo the raffles at such temples as Yanaka Tennō, Yushima Tenjin, and the Meguro Fudō (better known as the Ryūsen Temple) were famous. Many Buddhist priests profited from these activities, and some led rather profligate private lives, providing orthodox Confucian scholars reasons for demanding that Buddhism be stamped out. Yet, despite official disapproval, it remained important in the lives of the people.

Various sorts of popular faiths flourished also in the cities and villages of Edo times. Shugendō, for example, was an ancient form of ascetic practice preached by itinerant monks (yamabushi), who offered prayers to cure illness or bring happiness. While its teachings centred on traditional Tendai and Shingon Buddhism, it also contained beliefs drawn from Shintō, religious Taoism, and elsewhere to meet the religious feelings of the people. A new faith in healing spirits arose, sparked by the view that human suffering could be cured only by those who had suffered similar hardships themselves; and in the late Tokugawa period there developed a belief in living gods (ikigami) who could respond to the various needs and desires of the common people and who became revered as founders (kyōso) of new religious sects. Among such sects were Kurozumikyō, founded by Kurozumi Munetada, Konkōkyō of Kawate Bunjirō, and Tenrikyō of Nakayama Miki, all of which remain active in present-day Japan. People like Nakayama Miki, for example, reflected the confused social conditions of the late Tokugawa period. A peasant girl who suffered great hardship in her personal life, Nakayama became a shaman and a faith healer and attracted a widespread following. Many such people founded new religions, espousing utopian causes and leading millenarian movements; their advocacy of yo-naoshi, or relief of the world by social reform, had clear political overtones. In a similar manner, others were influenced by the growth of the cult of Shintō shrines, and periodic pilgrimages to Ise, called okage-mairi or nuke-mairi, became popular. Not only Ise but other shrines as well became the focus of popular pilgrimages; such major deities as Inari, Hachiman, and Tenjin became associated with local gods (ujigami) and developed into objects of local worship. Pilgrimages could consist of groups of several hundreds of thousands of commoners. Among these masses of Shintō pilgrims were many harbouring the same social and political hopes for yo-naoshi expressed in the faiths of the founders of new sects.

The maturity of Edo culture

In the early 19th century the urban culture that had arisen in the 17th century reached full maturity. Supported originally by wealthy townspeople and warriors, this Edo urban culture spread widely among the urban dwellers of Japan’s major cities and castle towns. In the 17th century literary and artistic production had centered in the Kyōto-Ōsaka area, but late Tokugawa culture was primarily produced in Edo. Literary styles took various forms; representative authors are Santō Kyōden in the sharebon (genre novel), Jippensha Ikku in the kokkeibon (comic novel), and Takizawa Bakin in the yomihon (regular novel). They examined in detail such things as the townspeople’s way of life, customs, conceptions of beauty, and ways of thinking. Ikku is best known for his Tōkai dōchu hizakurige (1802–22; Shank’s Mare), a humorous and bawdy tale of adventures on the Tōkaidō. In contrast, Bakin’s lengthy Nansō Satomi hakkenden (1814–42; “Satomi and the Eight Dogs”) is a didactic tale about the attempt to restore the fortunes of a warrior house.

Okumura Masanobu: Hanshozuku Bijin Soroi

Woodcutter Gazing at Waterfall

In the world of art, ukiyo-e reached maturity in both form and content and was unquestionably the most popular art form. Early wood-block printing had been simply in black and white, but artists had experimented with colour. Nishiki-e, literally “brocade pictures” (wood-block printing in many colours), was invented by Suzuki Harunobu in 1765 and entered its golden age with the prints of kabuki actors by Tshūsai Sharaku and of courtesans by Kitagawa Utamaro. In the last years of the Edo period, the masters of wood-block landscape prints, Andō Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai, extended the boundaries of wood-block prints far beyond the world of the pleasure quarters. While their prints show how Japanese artists had absorbed some techniques from Western art, the popularity of their works outside Japan and influence on foreign art is a measure of the sophistication Japanese culture reached in Edo times. As a result of the development of complex transportation links and market networks between city and countryside, scholarship, literature, and art not only spread to but even was produced in regional towns and villages, where crafts and products with distinctive local colouring were supported by landlords and merchants. A national culture emerged and became the foundation of a modern Japanese culture that developed after 1868.


Yet the spread of literacy and a nationwide culture could not mask contradictions in the political sphere. There were signs of stagnation and corruption in some aspects of Edo culture—a reflection of the crisis in the bakuhan system. The crisis had reached new levels by the 1830s. A great famine then, the result of abnormal weather conditions and resultant crop failures, lasted several years and dealt a savage blow to the impoverished villages. Both peasant uprisings and city riots over food shortages and intolerable living conditions reached unprecedented peaks. In 1836, to cite one extreme example, an uprising in Gunnai district of Kai province (Yamanashi prefecture), then under direct bakufu control, eventually attracted more than 50,000 participants and for a time reduced the centre of Kai to anarchy. The depth of the bakufu’s shock can be gauged from the fact that they sentenced 562 persons to crucifixion for their part in the uprising. Just a year later in the bakufu-controlled city of Ōsaka, Ōshio Heihachirō, a former city official, led a revolt aimed at overthrowing city officials and wealthy merchants and relieving the plight of the poor. Although the uprising was speedily suppressed, the bakufu was again shocked, incredulous that a former faithful official would lead a revolt.

At the same time that the bakufu was facing these serious domestic disturbances, the European powers also began to press more heavily upon Japan. The Opium War (1839–42) broke out between Ch’ing dynasty China and Britain, and foreign encroachments on Chinese territory following the British victory filled bakufu authorities with a sense of crisis. Tokugawa Nariaki, lord of Mito han, a Tokugawa collateral domain, urged the bakufu to institute drastic political reforms: he called the outbreak of rural and urban violence “domestic anxiety” and the pressure of the foreign powers “foreign anxiety.”

The last years of the bakuhan

The Tempō reforms

Thus beset by crises in both domestic and foreign affairs, the chief senior councillor (tairō), Mizuno Tadakuni, instituted the Tempō reforms, named for the Tempō era (1830–44). Based on the earlier Kōhyō and Kansei reforms and equally conservative, Tadakuni’s efforts lasted only from 1841 to 1843. He revised the regulations for the government officials and encouraged the samurai to practice frugality and diligently study the literary and martial arts. He also aimed to restore the farming villages devastated by the great famine. Stricter than earlier reformers, Tadakuni planned to force temporary residents in Edo to return to their home villages and to restrict the commercial-goods production of the farmers to make them concentrate on rice farming. He tried to lower the prices of commodities in the cities through detailed regulations on the lives of townspeople. Tadakuni further ordered the dissolution of kabu nakama, the merchant and artisan guilds, since he regarded them as the cause of rising commodity prices. Concerned as well with the foreign threat, he planned to reclaim the Imba Swamp (in modern Chiba prefecture) so that food supplies could easily be conveyed to nearby Edo if Edo Bay were blockaded by foreign ships. Plans for the defense of the bay also were formulated. Tadakuni also promulgated a land-requisition (agechi) order to bring daimyo and hatamoto domains surrounding Edo and Ōsaka under direct bakufu control: the stated object of this was the defense of Edo, but it also was designed to supplement the finances of the bakufu. The agechi order was finally withdrawn, however, in the face of fierce opposition from the daimyo, hatamoto, and people of the domains affected; and, as a direct result of this failure, Tadakuni was driven from power in 1845.


Tadakuni predicted that, thanks to his reforms, the Tokugawa regime would survive for another 30 years. It was, in fact, almost 30 years after his reforms (1867) that the bakufu was toppled by the combined forces of several tozama lords. During the Tempō period, administrative reforms were carried out in many of the domains, often with far more success than those of the bakufu. The reforms of the powerful domains in southwestern Japan—Chōshū, Satsuma, and Hizen in particular—were especially noteworthy, where middle- and lower-class samurai, motivated by a sense of loyalty to the han and frustrated at having been denied participation in domain administration, came forward as reformers. Replacing the previous conservative officials, these young reformers, often with a more realistic knowledge of the outside world gained through study in Edo, Nagasaki, and Kyōto, set about to strengthen their domains and expressed opinions on the national situation as well. Adopting the slogan “Fukoku kyōhei” (“Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Military”), these new officials were able to institute policies that improved domain finances and modernized their military capabilities. The way was thus gradually being prepared for the emergence of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration (1868) and of modern Japan.



The opening of Japan

In 1845, when Abe Masahiro replaced Mizuno Tadakuni as head of the rōjū, there were various reactions against the Tempō reforms. Reaction against domestic reform was comparatively calm, however, and the major stumbling block facing the bakufu was the foreign problem. The Netherlands, the only European power trading with Japan, realized that, if Britain succeeded in forcing Japan to open the country, it would lose its monopoly; so the Dutch now planned to seize the initiative in opening Japan and thus to turn the situation to their own advantage. In 1844 the Dutch sent a diplomatic mission urging the bakufu to open the country, but Abe and the bakufu rulers refused this suggestion. Yet visits by foreign ships proliferated. In 1844, 1845, and 1846, British and French warships visited the Ryukyu Islands and Nagasaki to request commercial relations. In response, the bakufu in 1845 established a new office for coastal defense and various diplomatic posts. The defense system of Edo Bay also was revived, the number of domains on guard duty was increased, and new gun emplacements were built. In 1848 the bakufu decided not to revive the Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships, which had been rescinded during the Tempō reforms, but decided instead to continue extensive military preparations against potential attack.

Matthew Perry

Rumours had long circulated among the various Western powers that the U.S. government would send an expeditionary fleet to Japan. In 1846 Commander James Biddle of the American East Indian fleet appeared with two warships in Uraga Harbour (near Yokohama) and held consultations with bakufu representatives on the question of opening commercial relations. When refused by the bakufu, Biddle returned empty-handed. The United States, however, eagerly desired ports for fuel and provisions for its Pacific merchant and whaling ships and was not willing to give up attempts to open Japan. But the bakufu had for two centuries retained its political dominance through strict adherence to the policy of seclusion, and it could not muster up the resolution necessary to open the country. Opinion among the daimyo and samurai was split between seclusion and opening the country. The opening of Japan was thus postponed until the last possible moment and had to be effected unilaterally by foreign pressure, backed by massive naval strength. This pressure was initiated by the squadron of U.S. warships commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry that entered Uraga Bay in July 1853.Kitajima MasamotoG. Cameron Hurst

Japan from 1850 to 1945

The Meiji restoration

The term restoration is commonly applied to the political changes in Japan that returned power to the imperial house in 1868. In that year the boy emperor Mutsuhito—later known by his reign name Meiji, or “Enlightened Rule”—replaced the Tokugawa bakufu, or shogunate, at the political centre of the nation. Although phrased in traditional terms as a restoration of imperial rule, the changes initiated during the Meiji period (1868–1912) constituted a social and political revolution that began in the late Tokugawa period and was not completed until the promulgation of the Meiji constitution in 1889.



The fall of the Tokugawa

The arrival of Americans and Europeans in the 1850s increased domestic tensions. The bakufu, already weakened by an eroding economic base and ossified political structure, now found itself challenged by Western powers intent on opening Japan to trade and foreign intercourse. When the bakufu, despite opposition from the throne in Kyōto, signed the Treaty of Kanagawa (or Perry Convention; 1854) and the Harris Treaty (1858), the shogun’s claim of loyalty to the throne and his role as “subduer of barbarians” came to be questioned. To bolster his position, the shogun elicited support from the daimyo through consultation, only to discover that they were firmly xenophobic and called for the expulsion of Westerners. The growing influence of imperial loyalism, nurtured by years of peace and study, received support even within the shogunal camp from men such as Tokugawa Nariaki, the lord of Mito domain (han). Activists used the slogan “Sonnō jōi” (“Revere the emperor! Expel the barbarians!”) not only to support the throne but also to embarrass the bakufu. Nariaki and his followers sought to involve the Kyōto court directly in shogunal affairs in order to establish a nationwide program of preparedness. In this Nariaki was opposed by the bakufu’s chief councillor (tairō), Ii Naosuke, who tried to steer the nation toward self-strengthening and gradual opening. But Ii’s effort to restore the bakufu was short-lived. In the spring of 1860 he was assassinated by men from Mito and Satsuma. Ii’s death inaugurated years of violence during which activist samurai used their swords against the hated “barbarians” and all who consorted with them. If swords proved of little use against Western guns, they exacted a heavy toll from political enemies.

By the early 1860s the Tokugawa bakufu found itself in a dilemma. On the one hand it had to strengthen the country against foreigners. On the other it knew that providing the economic means for self-defense meant giving up shogunal controls that kept competing lords financially weak. Activist samurai, for their part, tried to push their feudal superiors into more strongly antiforeign positions. At the same time, antiforeign acts provoked stern countermeasures and diplomatic indemnities. Most samurai soon realized that expelling foreigners by force was impossible. Foreign military superiority was demonstrated conclusively with the bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863 and Shimonoseki in 1864. Thereafter, samurai activists used their antiforeign slogans primarily to obstruct and embarrass the bakufu, which retained little room to maneuver. Domestically it was forced to make antiforeign concessions to placate the loyalist camp, while foreigners were assured that it remained committed to “opening the country” and abiding by the treaties. Both sides saw it as prevaricating and ineffectual. After the arrival of the British minister Sir Harry Parkes in 1865, Great Britain, in particular, saw no reason to negotiate further with the bakufu and decided to deal directly with the imperial court in Kyōto.

Samurai in several domains also revealed their dissatisfaction with the bakufu’s management of national affairs. One domain in which the call for more direct action emerged was Chōshū (now part of Yamaguchi prefecture), which fired on foreign shipping in the Shimonoseki Strait in 1863. This led to bombardment of Chōshū’s fortifications by Western ships in 1864 and a shogunal expedition that forced the domain to resubmit to Tokugawa authority. But many of Chōshū’s samurai refused to accept this decision, and a military coup in 1864 brought to power, as the daimyo’s counselors, a group of men who had originally led the radical antiforeign movement. Several of these had secretly traveled to England and were consequently no longer blindly xenophobic. Their aims were national—to overthrow the shogunate and create a new government headed by the emperor. The same men organized militia units that utilized Western training methods and arms and included nonsamurai troops. Chōshū became the centre for discontented samurai from other domains who were impatient with their leaders’ caution. In 1866 Chōshū allied itself with neighbouring Satsuma, fearing a Tokugawa attempt to crush all opponents to create a centralized despotism with French help.


Again shogunal armies were sent to control Chōshū in 1866. The defeat of these troops by Chōshū forces led to further loss of power and prestige. Meanwhile, the death of the shogun Iemochi in 1866 brought to power the last shogun, Yoshinobu, who realized the pressing need for national unity. In 1867 he resigned his powers rather than risk a full-scale military confrontation with Satsuma and Chōshū, doing so in the belief that he would retain an important place in any emerging national administration. But this was not to be. Outmaneuvered by the young Meiji emperor, who succeeded to the throne in 1867, and a few court nobles who maintained close ties with Satsuma and Chōshū, the shogun faced the choice of giving up his lands, which would risk revolt from his vassals, or appearing disobedient, which would justify punitive measures against him. Yoshinobu tried to move troops against Kyōto, only to be defeated. In the wake of this defeat, Satsuma, Chōshū, and Tosa units, now the imperial army, advanced on Edo, which was surrendered without battle. While sporadic fighting continued until the summer of 1869, the Tokugawa cause was doomed. In January 1868 the principal daimyo were summoned to Kyōto to learn of the restoration of imperial rule. Later that year the emperor moved into the Tokugawa castle in Edo, and the city was renamed Tokyo (“Eastern Capital”). With the emperor and his supporters now in control, the building of the modern state began.

From feudal to modern state

The Meiji government was dominated by men from Satsuma, Chōshū, and those of the court who had sided with the emperor. They were convinced that Japan needed a unified national government to achieve military and material equality with the West. Most, like Kido Kōin and Itō Hirobumi of Chōshū and Saigō Takamori and Ōkubo Toshimichi of Satsuma, were young samurai of modest rank, but they did not represent in any sense a class interest. Indeed, their measures destroyed the samurai class. In order to gain backing for their policies, they enlisted the support of leaders from domains with which they had worked—Tosa, Saga, Echizen—and court nobles like Iwakura Tomomi and Sanjō Sanetomi. The cooperation of the impressionable young emperor was essential to these efforts.


It was believed that the West depended on constitutionalism for national unity, on industrialization for material strength, and on a well-trained military for national security. “Fukoku kyōhei” (“Enrich the country, strengthen the military”) became the Meiji slogan. Knowledge was to be sought in the West, the goodwill of which was essential for revising the unequal treaties. In 1871 Iwakura Tomomi led a large number of government officials on a mission to the United States and Europe. Their experiences strengthened convictions already formed on the requisites for modernization.

Abolition of feudalism

The Meiji reformers began with measures that addressed the decentralized feudal structure to which they attributed Japan’s weakness. In 1869 the lords of Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Saga were persuaded to return their lands to the throne. Others quickly followed suit. The court took steps to standardize the administration of the domains, appointing their former daimyo as governors. In 1871 the governor-daimyo were summoned to Tokyo and told that the domains were officially abolished. The 250 former domains now became 72 prefectures and three metropolitan districts, a number later reduced by one-third. In the process, most daimyo were eased out of administrative roles, and though rewarded with titles in a new European-style peerage in 1884, were effectively removed from political power.

The Meiji leaders also realized that they had to end the complex class system that had existed under feudalism. Yet, it was difficult to deal with the samurai, who numbered, with dependents, almost two million in 1868. Starting in 1869 the old hierarchy was replaced by a simpler division that established three orders: court nobles and former feudal lords became kazoku (“peers”); former samurai, shizoku, and all others (including outcast groups) now became heimin (“commoners”). The samurai were initially given annual pensions, but financial duress forced the conversion of these into lump-sum payments of interest-bearing but nonconvertible bonds in 1876. Other symbolic class distinctions such as the hairstyle of samurai and the privilege of wearing swords were abolished.


Many former samurai lacked commercial experience and squandered their bonds. Inflation also undercut their value. A national conscription system instituted in 1873 further deprived samurai of their monopoly on military service. Samurai discontent resulted in numerous revolts, the most serious occurring in the southwest, where the restoration movement had started and warriors expected the greatest rewards. An uprising in Chōshū expressed dissatisfaction with administrative measures that deprived the samurai of their status and income. In Saga, samurai called for a foreign war to provide employment for their class. The last, and by far the greatest, revolt came in Satsuma in 1877. This rebellion was led by the restoration hero Saigō Takamori and lasted six months. The imperial government’s conscript levies were hard-pressed to defeat Saigō, but in the end superior transport, modern communications, and better weapons assured victory for the government. In this, as in the other revolts, issues were localized, and the loyalties of most Satsuma men in the central government remained with the imperial cause.

Land surveys were begun in 1873 to determine the amount and value of land based on average rice yields in recent years, and a monetary tax of 3 percent of land value was established. The same surveys led to certificates of land ownership for farmers, who were released from feudal controls. The land measures involved basic changes, and there was widespread confusion and uncertainty among farmers that expressed itself in the form of short-lived revolts and demonstrations. But the establishment of private ownership, and measures to promote new technology, fertilizers, and seeds, produced a rise in agricultural output. The land tax, supplemented by printed money, became the principal source of government revenue for several decades.

Although it was hard-pressed for money, the government initiated a program of industrialization, which was seen as essential for national strength. Except for military industries and strategic communications, this program was largely in private hands, although the government set up pilot plants to provide encouragement. Trade and manufacturing benefited from a growing national market and legal security, but the unequal treaties enacted with foreign powers made it impossible to protect industries with tariffs until 1911.


In the 1880s fear of excessive inflation led the government to sell its remaining plants to private investors—usually individuals with close ties to those in power. As a result, a small group of men came to dominate many industries. Collectively they became known as the zaibatsu, or financial cliques. With great opportunities and few competitors, zaibatsu firms came to dominate enterprise after enterprise. Sharing a similar vision for the country, these men maintained close ties to the government leadership. The House of Mitsui, for instance, was on friendly terms with many of the Meiji oligarchs, and that of Mitsubishi was founded by a Tosa samurai who had been an associate of those within the government’s inner circle.

Equally important for building a modern state was the development of national identity. True national unity required the propagation of new loyalties among the general populace and the transformation of powerless and inarticulate peasants into citizens of a centralized state. The use of religion and ideology was vital to this process. Early Meiji policy, therefore, elevated Shintō to the highest position in the new religious hierarchy, replacing Buddhism with a cult of national deities that supported the throne. Christianity was reluctantly legalized in 1873, but, while important for some intellectuals, it was treated with suspicion by many in the government. The challenge remained how to use traditional values without risking foreign condemnation that the government was forcing a state religion upon the Japanese. By the 1890s the education system provided the ideal vehicle to inculcate the new ideological orientation. A system of universal education had been announced in 1872. For a time its organization and philosophy were Western, but during the 1880s a new emphasis on ethics emerged as the government tried to counter excessive Westernization and followed European ideas on nationalist education. In 1890 the Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyōiku Chokugo) laid out the lines of Confucian and Shintō ideology, which constituted the moral content of later Japanese education. Thus, loyalty to the emperor, who was hedged about with Confucian teachings and Shintō reverence, became the centre of a citizen’s ideology. To avoid charges of indoctrination, the state distinguished between this secular cult and actual religion, permitting “religious freedom” while requiring a form of worship as the patriotic duty of all Japanese. The education system also was utilized to project into the citizenry at large the ideal of samurai loyalty that had been the heritage of the ruling class.

Constitutional movement

Many Japanese believed that constitutions provided the unity that gave Western nations their strength. The Meiji leaders therefore sought to transform Japan in this direction. In 1868 the government experimented with a two-chamber house, which proved unworkable. Meanwhile, the emperor’s charter oath of April 1868 committed the government to establishing “deliberative assemblies” and “public discussion,” to a worldwide search for knowledge, to the abrogation of past customs, and to the pursuit by all Japanese of their individual callings.


Echoing the government’s call for greater participation were voices from below. Village leaders, who had benefited from the commercialization of agriculture in the late Tokugawa period, wanted a more participatory system that could reflect their emerging bourgeois interests. Former samurai realized that a parliamentary system might allow them to recoup their lost positions. Samurai interest was sparked by a split in the government’s inner circle over a proposed Korean invasion in 1873. At odds with Iwakura and Ōkubo, who insisted on domestic reform over risky foreign ventures, Itagaki Taisuke and several fellow samurai from Tosa and Saga left the government in protest, calling for a popularly elected assembly so that future decisions might reflect the will of the people—by which they largely meant the former samurai. Starting with self-help samurai organizations, Itagaki expanded his movement for “freedom and popular rights” to include other groups. In 1881 he organized the Liberal Party (Jiyūtō), whose members were largely wealthy farmers. In 1880 nearly 250,000 signatures were gathered on petitions demanding a national assembly.

Under these circumstances, the emperor requested the advice of his ministers on constitutional matters. Ōkuma Shigenobu, a leader from Saga, submitted a relatively liberal constitutional draft in 1881, which he published without official approval. He also revealed sensational evidence of corruption in the disposal of government assets in Hokkaido. For this he was forced out of the government’s inner circle. Ōkuma organized the Progressive Party (Kaishintō) in 1882 to further his British-based constitutional ideals, which attracted considerable support among urban business and journalistic communities.

The clamour of 1881 resulted in an imperial promise of a constitution by 1889. Meanwhile, the parties were encouraged to await its promulgation quietly. The constitution was drafted behind the scenes by a commission headed by Itō Hirobumi and aided by the German constitutional scholar Hermann Roesler. The period of its drafting coincided with an era of great economic distress in the countryside. This provided an environment in which party agitation could easily kindle direct action and violence, and several incidents of this type led to severe government reprisals and increased police controls and press restrictions. Village leaders, confronted by unruly members of their community whose land faced imminent foreclosure, became less inclined to support liberal ideas. Consequently, the parties decided to dissolve temporarily in 1884. In the interim Itagaki traveled to Europe and returned convinced more than ever of the need for national unity in the face of Western condescension.


Itō also traveled to Europe as part of the work to prepare the new constitution. In Germany he found an appropriate balance of imperial power and constitutional forms that seemed to offer modernity without sacrificing effective control. To balance a popularly elected lower house, Itō established a new European-style peerage in 1884. Government leaders, military commanders, and former daimyo were given titles and readied for future seats in a house of peers. A cabinet system, in which ministers were directly appointed by the emperor, was installed in 1885, and a Privy Council, designed to judge and safeguard the constitution, was set up in 1888. Itō became head of the council.

The constitution was formally promulgated in 1889, and elections for the lower house were held to prepare for the initial Diet (Kokkai), which met in 1890. The constitution took the form of a gracious gift from the sovereign to his people, and it could be amended only upon imperial initiative. Its provisions were couched in general terms. Rights and liberties were granted “except as regulated by law.” If the Diet refused to approve a budget, the one from the previous year could be followed. The emperor was “sacred and inviolable”; he commanded the armies, made war and peace, and dissolved the lower house at will. Effective power thus lay with the executive, which could claim to represent the imperial will. The rescript on education guaranteed that future generations would accept imperial authority without question.

Despite its antidemocratic features, the constitution provided a much greater arena for dissent and debate than had previously existed. The lower house could initiate legislation. Private property was inviolate, and freedoms, though subject to legislation, were greater than before. Even military budgets required Diet approval for increases. Initially, a tax qualification of 15 yen limited the electorate to about 500,000; this was lowered in 1900 and 1920, and in 1925 universal manhood suffrage came into effect. The government leaders found it harder to control the lower house than initially anticipated, and party leaders found it advantageous, at times, to cooperate with the oligarchs. The constitution thus basically redefined politics for both sides. It also ended the revolutionary phase of the Meiji Restoration. With the new institutions in place, the oligarchs withdrew from power and were content to maintain and conserve the ideological and political institutions they had created through their roles as elder statesmen (genrō).



The emergence of imperial Japan

Foreign affairs

Japanese expansion

Achieving equality with the West was one of the primary goals of the Meiji leaders. Treaty reform, designed to end the foreigners’ judicial and economic privileges provided by extraterritoriality and fixed customs duties was sought as early as 1871 when the Iwakura mission went to the United States and Europe. The Western powers insisted, however, that they could not revise the treaties until Japanese legal institutions were reformed along European and American lines. Efforts to reach a compromise settlement in the 1880s were rejected by the press and opposition groups in Japan. It was not until 1894, therefore, that treaty provisions for extraterritoriality were formally changed.

During the first half of the Meiji period, Asian relations were seen as less important than domestic development. In 1874 a punitive expedition was launched against Formosa (Taiwan) to chastise the aborigines for murdering Ryukyuan fishermen. This lent support to Japanese claims to the Ryukyu Islands, which had been under Satsuma influence in Tokugawa times. Despite Chinese protests, the Ryukyus were incorporated into Japan in 1879. Meanwhile, calls for an aggressive foreign policy in Korea, aired by Japanese nationalists and some liberals, were steadily rejected by the Meiji leaders. At the same time, China became increasingly concerned about expanding Japanese influence in Korea, which China still viewed as a tributary state. Incidents on the peninsula in 1882 and 1884 that might have involved China and Japan in war were settled by compromise, and in 1885 China and Japan agreed that neither would send troops to Korea without first informing the other.

The Sino-Japanese War

By the early 1890s Chinese influence in Korea had increased. In 1894 Korea requested Chinese assistance in putting down a local rebellion. When the Chinese notified Tokyo of this, Japan quickly rushed troops to Korea. With the rebellion crushed, neither side withdrew. The Sino-Japanese War formally erupted in July 1894. Japanese forces proved to be superior on both land and sea, and, with the loss of its northern fleet, China sued for peace. The peace treaty negotiated at Shimonoseki was formally signed on April 17, 1895; both sides recognized the independence of Korea, and China ceded to Japan Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaotung Peninsula, granted Japan all rights enjoyed by European powers, and made significant economic concessions, including the opening of new treaty ports and a large indemnity in gold. A commercial treaty giving Japan special tax exemptions and other trade and manufacturing privileges was signed in 1896. Japan thus marked its own emancipation from the unequal treaties by imposing even harsher terms on its neighbour. Meanwhile, France, Russia, and Germany were not willing to endorse Japanese gains and forced the return of the Liaotung Peninsula to China. Insult was added to injury when Russia leased the same territory with its important naval base, Port Arthur (now Lü-shun), from China in 1898. The war thus demonstrated that the Japanese could not maintain Asian military victories without Western sufferance. At the same time, it proved a tremendous source of prestige for Japan and brought the government much internal support; it also strengthened the hand of the military in national affairs.

The Russo-Japanese War

Reluctant to accept Japanese leadership, Korea instead sought Russia’s help. During the Boxer Rebellion (1900) in China, Japanese troops played a major part in the allied expedition to rescue foreign nationals in Beijing, but Russia occupied southern Manchuria, thereby strengthening its links with Korea. Realizing the need for protection against multiple European enemies, the Japanese began talks with England that led to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902). In this pact both countries agreed to aid the other in the event of an attack by two or more powers but remain neutral if the other went to war with a single enemy. Backed by Britain, Tokyo was prepared to take a firmer stand against Russian advances in Manchuria and Korea. In 1904 Japanese ships attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur without warning. In the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) that followed, Japanese arms were everywhere successful; the most spectacular victory occurred in the Tsushima Strait, where the ships of Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet. But the war was extremely costly in Japanese lives and treasure, and Japan was relieved when U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate a peace settlement. The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on September 5, 1905, gave Japan primacy in Korea, and Russia granted to Japan its economic and political interests in southern Manchuria, including the Liaotung Peninsula. Russia also ceded to Japan the southern half of the island of Sakhalin. The victory over Russia altered the balance of power in East Asia, and it encouraged nationalist movements in India and the Middle East. But at home Japan’s failure to gain an indemnity to pay for the heavy war costs made the treaty unpopular.



Japanese expansionism

After the conclusion of the war, Japanese leaders gained a free hand in Korea. Korean opposition to Japanese “reforms” was no longer tolerated. Itō Hirobumi, sent to Korea as resident general, forced through treaties that gave Korea little more than protectorate status and ordered the abdication of the Korean king. Itō’s assassination in 1909 led to Korea’s annexation by Japan the following year. Korean liberties and resistance were crushed. By 1912, when the Meiji emperor died, Japan had not only achieved equality with the West but also had become the strongest imperialist power in East Asia.

Japan had abundant opportunity to use its new power in the years that followed. During World War I it fought on the Allied side but limited its activities to seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. When China sought the return of former German holdings in Shantung province, Japan responded with the so-called Twenty-one Demands, issued in 1915, that tried to pressure China into widespread concessions ranging from extended leases in Manchuria and joint control of China’s coal and iron resources to policy matters regarding harbours and the policing of Chinese cities. While giving in on a number of specific issues, the Chinese resisted the most extreme Japanese demands that would have turned China into a Japanese ward. Despite its economic gains, Japan’s World War I China policy left behind a legacy of ill feeling and distrust, both in China and in the West. The rapaciousness of Japanese demands and China’s chagrin at its failure to recover its losses in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) cost Japan any hope of Chinese friendship. Subsequent Japanese sponsorship of corrupt warlord regimes in Manchuria and North China helped to confirm the anti-Japanese nature of modern Chinese nationalism.

The part played by Japan in the Allied intervention in Siberia following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 caused further concerns about Japanese expansion. One of the principal reasons for the disarmament conference held in Washington, D.C., in 1921–22, was to reduce Japanese influence. A network of treaties was designed to place restraints on Japanese ambitions while guaranteeing Japanese security. These treaties included a Four-Power Pact, between Japan, Great Britain, the United States, and France, that replaced the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and a Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty (with Italy) that set limits for battleships at a ratio of five for Great Britain and the United States to three for Japan. An agreement on the fortification of Pacific island bases was intended to assure Japan of security in its home waters. Finally a Nine-Power Pact would, it was hoped, protect China from further unilateral demands. Japan subsequently agreed to retire from Shantung, and, shortly thereafter, Japanese armies withdrew from Siberia and northern Sakhalin. In 1925 a treaty with the Soviet Union extended recognition to the U.S.S.R. and ended active hostilities.


Thus, by the mid-1920s Japan’s great surge forward in Asia and the Pacific had ended. This brought hope that a new quality of moderation and reasonableness, based on the absence of irritating reminders of inferiority and weakness, might characterize Japanese policy.

Constitutional government

The inauguration of parliament in 1890 was accompanied by a vigorous and often obstreperous opposition in the lower house, and it was only a general determination to convince Western skeptics that constitutional government could work in Japan that forced party and government leaders to cooperate. The first cabinets, led by Yamagata Aritomo, Matsukata Masayoshi, and Itō, maintained the principle that the government, which represented the emperor, must be aloof from parties and that the lower house should approve government requests. This policy failed because the parties tried to increase their power and patronage and therefore sought cabinets responsible to the Diet. Only the Sino-Japanese War produced the kind of unity the constitution’s makers had envisaged. Thereafter, the oligarchs formed alliances with the two parties, usually exchanging cabinet seats for support in the lower house. These arrangements proved unsatisfactory, however, when party leaders raised their sights. In 1898 Itagaki and Ōkuma combined forces to form a single party, the Constitutional Party (Kenseitō), and were allowed to form a government. But their alliance was brittle as long-standing animosities and jealousies enabled antiparty forces among the bureaucracy and oligarchy to force their resignation within a few months.

A discernible division developed among the dwindling group of Meiji leaders. Yamagata Aritomo dominated the army and much of the bureaucracy. In power for two years after the Kenseitō cabinet, he strengthened legal and institutional safeguards against rule by political parties and secured an imperial ordinance that service ministers should be career officers on active duty; this gave the army and navy power to break cabinets. Meanwhile, Itō Hirobumi endorsed the party trend by forming the Friends of Constitutional Government Party (Rikken Seiyūkai) in 1900, which enlisted most of the former followers of Itagaki’s Jiyūtō. Thereafter, practical political goals of power and patronage softened the hostility between oligarchs and politicians.

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After 1901 both Itō and Yamagata retired from active participation in politics, and until 1913 cabinets were led by their protégés Saionji Kimmochi and Katsura Tarō. Basic decisions on politics and policy, however, continued to be made by the elder statesmen, who advised the emperor on all important matters and selected prime ministers by rotating power between the two principal factions. Saionji was the last leader recruited into this extraconstitutional body.

With the death or enfeeblement of the first generation of oligarchs, the pattern of political manipulation changed. No subsequent group could match the prestige of the Meiji leaders. The Meiji emperor died in 1912 and was succeeded by a son who took the reign name Taishō (“Great Righteousness”; reigned 1912–26); but mental illness prevented him from approximating his father’s fame. The growing prestige and power of businessmen found expression in their control of the political parties and resulted in an increasing role for professional party politicians. The genrō’s last attempt to seat Katsura in 1912 ended in failure, while his successor, Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe, was discredited by scandals in naval procurement. Ōkuma Shigenobu emerged from retirement to head a cabinet during World War I and was succeeded by a military cabinet under General Terauchi Masatake. In 1918, however, discontent with Terauchi’s reactionary posture and administrative incompetence combined with the rising power of the party professionals to bring about the appointment of Hara Takashi (Hara Kei) as prime minister. Hara was the first nontitled person to hold that office, and his appointment marked the first party cabinet. His assassination in 1921 cut short his cautious efforts to rein in military and bureaucratic power and extend the franchise. After several short-lived cabinets, a successful party cabinet was organized by Katō Takaaki in 1924. The army was reduced in size, moderate social legislation was enacted, and universal manhood suffrage extended the franchise to some 14 million voters. Meanwhile, Japan avoided stronger involvement in the civil war in China and pursued a conciliatory course with the Soviet Union, despite demands from nationalists, who utilized alleged outrages in China and the discriminatory U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 to warn of the futility of cooperating with Western countries.


But, as the parties grew in power, they tended to look to bureaucrats for leadership. The businessmen who supported the parties and the bureaucrats who led them shared a fear of the social movements that followed industrialization and the importation of foreign ideas. A growing labour movement already had been checked by a special police law introduced in 1900. This was strengthened under Katō in 1925 as conservatives generally began to fear subversion in labour and tenant movements. Their anxieties mounted after the Japan Communist Party (JCP) was organized in 1922, and interest in Marxism expanded in intellectual circles. Under the Meiji constitution, party cabinets had to make peace with the military, the House of Peers, and the conservatives close to the throne. Therefore, they needed to work out their ideas for reform with utmost caution. The Diet often found itself virtually powerless, which led to disorder and corruption that did little to win popular support for representative government. The Meiji constitution was so ambiguous in assigning executive power that without institutional reform the party prime ministers could do little but compromise with forces antagonistic to democratic government.

Social change

Social and intellectual changes taking place in Japan were as important as those in politics. Many were closely related to the growth and development of industry. After the Treaty of Shimonoseki the government used the Chinese indemnity to subsidize the Yawata Iron and Steel Works in northern Kyushu, which came into production in 1901 and greatly expanded Japan’s heavy industrial sector. At the same time, textile and other consumer-goods industries expanded to meet Japanese needs and to earn credits required for the import of raw materials. Heavy industry was encouraged by government-controlled banks, which provided needed capital. Strategic industries, notably steel and the principal rail lines, were in state hands, but most new growth was in the private sector.


By 1900 Japan’s population had expanded to nearly 45 million from a late Tokugawa base of about 30 million. Increasing numbers of Japanese were attracted to urban industrial centres. At the same time, domestic food production was hard-pressed to stay abreast of population increases. Agricultural productivity, after early improvements, slowed and stagnated, and it became necessary to import food.

The enlarged urban population produced movements of social inquiry and protest. In 1895 the industrial labour force numbered about 400,000, the majority of which were women employed in the textile mills. Several efforts to organize socialist movements met with police repression. Peace-preservation laws were passed in 1900 and 1925 to inhibit labour organization, and in 1928 it became a capital crime to agitate against private property or the Japanese “national polity” (kokutai). In 1903 a small group organized the Heimin shimbun (“Commoner’s Newspaper”); it published The Communist Manifesto and opposed the Russo-Japanese War before being forced to cease publication. The socialist movement gained strength after World War I, but its program was often theoretical and doctrinaire, and its leaders found it difficult to make contact with workers. Police repression and the difficulties of organizing a labour movement among large numbers of women workers (who worked under three-year contracts before leaving to get married) and diverse industrial empires such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi also hampered union organizers. Meanwhile, the increasing confidence and power of management came to influence, and at times control, the political parties.

In the countryside the principal reflection of Japan’s growing involvement in the world economy was the increased production of silkworms, which augmented farm income. At the same time, rural Japan provided the bulk of the labourers for the new industries, and daughters from farming families were found in many textile plants. But the early 20th century was not a time of agricultural prosperity. Colonial competition tended to depress domestic agricultural prices. Farmers also were handicapped by growing fragmentation of holdings and increasing tenancy. The rising number of tenants resulted in an expansion of tenant organizations, especially during and after World War I. Government efforts to address the situation resulted in little more than a law in 1924 that called for mediation of landlord-tenant disputes. A financial panic in 1927 aggravated rural conditions and indebtedness, even before the collapse of the American silk market in 1929 spelled disaster for farmers and workers alike. In social terms, the countryside remained poor, traditional, and largely undeveloped.


The most lasting social changes were found in the great metropolitan centres, where a growing labour force and new middle class were concentrated. The Tokyo-Yokohama area was devastated by the great Kantō earthquake of September 1923, and the region’s reconstruction as a modern metropolis symbolized the growth of the urban society. Cultural interests during and after World War I were uniformly international and largely American in inspiration. Western music, dancing, and sports became popular, and rising urban living standards and expectations produced the need for more and better higher education. The participation of women in office work and other new occupations, and the rise of a feminist movement, however unsuccessful, marked the beginning of changes in the family system.

The educated class grew in size and vigour. Currents of thought included Western-style democracy and the new radicalism of the Soviet Union; the Marxist influence went far beyond the ranks of the struggling Communist Party—which, in any event, was soon crushed by the police. Political liberalism was championed by the educator and politician Yoshino Sakuzō, who formed a group of students and intellectuals into the New Peoples Association (Shinjinkai), which represented a self-conscious break with tradition. Minobe Tatsukichi, a distinguished constitutional theorist, introduced the idea that the emperor was an organ of the state and not the sole source of sovereignty. Such men faced sharp criticism and, in time, were forced to resign their positions, but they had great influence, both symbolizing and stimulating the world of advanced ideas.

The base for these new currents, however, was precarious. Politically and institutionally, no advances—beyond the suffrage act of 1925—were made, while the peace-preservation laws of 1928 established a special police corps to ferret out “dangerous thoughts.” The economic well-being of the urban classes depended on the continued expansion of international trade. When the worldwide financial collapse at the end of the decade wrecked Japan’s foreign markets and removed the possibility of villagers augmenting their meagre incomes from rice farming with silk production, and when the venality, irresponsibility, and occasional corruption of Diet representatives was contrasted to the poverty found in many parts of Japan, numerous Japanese were prepared to listen to charges that the political-party government, dominated by selfish zaibatsu interests, had neglected Japan’s markets in China, imperiled morality and decency at home, and allowed subversive trends to flourish, while politicians reaped personal fortunes.



The rise of the militarists

The notion that expansion through military conquest would solve Japan’s economic problems gained currency during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was argued that the rapid growth of Japan’s population—which stood at close to 65 million in 1930—necessitated large food imports. To sustain such imports, Japan had to be able to export. Western tariffs limited exports, while discriminatory legislation in many countries and anti-Japanese racism served as barriers to emigration. Chinese and Japanese efforts to secure racial equality in the League of Nations covenant had been rejected by Western statesmen. Thus, it was argued, Japan had no recourse but to use force.

The weakening of party government

To these economic and racial arguments was added the military’s distrust of party government. The Washington Conference had allowed a smaller ratio of naval strength than the navy desired, while the government of Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi in 1930 had accepted the London Naval Conference’s limits on heavy cruisers over military objections. In 1925 Katō Takaaki had cut the army by four divisions. Many military men objected to the restraint shown by Japan toward the Chinese Nationalists’ northern expedition of 1926 and 1927 and wanted Japan to take a harder line in China. Under Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi the Seiyūkai cabinet reversed earlier policy by intervening in Shantung in 1927 and 1928. But Tanaka was replaced by Hamaguchi in 1929, and under his cabinet the policy of moderation was restored. The army and its supporters felt that such vacillation earned Japan ill will and boycotts in China without gaining any advantages.

While many military leaders chafed under the restrictions that civilian governments placed upon them, they still retained considerable power. It would be wrong to attribute such resentment to all, or even most, of the high command, but enough army officers held such views to become a locus for dissatisfaction among other groups in Japanese society. The idea of the frugal and selfless samurai served as a useful contrast to the stock portrait of the selfish party politician.

Economic pressures and political misgivings were further exploited by civilian ultranationalists who portrayed parliamentary government as being “un-Japanese.” A number of rightist organizations existed that were dedicated to the theme of internal purity and external expansion. These sought to preserve what they thought was unique in the Japanese spirit and fought against excessive Western influence. Some originated in the Meiji period, when nationalists had felt obliged to work for a “fundamental settlement” of differences with Russia. Most, like the Black Dragon Society (Kokuryūkai), combined continental adventurism and a strong nationalist stance with opposition to party government, big business, acculturation, and Westernization. By allying with other rightists, they alternately terrorized and intimidated their presumed opponents. A number of business leaders and political figures were killed, and the assassins’ success in publicizing and dramatizing the virtues they claimed to embody had a considerable impact on the troubled 1930s. It is clear, however, that the terrorists never had as much influence as they claimed or as the West believed.


The principal force against parliamentary government was provided by junior military officers, who were largely from rural backgrounds. Distrustful of their senior leaders, ignorant of political economy, and contemptuous of the urban luxuries of politicians, such officers were ready marks for rightist theorists. Many of them had goals that were national-socialist in character. Kita Ikki, a former socialist and one-time member of the Black Dragon Society, contended that the Meiji constitution should be suspended in favour of a revolutionary regime advised by “national patriots” and headed by a military government, which should nationalize large properties, limit wealth, end party government and the peerage, and prepare to take the leadership of a revolutionary Asia. Kita helped persuade a number of young officers to take part in the violence of the 1930s with the hope of achieving these ends.

Aggression in Manchuria

The Kwantung Army, which occupied the Kwantung (Liaotung) Peninsula and patrolled the South Manchurian Railway zone, included officers who were keenly aware of Japan’s continental interests and were prepared to take steps to further them. They hoped to place the civilian government in an untenable position and to force its hand. The Tokyo terrorists similarly sought to change foreign as well as domestic policies. The pattern of direct action in Manchuria began with the murder in 1928 of Chang Tso-lin, the warlord ruler of Manchuria. The action, though not authorized by the Tanaka government, helped bring about its fall. Neither the cabinet nor the Diet dared to investigate and punish those responsible. This convinced extremist officers that their lofty motives would make retribution impossible. The succeeding government of Prime Minister Hamaguchi sought to curtail military activists and their powers. The next plots, therefore, were aimed at replacing civilian rule, and Hamaguchi was mortally wounded by an assassin in 1930. In March 1931 a coup involving highly placed army generals was planned but abandoned.


On September 18, 1931, came the Mukden (or Manchurian) Incident, which launched Japanese aggression in East Asia. A Kwantung Army charge that Chinese soldiers had tried to bomb a South Manchurian Railway train (which arrived at its destination safely) resulted in a speedy and unauthorized capture of Mukden (now Shen-yang), followed by the occupation of all Manchuria. The civilian government in Tokyo could not stop the army, and even army headquarters was not always in full control of the field commanders. Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō gave way in December 1931 to Inukai Tsuyoshi. Inukai’s plans to stop the army by imperial intervention were frustrated. On May 15, 1932, naval officers took the lead in a terrorist attack in Tokyo that cost Inukai his life but failed to secure a proclamation of martial law. The army now announced that it would accept no party cabinet. To forestall its desire for power, the last genrō, Saionji, suggested retired Admiral Saitō Makoto as prime minister. Plotting continued, culminating in a revolt of a regiment about to leave for Manchuria. On February 26, 1936, several outstanding statesmen (including Saitō) were murdered; Prime Minister Okada Keisuke escaped when the assassins mistakenly shot his brother-in-law. For more than three days the rebel units held much of downtown Tokyo. When the revolt was put down on February 29, the ringleaders were quickly arrested and executed. Within the army, the influence of the young extremists now gave way to more conservative officers and generals who were less concerned with domestic reform, while sharing many of the foreign-policy goals of the young fanatics.

The only possible source of prestige sufficient to thwart the military lay with the throne. But the senior statesmen were cautious lest they imperil the imperial institution itself. The young emperor Hirohito had been enthroned in 1926, taking as his reign name Shōwa (“Enlightened Peace”). His outlook was more progressive than that of his predecessors; he had traveled in the West, and his interests lay in marine biology. Those close to the throne feared that a strong stand by the emperor would only widen the search for victims and could lead to his dethronement. As international criticism of Japan’s aggression grew, many Japanese rallied to support the army.



The road to World War II

Each advance by the military extremists gained them new concessions from the moderate elements in the government and brought greater foreign hostility and distrust. Rather than oppose the military, the government agreed to reconstitute Manchuria as an “independent” state, Manchukuo. The last Manchu emperor of China, P’u-i, was declared regent and later enthroned as emperor in 1934. Actual control lay with the Kwantung Army, however; all key positions were held by Japanese, with surface authority vested in cooperative Chinese and Manchu. A League of Nations committee recommended in October 1932 that Japanese troops be withdrawn, Chinese sovereignty restored, and a large measure of autonomy granted to Manchuria. The League called upon member states to withhold recognition from the new puppet state. Japan’s response was to formally withdraw from the world body in 1933. Thereafter, Japan poured technicians and capital into Manchukuo, exploiting its rich resources to establish the base for the heavy-industry complex that was to undergird its “new order” in East Asia.

Events in China

In northern China, boundary areas were consolidated in order to enlarge Japan’s economic sphere. In early 1932 the Japanese navy precipitated an incident at Shanghai in order to end a boycott of Japanese goods; but Japan was not yet prepared to challenge other powers for control of central China, and a League of Nations commission arranged terms for a withdrawal. By 1934, however, Japan had made it clear that it would brook no interference in its China policy and that Chinese attempts to procure technical or military assistance elsewhere would bring Japanese opposition.

Further external ambitions had to wait, however, for the resolution of domestic crises. The military revolt in Tokyo in February 1936 marked the high point of extremist action. In its wake power shifted to the military conservatives. Moreover, the finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo, whose policies had brought Japan out of its economic depression, was killed, and his opposition to further inflationary spending was thus stilled. In politics, the confrontation between the parties and the army continued. Efforts to find a leader who could represent both military and civilian interests led to the appointment to the premiership of the popular but ineffective Konoe Fumimaro, scion of an ancient court family, in 1937. Meanwhile, in China the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek had been kidnapped in the Sian Incident in December 1936, and this led to an anti-Japanese united front by Nationalists and Communists. Domestic politics revealed, moreover, that the Japanese people were not yet prepared to renounce their parliamentary system. In the spring of 1937, general elections showed startling gains for the new Social Mass (or Social Masses) Party (Shakai Taishūtō), which received 36 out of 466 seats, and a heavy majority of the remainder went to the Seiyūkai and Minseitō, which had combined forces against the government and its policies. The time seemed ready for new efforts by civilian leaders, but in the field the armies preempted them.

On July 7, 1937, Japanese troops engaged Chinese units at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, leading to warfare between China and Japan. Japanese armies took Nanking, Han-k’ou (Hankow), and Canton despite vigorous Chinese resistance; Nanking was brutally pillaged by Japanese troops. To the north, Inner Mongolia and China’s northern provinces were invaded. On discovering that the Nationalist government, which had retreated up the Yangtze to Chungking, refused to compromise, the Japanese installed a more cooperative regime at Nanking in 1940.

Foreign relations

In November 1936 Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany and later with Italy. This was replaced by the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which recognized Japan as the leader of a new order in Asia; Japan, Germany, and Italy agreed to assist each other if they were attacked by any additional power not yet at war with them. The intended target was the United States, since the Soviets and Nazis had already signed a nonaggression pact in 1939, and the Soviets were invited to join the new agreement later in 1940.


Japanese relations with the Soviet Union were considerably less cordial than those with Germany. The Soviets consented, however, to sell the Chinese Eastern Railway to the South Manchurian Railway in 1935, thereby strengthening Manchukuo. In 1937 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with China, and in 1938 and 1939 Soviet and Japanese armies tested each other in two full-scale battles along the border of Manchukuo. But in April 1941 a neutrality pact was signed with the Soviet Union, with Germany acting as intermediary.

Japanese-German ties were never close or effective. Both parties were limited in their cooperation by distance, distrust, and claims of racial superiority. The Japanese were uninformed about Nazi plans for attacking the Soviet Union, and the Germans were not told of Japan’s plans to attack Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Nor, despite formal statements of rapport, did Japan’s state structure approach the totalitarianism of the Nazis. A national-mobilization law (1938) gave the Konoe government sweeping economic and political powers, and in 1940, under the second Konoe cabinet, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association was established to merge the political parties into one central organization; yet, the institutional structure of the Meiji constitution was never altered, and the wartime governments never achieved full control over interservice competition. The Imperial Rule Assistance Association failed to mobilize all segments of national life around a leader. The emperor remained a symbol, albeit an increasingly military one, and no führer could compete without endangering the national polity. Wartime social and economic thought retained important vestiges of an agrarianism and familism that were in essence premodern rather than totalitarian.

Japan’s relations with the democratic powers deteriorated steadily. The United States and Great Britain did what they could to assist the Chinese Nationalist cause. The Burma Road into southern China permitted the transport of minimal supplies to Nationalist forces. Constant Japanese efforts to close this route led to further tensions between Great Britain and Japan. Anti-Japanese feeling strengthened in the United States, especially after the sinking of a U.S. gunboat in the Yangtze River in 1937. In 1939 U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull renounced the 1911 treaty of commerce with Japan, and thus embargoes became possible in 1940. President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to rally public opinion against aggressors included efforts to stop Japan, but, even after war broke out in Europe in 1939, American public opinion rejected involvement abroad.



World War II and defeat

Prologue to war

The European war presented the Japanese with tempting opportunities. After the Nazi attack on Russia in 1941, the Japanese were torn between German urgings to join the war against the Soviets and their natural inclination to seek richer prizes from the European colonial territories to the south. In 1940 Japan occupied northern Indochina in an attempt to block access to supplies for the Chinese Nationalists, and in July 1941 it announced a joint protectorate with Vichy France over the whole colony. This opened the way for further moves into Southeast Asia.

The United States reacted to the occupation of Indochina by freezing Japanese assets and embargoing oil. The Japanese now faced the choices of either withdrawing from Indochina, and possibly China, or seizing the sources of oil production in the Dutch East Indies. Negotiations with Washington were initiated by the second Konoe cabinet. Konoe was willing to withdraw from Indochina, and he sought a personal meeting with Roosevelt, hoping that any U.S. concessions or favours would strengthen his hand against the military. But the State Department refused to agree to such a meeting without prior Japanese concessions. Having failed in his negotiations, Konoe resigned in October 1941 and was immediately succeeded by his war minister, General Tōjō Hideki. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hull rejected Japan’s “final offer”: Japan would withdraw from Indochina after China had come to terms in return for U.S. promises to resume oil shipments, cease aid to China, and unfreeze Japanese assets. With Japan’s decision for war made, the negotiators received instructions to continue to negotiate, but preparations for the opening strike against the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor were already in motion. Japan’s war aims were to establish a “new order in East Asia,” built on a “coprosperity” concept that placed Japan at the centre of an economic bloc consisting of Manchuria, Korea, and North China that would draw on the raw materials of the rich colonies of Southeast Asia, while inspiring these to friendship and alliance by destroying their previous masters. In practice, “East Asia for the Asiatics,” the slogan that headed the campaign, came to mean “East Asia for Japan.”

Early successes

The attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7 [December 8 in Japan], 1941) achieved complete surprise and success. It also unified American opinion and determination to see the war through to a successful conclusion. The Japanese had expected that, once they fortified their new holdings, a reconquest would be so expensive in lives and treasure that it would discourage the “soft” democracies. Instead, the U.S. fleet was rebuilt with astonishing speed, and the chain of defenses was breached before the riches of the newly conquered territories could be effectively tapped by Japan.

Battle of Midway

The first years of the war brought Japan great success. In the Philippines, Japanese troops occupied Manila in January 1942, although Corregidor held out until May; Singapore fell in February, and the Dutch East Indies and Rangoon (Burma) in early March. The Allies had difficulty maintaining communications with Australia, and British naval losses promised the Japanese navy further freedom of action. Tōjō grew in confidence and popularity and began to style himself somewhat in the manner of a fascist leader. But the U.S. Navy had not been permanently driven from the South Pacific. The Battle of Midway in June 1942 cost the Japanese fleet four aircraft carriers and many seasoned pilots, and the battle for Guadalcanal Island in the Solomons ended with Japanese withdrawal in February 1943.

Japan on the defensive

After Midway, Japanese naval leaders secretly concluded that Japan’s outlook for victory was poor. When the fall of Saipan in July 1944 brought U.S. bombers within range of Tokyo, the Tōjō cabinet was replaced by that of Koiso Kuniaki. Koiso formed a supreme war-direction council designed to link the cabinet and the high command. Many in government realized that the war was lost, but none had a program for ending the war that was acceptable to the military. There were also grave problems in breaking the news to the Japanese people, who had been told only of victories. Great firebombing raids in 1945 brought destruction to every major city except the old capital of Kyōto; but the generals were bent on continuing the war, confident that a major victory or protracted battle would help gain honourable terms. The Allied talk of unconditional surrender provided a good excuse to continue the fight.


In February 1945 the emperor met with a group of senior statesmen to discuss steps that might be taken. When U.S. landings were made on Okinawa in April, the Koiso government fell. The problem of the new premier, Admiral Suzuki Kantarō, was not whether to end the war but how best to do it. The first plan advanced was to ask the Soviet Union, which was still at peace with Japan, to intercede with the Allies. The Soviet government had agreed, however, to enter the war; consequently, its reply was delayed while Soviet leaders participated in the Potsdam Conference in July. The Potsdam Declaration issued on July 26 offered the first ray of hope with its statement that Japan would not be “enslaved as a race, nor destroyed as a nation.”

The end of the war

Discover more about the first atomic bombs, tested and used during World War II

atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Atomic bombs largely destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, respectively. On August 8 the Soviet Union declared war and the next day marched into Manchuria, where the Kwantung Army could offer only token resistance. The Japanese government attempted to gain as its sole condition for surrender a qualification for the preservation of the imperial institution; after the Allies agreed to respect the will of the Japanese people, the emperor insisted on surrender. The Pacific war came to an end on August 14 (August 15 in Japan). The formal surrender was signed on September 2 in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship USS Missouri.


USS Missouri: Japanese surrender

Military extremists attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the radio broadcast of the emperor’s announcement to the nation. There were a number of suicides among the military officers and nationalists who felt themselves dishonoured, but the emperor’s prestige and personal will, once expressed, sufficed to bring an orderly transition. To increase the appearance of direct rule, the Suzuki cabinet was replaced by that of Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko.

Postwar investigators concluded that neither the atomic bombs nor the Soviet entry into the war was central to the decision to surrender, although they probably helped to advance the date. It was determined that submarine blockade of the Japanese islands had brought economic defeat by preventing exploitation of Japan’s new colonies, sinking merchant tonnage, and convincing Japanese leaders of the hopelessness of the war. Bombing brought the consciousness of defeat to the people. The destruction of the Japanese navy and air force jeopardized the home islands. By the end of the war, Japan’s cities were destroyed, its stockpiles exhausted, and its industrial capacity gutted. The government stood without prestige or respect. An alarming shortage of food and rising inflation threatened what remained of national strength.



Japan since 1945

The early postwar decades

Occupation

From 1945 to 1952 Japan was under Allied military occupation, headed by the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (SCAP), a position held by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur until 1951. Although nominally directed by a multinational Far Eastern Commission in Washington, D.C., and an Allied Council in Tokyo—which included the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and the Commonwealth countries—the occupation was almost entirely an American affair. While MacArthur developed a large General Headquarters in Tokyo to carry out occupation policy, supported by local “military government” teams, Japan, unlike Germany, was not governed directly by foreign troops. Instead, SCAP relied on the Japanese government and its organs, particularly the bureaucracy, to carry out its directives.

The occupation, like the Taika Reform of the 7th century and the Meiji Restoration 80 years earlier, represented a period of rapid social and institutional change that was based on the borrowing and incorporation of foreign models. General principles for the proposed governance of Japan had been spelled out in the Potsdam Declaration and elucidated in U.S. government policy statements drawn up and forwarded to MacArthur in August 1945. The essence of these policies was simple and straightforward: the demilitarization of Japan, so that it would not again become a danger to peace; democratization, meaning that, while no particular form of government would be forced upon the Japanese, efforts would be made to develop a political system under which individual rights would be guaranteed and protected; and the establishment of an economy that could adequately support a peaceful and democratic Japan.

MacArthur himself shared the vision of a demilitarized and democratic Japan and was well suited to the task at hand. An administrator of considerable skill, he possessed elements of leadership and charisma that appealed to the defeated Japanese. Brooking neither domestic nor foreign interference, MacArthur enthusiastically set about creating a new Japan. He encouraged an environment in which new forces could and did rise, and, where his reforms corresponded to trends already established in Japanese society, they played a vital role in Japan’s recovery as a free and independent nation.


In the early months of the occupation, SCAP acted swiftly to remove the principal supports of the militarist state. The armed forces were demobilized and millions of Japanese troops and civilians abroad repatriated. The empire was disbanded. State Shintō was disestablished, and nationalist organizations were abolished and their members removed from important posts. Japan’s armament industries were dismantled. The Home Ministry with its prewar powers over the police and local government was abolished; the police force was decentralized and its extensive power revoked. The Education Ministry’s sweeping powers over education were curtailed, and compulsory courses on ethics (shūshin) were eliminated. All individuals prominent in wartime organizations and politics, including commissioned officers of the armed services and all high executives of the principal industrial firms, were removed from their positions. An international tribunal was established to conduct war crimes trials, and seven men, including the wartime prime minister Tōjō, were convicted and hanged; another 16 were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Political reform

The most important reform carried out by the occupation was the establishment of a new constitution. In 1945 SCAP made it clear to Japanese government leaders that revision of the Meiji constitution should receive their highest priority. When Japanese efforts to write a new document proved inadequate, MacArthur’s government section prepared its own draft and presented it to the Japanese government as a basis for further deliberations. Endorsed by the emperor, this document was placed before the first postwar Diet in April 1946. It was formally promulgated on November 3 and went into effect on May 3, 1947.

The emphasis in the new constitution was clearly on the people rather than the throne. Sovereignty now lay with the people. A 31-article bill of rights followed, with Article 9 renouncing forever “war as a sovereign right of the nation” and pledging that “land, sea and air forces” would “never be maintained.” The emperor, no longer “sacred” or “inviolable,” was now described as the “symbol of the state and of the unity of the people.” The constitution called for a bicameral Diet, with the greatest power concentrated in the House of Representatives, members of which would now be elected by both men and women. The old peerage was dissolved, and the House of Peers was replaced by a House of Councillors. The Privy Council was abolished. The prime minister was to be chosen by the Diet from its members, and an independent judiciary was established with the right of judicial review.


Despite its hasty preparation and foreign inspiration, the new constitution gained wide public support. Although the ruling conservatives desired to revise it after Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952, and an official commission favoured changes in the constitution in 1964, no political group in postwar Japan has been able to secure the two-thirds majority needed to make revisions. While parts of the structure established by the document have been modified through administrative actions—including a reversal of the principle of decentralization in areas such as the police, the school system, and some spheres of local administration—and while Article 9 has been compromised by the decision to form a National Police Reserve that in 1954 became the Self-Defense Forces, the basic principles of the constitution have enjoyed support among all factions in Japanese politics. Executive leadership proved to be the chief asset of the new institutions, and, with the abolition of the competing forces that had hampered the premiers of the 1930s, Japan’s postwar prime ministers have found themselves firmly in charge of the administration and (with limited rearmament) the armed forces as well. Thus, responsible leadership gradually replaced the ambiguous claims of imperial rule of earlier days.

Economic and social changes

The occupation’s political democratization was reinforced by economic and social changes. SCAP was aware that political democracy in Japan required not only a weakening of the value structure of the hierarchic “family state,” which restricted the individual, but also a liberation of the Japanese people from the economic forces that reinforced such a state. With nearly half of Japan’s farmers subsisting as tenants, Americans saw little hope for democracy in Japan without significant changes in the ownership of land. Occupation authorities therefore set out to establish a program of land reform that was designed to convert tenants into owner-farmers. Through legislation a plan was devised whereby landlords, many of whom lived in the cities, were forced to divest themselves of a high proportion of their holdings to the government. This land was then sold to tenants on favourable terms. Given the fact that prices were set at wartime and postwar pre-inflation rates, landlords were essentially expropriated. Still, the reforms were implemented with great efficiency and in the end proved highly successful. Supported by favourable tax and price arrangements, the majority of Japan’s new owner-farmers gained control of their land, which on average consisted of about 2.5 acres (1 hectare) per farm. Benefited by agricultural subsidies and government-maintained high agricultural prices, the Japanese countryside experienced increased prosperity. Rural voters became not only the mainstay of the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) after its formation in 1955 (fulfilling the original American intent), but as one of Japan’s most powerful lobbies they often successfully resisted agricultural trade liberalization. In a reversal of the Taishō dilemma that sprang from low domestic consumption, land reform and agricultural price supports contributed significantly to Japan’s emergence as a consumer economy in the 1950s and ’60s.


Initial Allied plans had contemplated exacting heavy reparations from Japan, but the unsettled state of other Asian countries that were to have been recipients brought reconsideration. Except for Japanese assets overseas and a small number of war plants, reparations were largely limited to those worked out between Japan and its Asian victims after the Treaty of Peace with Japan was signed in 1951.

The dissolution of Japan’s great financial houses (zaibatsu) also was an early occupation priority, but it gave way under Cold War pressures. Although the zaibatsu originally were seen as the chief potential war makers, the need for an economically viable Japan changed this perspective to viewing them as essential for economic recovery. Thus, of 1,200 concerns marked for investigation and possible dissolution, fewer than 30 were broken up by SCAP, though the major units of the zaibatsu empires—holding companies—were dissolved and their securities made available for public purchase. New legislation sought to enforce fair trading and to guard against a return to monopolies. The war itself, new postwar tax policies, and the purges that removed many top executives further undercut the largest firms. By 1950 extensive changes, although far short of those initially proposed, had taken place in the industrial world. The large banks, however, were not broken up and proved to be the centres for a measure of reconsolidation in the years after the occupation ended.

Strengthening the influence of labour in Japan also was seen as important for the advancement of democracy. A new Ministry of Labour was established in 1947. Laws on trade unions and labour relations modeled on New Deal legislation in the United States were passed, and a strong union movement was initially encouraged. Leaders of this movement included a number of socialists and communists who had been released from prison by the occupation. But a proposed general strike in 1947 and the Cold War-induced shift toward rapid economic reconstruction, anti-inflationary policies, and a control of radicalism quickly resulted in a purge of left-wing labour leaders and an effort to bring labour under government control. In 1948 SCAP ordered the government to take steps to deprive government workers—including those in communications unions—of the right to strike. At the same time a new labour organization, the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sōhyō), was sponsored as a counterweight and gradual replacement for the Congress of Industrial Labour Unions of Japan (Sambetsu Kaigi), which had become dominated by the left. In the late 1950s Sōhyō, too, had become increasingly antigovernment and anti-American, its Marxist and socialist orientation finding a political voice in the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), of which it became the leading supporter.


Postwar social legislation also provided relief from earlier restrictions. The civil code, which had supported the power of the male family head in the past, was rewritten to allow for equality between the sexes and joint inheritance rights. Women were given the right to vote and to sit in the Diet.

Educational reforms

Occupation authorities, convinced that democracy and equality were best inculcated through education, revised the Japanese educational system. A Fundamental Law of Education was passed in 1947, which guaranteed academic freedom, extended the length of compulsory education from six to nine years, and provided for coeducation. Americans were convinced that Japanese education had been too concerned with rote memorization and indoctrination and that what Japan needed was a curriculum that encouraged initiative and self-reliance. The prewar system of special channels that led to vocational training, higher technical schools, or universities was seen as essentially elitist, and the occupation therefore supported the standardization of grade levels so that completion of any level would allow entrance to the next. The American 6-3-3-4 structure of elementary, lower secondary, higher secondary, and undergraduate higher education was adopted. Entrance to high schools and universities came to depend on passing highly competitive examinations, which many Japanese young people still call “examination hell.” Other efforts to democratize education were made. To complement Japan’s prewar elite institutions, such as Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), the Americans sought to encourage the establishment of prefectural universities and junior colleges. By the 1960s college and university graduates numbered nearly four times their prewar counterparts, and there were some 565 universities and junior colleges.

Political trends

Politics under the occupation and new constitution experienced considerable flux, as many of Japan’s prewar leaders found themselves purged from public office and the two prewar parties, the Seiyūkai and Minseitō, restructured themselves as the Liberal and Progressive parties, respectively (the latter eventually becoming the Japan Democratic Party). On the left wing, the socialists and communists also reorganized their respective parties. Initial postwar elections included many political splinter groups. Faced with a lack of consensus, cabinets tended to be unstable and short-lived. This was true of the first Yoshida Shigeru cabinet (1946–47), which implemented most of the early SCAP reforms only to be replaced by an equally transitory cabinet headed by the Socialist Katayama Tetsu (1947–48). A similar fate confronted Ashida Hitoshi, who became prime minister for five months in 1948. Yoshida’s return to power in the fall of 1948 resulted in a more stable situation and ushered in the Yoshida era, which lasted until 1954. During those years, Japan capitalized on the economic benefits of close cooperation with the United States during the Korean War (1950–53), which laid the groundwork for national reconstruction and for the essential postwar U.S.-Japan relationship. In 1951 Yoshida achieved what he regarded as his greatest accomplishment—the restoration of national sovereignty—by taking Japan to the San Francisco peace conference. There, with the American negotiator John Foster Dulles and representatives of 47 nations, he hammered out the final details of the Treaty of Peace with Japan. The treaty was formally signed on September 8, 1951, and the occupation of Japan ended on April 28, 1952.

The era of rapid growth

From 1952 to 1973 Japan experienced accelerated economic growth and social change. By 1952 Japan had at last regained its prewar industrial output. Thereafter, the economy expanded at unprecedented rates. At the same time, economic development and industrialization supported the emergence of a mass consumer society. Large numbers of Japanese who had previously resided in villages became urbanized; Tokyo, whose population stood at about three million in 1945, reached some nine million by 1970. Initial close ties to the United States fostered by the Mutual Security Treaty gave way to occasional tensions over American policies toward Vietnam, China, and exchange rates. The first trade frictions, over Japanese textile exports, took place at that time. Meanwhile, foreign culture, as was the case in the 1920s, greatly influenced young urban dwellers, who in the postwar period broke with their own traditions and turned increasingly to Hollywood and American popular culture for alternatives. Japan’s new international image was projected and enhanced by events such as the highly successful 1964 Olympic Summer Games and the Ōsaka World Exposition of 1970.



Economic transformation

The Korean War marked the turn from economic depression to recovery for Japan. As the staging area for the United Nations forces on the Korean peninsula, Japan profited indirectly from the war, as valuable procurement orders for goods and services were assigned to Japanese suppliers. The Japanese economy at the return of independence in 1952 was in the process of growth and change. Sustained prosperity and high annual growth rates, which averaged 10 percent in 1955–60 and later climbed to more than 13 percent, changed all sectors of Japanese life. The countryside, where farmers had benefited from land reform, began to feel the effects of small-scale mechanization and a continuous migration to industrial centres. Agricultural yields rose as improved strains of crops and modern technology were introduced, as household appliances appeared in remote villages, and as the changing patterns of urban food consumption provided an expanded market for cash crops, fruits and vegetables, and meat products. Efforts to control population growth, which had begun with the legalization of abortion in 1948 and included a national campaign to encourage family planning, showed considerable success, as the population stabilized and thereafter grew slowly. Gains in economic output, therefore, were not offset by a rapidly expanding population, and steady industrial growth brought full employment and even labour shortages.

Two elements underscored rapid growth in the 1960s. The first was the development of a consumer economy, which was given a significant boost by Ikeda Hayato’s Income Doubling Plan of 1960. This plan reaffirmed the government’s responsibility for social welfare, vocational training, and education, while also redefining growth to include consumers as well as producers. The second was the new industrial policy that emerged out of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1959. Under these influences the structure of the Japanese economy changed to concentrate on high-quality and high-technology products designed for domestic and foreign consumption. The production of such products also emphasized Japan’s need for stable, economically advanced trading partners to replace the Asian markets to which inexpensive textiles had been sent earlier. Improvements in transportation—e.g., cargo-handling methods and bulk transport by large ore carriers and tankers—helped to remove the disadvantage of the greater distances over which Japan’s products had to be shipped. Most important, the large and growing domestic market was rendering invalid earlier generalizations about Japan’s need for cheap labour and captive Asian colonies to sustain its economy. The era of high growth continued until the “oil shock” of 1973: the embargo by OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Nations). In the interim, Japan’s output shifted with world currents, and its industrial expansion made it a world leader in shipbuilding, electronics, precision optical equipment, steel, automobiles, and high technology. In the 1960s Japanese exports expanded at an annual rate of more than 15 percent, and in 1965 Japan revealed the first signs that it had a trade surplus.

A number of factors greatly aided Japan’s economic resurgence during the 1950s and ’60s. One was the complete destruction of the nation’s industrial base by the war. This meant that Japan’s new factories, using the latest developments in technology, were often more efficient than those of their foreign competitors. The Japanese became enthusiastic followers of the American statistician W. Edward Deming’s ideas on quality control and soon began producing goods that were more reliable and contained fewer flaws than those of the United States and western Europe. At the same time, Japan was able to import, under license, advanced foreign technology at relatively low cost. With the addition of a youthful and well-educated workforce, a high domestic savings rate that provided ample capital, and an activist government and bureaucracy that provided guidance, support, and subsidies, the ingredients were in place for rapid and sustained economic growth.

Social change

Two major changes were visible in the social life of the Japanese from 1952 to 1973. The first was the significant decline in the birth rate that stabilized the Japanese population. The second was the population shift from the countryside to urban centres. In addition to birth control, such factors as a more highly educated populace, postponement of marriage in favour of education and employment, and a desire for greater independence in early adulthood contributed to changing fertility patterns—as did the increasing conviction among many couples that it was in their economic self-interest to have fewer children. But even with a stable population Japan remained one of the world’s most densely populated countries.


As population growth slowed and the economy expanded, Japan faced a labour shortage that drew workers from agriculture, as well as from small and medium enterprises, to the new large-scale industries of the cities. The resulting shift in Japan’s population was dramatic. In the Meiji period the rural population of Japan stood at 85 percent of the national total; by 1945 it was approximately 50 percent, and by 1970 it had fallen to less than 20 percent. In the process, both village and urban life underwent significant changes. Factories were built in the countryside as industrialists tried to tap into the still-underemployed rural labour force. Agriculture itself became increasingly mechanized and commercialized. As sons, and even husbands, went off to the factories, women, children, and the elderly were often left to run the family farm. At the same time, the face of rural Japan changed, with hard-surfaced roads, concrete schools, factories, and sales outlets for automobiles and farm equipment replacing the once timeless thatched-roof houses. By 1970 the average farm household income had risen higher than its urban counterpart, providing considerable rural purchasing power. Television tied rural households to urban Japan and to the world beyond. Young men brought up on visions of urban life as projected by American television programs were eager to move to the cities after graduation from high school. Young women showed increasing reluctance to become farm wives, and in some instances villagers sought spouses for their sons in Southeast Asia. Rural solidarity suffered from such out-migration, and in many cases prewar village life ceased to be, as villages amalgamated into cities and struggled to develop new identities.

Cities also underwent rapid change. By 1972 one in every nine Japanese lived in Tokyo and one in four lived in the Tokyo-Ōsaka industrial corridor. As the national centre for government, finance, business, industry, education, and the arts, Tokyo became a magnet for many Japanese and the quintessential expression of Japanese urban life.


But while Tokyo and other large cities remained highly attractive, urban dwellers also faced serious problems, notably housing. Living space for most urban dwellers was infinitesimal when compared with Western societies. Although Japanese bristled when Westerners described them as living in “rabbit hutches,” apartments with 125 square feet (12 square metres) of living space—often with shared facilities—were common. Such apartments were often found in drab residential developments that pushed out at greater distances from the inner wards of major cities and required increased commuting times. The dream of owning one’s home, which most urban dwellers sought to keep alive, was already becoming increasingly elusive by the 1970s. In 1972 the price of land in or near Japan’s largest cities was some 25 times higher than it had been in 1955, far surpassing the rise in the average urban worker’s disposable income for the same period. While government and private industry were able to provide some low-cost housing, higher-priced housing in the form of high-rise condominiums, or “mansions,” proliferated, and for most Japanese urbanites housing remained the chief flaw in Japan’s postwar economic “miracle.”

If urban life retained a number of density-induced drawbacks—which in addition to housing included few parks and open spaces, limited sewage systems, and an overcrowded transportation network of trains, subways, and buses that often required “pushers” and “pullers” to get passengers on and off—it also had its compensations in a rising standard of living and the entertainments that money afforded in splendid department stores, shopping areas, movie houses, coffee shops, bars, nightclubs and restaurants. The impact of American culture was everywhere. Young urbanites, in particular, took with gusto to jazz and rock music, pinball machines, American soft drinks and fast foods, baseball, and the freer social relations that typified American dating patterns. American fashions of dress and grooming, often set by movie and rock stars, quickly found bands of faithful imitators. Indeed, almost every American fad from the hula hoop to hang gliding had its Japanese supporters.


Urban life also brought about changes in traditional Japanese family and gender relationships. The position of women improved, as many more now went to high schools and colleges. Most found urban employment until marriage. As arranged marriages declined and “love” matches increased, marriage customs also changed. Urban living promoted the ideal of the nuclear family, particularly as housing conditions made it difficult for the extended family to live together. Urban dwellers found themselves less dependent on the goodwill of their neighbours. There was also less need for the conformity that typified rural life—although for many recent arrivals the city-based company and factory effectively restructured village values to support an efficient workplace.

The majority of villagers actually made the transition from rural to urban life with less social stress than was the case in Europe and America. Juvenile delinquency showed some increase, but overall crime rates remained low. So-called “new” religions such as Sōka Gakkai (Value-Creation Society), which strongly appealed to those feeling isolated or alienated, flourished in the 1950s and ’60s. Disparities between the newly rich and the older generation living on fixed incomes and between a freer, franker, and often more egotistic and brash mass culture that appealed to the young and traditional taste set by what once had been the aristocracy often accentuated how generations viewed the postwar situation. For many of the older generation, the new culture epitomized moral decay, which they attributed to the postwar system of education; to the young, the older generation seemed out of touch with the new realities that Japan faced. Such a generational split was further dramatized in the universities, where older professors were firmly in control but where young people struggled to find ways of expressing their own positions, which, typically, were often far more radical than those of their teachers.

Political developments

With the restoration of sovereignty, politicians who had been purged by the occupation were allowed to return to public life. This included a number of prewar rightists who had been active in the 1930s. But the ideological right found few adherents among the postwar generation, and without military or big-business support the right wing played a largely dormant role during the 1950s and ’60s. Occasionally disturbing incidents, such as the 1960 assassination of the socialist leader Asanuma Inajirō by a right-wing activist, revealed that the right was still able to intimidate; but rightists, for the most part, concentrated on campaigns to restore the use of the national flag, revive such national holidays as Foundation Day (February 11; succeeded in 1966), and restore state sponsorship for Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo (where Japan’s war dead, notably those of World War II, are enshrined). The left fared considerably better. Communists who returned to Japan from foreign exile or who were released from domestic prisons played a vigorous role in the immediate postwar political arena. In 1949 the Japan Communist Party (JCP) elected 35 candidates to the lower house and garnered 10 percent of the vote. But by 1952 the Korean War (which had led SCAP to purge communists from public office), steady improvements in living conditions, and uncooperative Soviet attitudes in negotiations over the return of the Kuril Islands and over fishing treaties had seriously undermined public support for the communists, as did communist opposition to the imperial institution and extremist labour tactics. Still, Marxist, and later Maoist, ideas remained highly appealing to large numbers of Japanese intellectuals and college students, and the noncommunist left became a major voice for opposition in Japanese politics.


The year 1955 was highly significant in postwar politics. The right and left wings of the socialist movement, which had been divided since 1951 over the peace treaty, merged to form the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). Faced with this united opposition the conservative parties, the Liberals and the Democrats, joined to found the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP). Japan thus entered a period of essentially two-party politics. The dominant LDP, which inherited Yoshida’s mantle, worked effectively to solidify the close ties he had created with bureaucrats, bankers, and the business community. As a result, ex-bureaucrats played significant roles in the LDP, often being elected to the Diet and becoming important cabinet members. Three of the next six prime ministers (all from the LDP) who succeeded Yoshida—Kishi Nobusuke, Ikeda Hayato, and Satō Eisaku—were ex-bureaucrats. These close government-business ties, which became essential to domestic economic growth, later were characterized as “Japan Incorporated” in the West.

Ideologically, the LDP combined a strong commitment to economic growth with the desire to return Japan to world prominence. The party depended on the financial support of business and banking, but its voter base remained in rural Japan. At the local level, LDP politicians established political networks that became the hallmarks of postwar politics and emphasized the role of personal “machine” politics over party platforms. But individual LDP Diet members realized that in order to provide patronage for their constituents they needed the support of party leaders with access to the bureaucracy. Factions therefore formed around such leaders, who vied with one another for the premiership and sought to have members of their faction appointed to important cabinet posts.

As the voice of the opposition, the JSP resisted rearmament, had a strong antinuclear stance, campaigned to rid Japan of the American bases and abrogate the Mutual Security Treaty, supported mainland China, and vigorously opposed all efforts to change the postwar constitution. The appeal of the JSP was directed both to urban intellectuals and to the working classes, and its financial support came largely from labour (Sōhyō). In contrast to the LDP’s focus on economic growth, big business, and agriculture, the JSP concentrated on urban issues, on those bypassed by prosperity, and on the mounting problems of pollution and environmental degradation that accompanied accelerated industrial growth. Socialist influence was weakened, however, when the more right-wing JSP members split off to form the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) in 1959.


By the early 1970s urban issues also attracted the JCP, which started to substitute practical matters for ideology and won a number of mayoral elections. To the right of the communists and socialists appeared the Clean Government Party (Kōmeitō; later renamed the New Clean Government Party), which began in 1964 as the political arm of Sōka Gakkai but dissociated itself from the religion by 1970; like its opposition counterparts, it focused on the urban electorate. On occasion, as in 1960 with the Kishi government and the proposed renewal of the U.S-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, the opposition could mount sufficient public support to bring down an LDP cabinet, but on the whole the era was one in which the LDP remained firmly in power.

Still, by the late 1960s and early ’70s there also were signs of a decline in LDP support. Dissatisfaction with the party’s handling of domestic labour issues, Japan’s involvement in the Vietnam War, demands for the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty, and extensive student uprisings on university campuses, combined with growing doubts about the effects of unbridled growth and the increasing dangers from pollution, all undercut the party’s popularity. In 1952 the LDP had garnered two-thirds of the Diet seats, but by 1972 it controlled only slightly more than half. The effects of the so-called “Nixon shocks” in 1971, which allowed the yen to rise against the dollar and restructured the U.S.-China (and hence the Japan-China) relationship, were compounded in 1973 by the OPEC oil crisis that threatened the underpinnings of Japan’s postwar prosperity and the LDP’s political hegemony.



International relations

The Japan that returned to the international community in 1952 was considerably reduced in territory and influence. The Republic of China (Taiwan), the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) all possessed military establishments far larger than what became Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Given the rise of the Cold War, international relations were not destined to be conducted on the pacifist lines envisioned by Article 9 of the constitution. The United States maintained its occupancy of Okinawa and the Ryukyus, while the Soviet Union occupied the entire Kuril chain and claimed southern Sakhalin. The Korean War increased the urgency for a peace treaty. Details for such a treaty were worked out by the United States and its noncommunist allies during the command of General Matthew B. Ridgway, who succeeded MacArthur as supreme commander in April 1951.

The San Francisco peace conference that convened in September 1951 thus ratified arrangements that had been worked out earlier. In the peace treaty that ensued, Japan recognized the independence of Korea and renounced all rights to Taiwan, the Pescadores, the Kurils, and southern Sakhalin and gave up the rights to the Pacific islands earlier mandated to it by the League of Nations. The Soviet Union attended the conference but refused to sign the treaty. This enabled Japan to retain hope for regaining four islands of the Kurils closest to Hokkaido—territory that Japan had gained through negotiations, not war. The peace treaty recognized Japan’s “right to individual and collective self-defense,” which it exercised through the United States–Japan Security Treaty (1951) by which U.S. forces remained in Japan until the Japanese secured their own defense. Japan agreed not to grant similar rights to a third power without U.S. approval. Americans promised to assist Japan’s Self-Defense Forces while U.S. military units (except air detachments and naval forces) were withdrawn to Okinawa.

The treaty made no arrangements for reparations to the victims of Japan’s Pacific war but provided that Japan should negotiate with the countries concerned. Consequently, effective resumption of relations with the countries of Asia came only after treaties covering reparations had been worked out with them. These were signed with Burma (now Myanmar) in 1954, the Philippines in 1956, and Indonesia in 1958. In 1956 Japan restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union but without a formal peace treaty. With the Soviet Union no longer blocking the way, Japan was admitted to the United Nations in late 1956 and subsequently became active in United Nations meetings and specialized agencies. It also became a contributing member of the Colombo Plan group of countries for economic development in South and Southeast Asia, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Japan spearheaded the creation of the Asian Development Bank in 1965–66.


At the time of the peace treaty, Prime Minister Yoshida wanted to delay committing Japan to either of the two Chinas, but the U.S. negotiator John Foster Dulles convinced him that the treaty would be opposed in the U.S. Senate unless assurances were given that Japan would recognize the Republic of China. Thus, Tokyo soon negotiated a peace treaty with that regime, but one that would not prejudice subsequent negotiations with Beijing. A lively trade developed with Taiwan, where Japan made considerable contributions to the economy.

Trade relationships with mainland China developed slowly in the absence of diplomatic ties. In 1953 an unofficial trade pact was signed between private Japanese groups and Chinese authorities. In addition, a semiofficial “memorandum” trade became increasingly important in the 1960s. The Chinese government made skillful use of trade for political purposes, in the hope of embarrassing or weakening Japan’s conservative governments, and intervals of ideological tension on the mainland—e.g., the Great Leap Forward (1958–60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)—usually were reflected in a decline or cessation of trade with Japan. Nevertheless, Japan gradually became China’s most important trading partner.

U.S. overtures toward mainland China in 1971 led to a rapid reorientation of Japan’s China policy. Japanese government leaders indicated a willingness to compromise ties with Taiwan in favour of a closer relationship with Beijing. Beijing also revealed a new interest in formal relations with Japan, subject to Japan’s revocation of its treaty with Taiwan. In 1972, a year after mainland China was admitted to the UN, Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei reached an agreement with Beijing on steps to normalize relations. Japan simultaneously severed its ties with Taiwan, replacing its embassy with a nonofficial office.

Japan’s post-occupation relationship with the United States was founded on the 1951 security treaty. Part of the understanding that lay behind this treaty was that Japan would have access to the U.S. market in exchange for the maintenance of American bases on Japanese soil. While the LDP saw advantages to maintaining such a quid pro quo relationship, which allowed Japan to dramatically expand its foreign trade while avoiding undue security costs, Japan’s opposition parties were less sanguine about a relationship that tied Japan directly into the increasingly hostile Cold War. Tensions therefore mounted as the renewal date of the treaty (scheduled for 1960) approached; both governments hoped to extend it for 10 years as the revised Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. The situation was complicated by domestic dislike of Kishi Nobusuke, who had become prime minister in 1957 after having earlier served in the Tōjō cabinet. Kishi had been named, though not tried, as a war criminal by the occupation. His staunch anticommunist stand, his open support of constitutional revision, and his undemocratic tactics made him suspect among many Japanese who felt they had been only marginally involved in the making of the original treaty and were anxious about the nation’s future. Added to this was the proposed visit to Japan by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower that was scheduled amid new tensions caused by the downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane by the Soviet Union in May 1960. When the Kishi cabinet used its majority in the Diet to force through treaty revisions, opposition increased steadily. Gigantic public demonstrations, largely composed of students, shook Tokyo for days. In the end the treaty survived, but Eisenhower’s visit was canceled and Kishi resigned in July 1960.


The administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy caught the imagination of many Japanese, and Kennedy’s designation of the popular scholar Edwin O. Reischauer as ambassador further improved Japanese-American relations. But by the late 1960s the unpopularity of the Vietnam War threatened to disturb the relationship once more. Prime ministers Ikeda and Satō worked hard to remove the final reminders of war. In 1967, under Satō, the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands were restored to Japan; and in 1969, on the eve of renewed negotiations over treaty revisions, the United States agreed to return the Ryukyus in 1972, although bases were to be maintained on Okinawa under the terms of the security treaty. The treaty was renewed without incident in 1970, now changed to allow termination by either side with a year’s advanced notification. Thus, by 1972 the U.S.-Japan relationship had stabilized. While signs of change on the part of both countries could be found in their China policies, there was as yet little to indicate the mounting conflict over trade that subsequently emerged.Marius B. JansenFred G. Notehelfer

The late 20th and early 21st centuries

Economic change

By the early 1970s a series of forces had combined to bring to an end the era of high growth that Japan had experienced in the 1950s and ’60s. These included significant advances in technology, the disappearance of ample rural labour for industry, and the decline in international competitiveness of heavy manufacturing industries such as shipbuilding, aluminum, fertilizers, and, later, steel. Outcries over urban congestion, pollution, and environmental degradation and dissatisfaction with ever-escalating land prices caused many middle-class Japanese to question the economic and political logic that linked growth with national success. The foreign trading environment also was changing. In 1971 the United States devalued the U.S. dollar by 17 percent against the Japanese yen. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973–74 created a further disruption of the Japanese economy, which depended heavily on Middle Eastern oil. Outbreaks of panic buying by consumers brought reminders of the essential fragility of Japan’s economic position; the rapid rise in the price of oil ended an era of relatively cheap and abundant energy resources. Thus, by the mid-1970s many Japanese felt increasingly insecure about their place in the global economy. Japanese dependency on fuel and food—as demonstrated by the consternation caused in 1972 when the United States temporarily embargoed soybean exports to Japan—had become increasingly clear.


During the 1970s and ’80s, consequently, Japan tried to integrate its economy more effectively into the global system and sought to diversify its markets and sources of raw materials. Japan became a firm advocate of international free trade and tried to create at least a measure of energy self-sufficiency through the increased use of nuclear power. The economic uncertainties of the 1970s produced a reemergence of a defensive, nationalistic sentiment that pictured Japan in a struggle with outside forces aimed at depriving the Japanese of their hard-won postwar gains. Until the early 1990s, international economic tensions were effectively used by the ruling LDP and the bureaucracy to contain and defuse important domestic economic and political issues.

The domestic rhetoric about the hostile international environment in which Japan operated cloaked the fact that by the 1980s the Japanese economy had become one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated. Per capita income had surpassed that of the United States, and total gross national product stood at roughly one-tenth of world output. By the mid-1980s Japan had become the world’s leading net creditor nation and the largest donor of development aid. Prosperity, however, was increasingly linked to trade. Slow domestic growth was offset by booming exports. In the 1970s exports were seen as vital to balance the deficits anticipated from rapidly rising oil prices. But, as the Japanese economy successfully weathered the recessions induced by escalating oil prices in 1972–74 and 1979–81, the volume of exports accelerated. Headed by automobiles, colour television sets, high-quality steel, precision optical equipment, and electronic products, Japan’s merchandise trade balance with western Europe and the United States steadily mounted in its favour.

By contrast, domestic consumption, which had played such an important role in the first phase of Japan’s postwar recovery, began to stagnate. By the early 1990s the Japanese were consuming considerably less than their American, British, or German counterparts. At the same time, consumer prices in Japan were considerably higher than the world average. Studies showed that consumption patterns were influenced by lagging wage increases, congested housing, traditional savings habits, and long working and commuting schedules that provided little time for leisure.


Mounting Japanese trade surpluses increased friction between Japan and its trading partners in Europe and the United States. Japan’s critics charged that the country advocated free trade abroad but maintained a closed market at home, engaged in “adversarial trade” designed to benefit only Japan, and pushed trade to export domestic unemployment during economic hard times, and there were complaints that Japan sold goods abroad at lower than domestic prices—a charge denied by Japanese business and government leaders. The government and bureaucracy responded by making efforts to “open” Japan. In the early 1970s Japan had the world’s second highest tariffs on manufactured goods, but two decades later such tariffs were the lowest among the economically advanced countries. Restrictions on many agricultural products—including, in the early 1990s, rice—were lifted. Japan’s financial markets were deregulated and liberalized, and a study commissioned under Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro in 1986 proposed the restructuring of the Japanese economy to make it rely almost entirely on domestic demand for growth. Plans for such changes were further taken up in the so-called Structural Impediments Initiative (SII) in the late 1980s. By the end of the decade it was generally acknowledged that formal barriers to trade had been largely dismantled, though areas such as construction bidding were still closed, and many cultural barriers remained.

At the same time, what came to be called Japan’s “bubble economy” of the 1980s, which typified an era that combined easy credit with unbridled speculation and eventually drove Japanese equity and real estate markets to astronomical price levels, burst. In 1992–93 this ushered in a deep recession, the severity of which postponed many of the earlier reform plans, further undercut Japanese consumer confidence, and inevitably exacerbated trade tensions. Japan’s merchandise trade surplus with the world, however, continued to spiral up. Those export surpluses finally produced a rapid appreciation of the yen against the dollar in the mid-1990s. Contrary to American expectations, however, this had only marginal effects on the trade balance. At the same time, the stronger Japanese currency allowed Japanese firms and individuals to invest heavily abroad by buying foreign assets (notably real estate) at bargain prices.


The Japanese economy continued to stagnate, teetering between economic recession and anemic growth as the country entered the 21st century. Unemployment, still relatively low by Western standards, rose considerably and in 2000 surpassed 5 percent for the first time in the postwar era. A series of prime ministers in the 1990s and early 21st century called for major economic reforms, particularly deregulation. Notable were the sweeping reforms (dubbed the “Big Bang”) proposed by Hashimoto Ryūtarō (who served as prime minister 1996–98) in administration, finance, social security, the economy, the monetary system, and education. The measures were endorsed by Hashimoto’s successors, but they met resistance in many sectors. Several leaders, including Koizumi Junichiro, who became prime minister in 2001, felt stymied by the inability of the policy changes to produce economic growth. The economy also faced other challenges, particularly from a rapidly aging population and rising income disparities. Although the bond with the United States remained the linchpin of Japan’s external relations, Japan reoriented its economy to integrate it more effectively into that of the Asian economic bloc.