Against the background of three hundred years of early modern Japanese history, Emperor Meiji’s reign (1867-1912) stands out as a time of deliberate modernization. During the Tokugawa period, certain preconditions for modernization had developed. Though vitally important, these preconditions were accidental in that concepts like modernization 'and progress were never consciously adopted as social and administrative goals. In the Meiji era, however, Japan’s government and people set themselves the ambitious task of deliberately catching up with the technologically advanced nation-states of the West, and in striving to achieve this aim, they absorbed sufficient Western civilization to affect society profoundly at all levels. The change from unthinking acceptance of traditional attitudes to deliberate espousal of new goals marked a decisive break with the past.
To the Japanese, being “modem” in the second half of the nineteenth century meant having an economic system of industrial capitalism and a political system of liberal or quasiliberal constitutionalism as in the United States and a number of European countries. Japanese domestic policies were guided by these aspirations, which gave the Meiji era a certain simplicity: the goals, though awesome, were few and clear-cut, and authority remained in the hands of a small number of people enjoying widespread support.
Foreign relations, an increasingly perilous area of public concern after 1912, possessed a similar simplicity of basic aim and method. The central objective, for government and people alike, was negotiated revision of treaties which the bakufu had been forced to sign with Western countries during its last years, and which relegated Japan to an inferior status. Full revision did not occur until the end of the Meiji reign. However unfortunate and irritating the delays may have been, they enforced a valuable unanimity of opinion on the nature and importance of the tasks confronting the nation’s diplomats.
The Meiji era then was a time of transition and of deliberate transformation in response to the West. During its forty-five years, national life went through a period of intensive and extensive reordering, which brought it to the threshold of the next stage, when affairs moved of their own momentum, with governments attempting to keep pace with, rather than instigate, change. Generally speaking, the Meiji statesmen did well, working diligently and boldly to lay the foundations of a modern nation-state. It was their achievements, not their mistakes, that gave rise to an increasingly complex social, political and diplomatic situation not long after their departure from the helm.
World History
