Once in power, the new leaders launched a comprehensive
reform of Japanese political, social, economic, and
cultural institutions and values. They moved first to abolish
the remnants of the old order and strengthen executive
power in their hands. To undercut the power of the
daimyo, hereditary privileges were abolished in 1871, and
the great lords lost title to their lands. As compensation,
they were named governors of the territories formerly under
their control. The samurai received a lump-sum payment
to replace their traditional stipends but were forbidden
to wear the sword, the symbol of their hereditary
status.
The abolition of the legal underpinnings of the Tokugawa
system permitted the Meiji modernizers to embark
on the creation of a modern political system based on the
Western model. In the Charter Oath of 1868, the new
leaders promised to create a new deliberative assembly
within the framework of continued imperial rule. Although
senior positions in the new government were
given to the daimyo, the key posts were dominated by
modernizing samurai, known as the genro, from the Sat-
Cho clique.
During the next two decades, the Meiji government
undertook a systematic study of Western political systems.
A constitutional commission under Prince Ito Hirobumi
traveled to several Western countries, including
Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and the United
States, to study their political systems. As the process
evolved, a number of factions appeared, each representing
different political ideas. The most prominent were
the Liberals, who favored political reform on the Western
liberal democratic model, and the Progressives, who
called for a distribution of power between the legislative
and executive branches, with a slight nod to the latter.
There was also an imperial party that advocated the retention
of supreme authority exclusively in the hands of
the emperor.
During the 1870s and 1880s, these factions competed
for preeminence. In the end, the Progressives emerged
victorious. The Meiji constitution, adopted in 1890, was
based on the Bismarckian model, with authority vested in
the executive branch, although the imperialist faction
was pacified by the statement that the constitution was
the gift of the emperor. Members of the cabinet were to
be handpicked by the Meiji oligarchs. The upper house of
parliament was to be appointed and have equal legislative
powers with the lower house, called the Diet, whose
members would be elected. The core ideology of the state
was called the kokutai (national polity), which embodied
(although in very imprecise form) the concept of the
uniqueness of the Japanese system based on the supreme
authority of the emperor.
The result was a system that was democratic in form
but despotic in practice, modern in external appearance
but still recognizably traditional in that power remained
in the hands of a ruling oligarchy. The system permitted
the traditional ruling class to retain its influence and eco-
nomic power while acquiescing in the emergence of a
new set of institutions and values.
World History
