2004 Teacher Training Institute
Japanese History from 1868 to the Present
Presented by Justin Jesty
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago
I.
Introduction
•
II.
This presentation isn’t aimed to give a comprehensive coverage of this
period of history. What I will try to do instead is provide a general outline
and some leads so that when you come to teach modern Japanese history,
you’ll be able to find the information, images, and lesson ideas that can fill
in this outline in a way that suits your particular interests and class level.
All of the links listed on the left hand side of the page in text bubbles are
comprehensive information sources, so you can use them for many other
things other than the ones I’ve suggested.
Timeline and Lesson Ideas
•
The timeline below is one that I’ve cobbled together from various
resources both online and in printed books. If you’re interested in
comparing it to some other timelines, please take a look at the following
links.
i. This timeline is the most complete one I’ve found, from the
website for A Modern History of Japan: from Tokugawa Times to
the Present.
http://www.oxfordjapan.org/
ii. This page was developed by a high school teacher and has a very
good periodization of modern Japanese history.
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jearnol2/MeijiRestoration/japan.htm
iii. The syllabus on this page was designed for a university course and
has a bit more detail, but could be useful for development.
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~naso/hist159b/index.htm
III.
Famine through
mid 1830s.
Timeline Beginning from the 1830s
1. The End of the Bakufu: 1840s to 1868.
1846 Foreign
whaling ships
begin to enter
Japanese waters.
The name of this period, bakumatsu literally means the “end
of the bakufu.” The bakufu was the semi-feudal political
organization that I think you talked about in the morning
session. There are a number of different forces that came
together in this period to bring it to its end.
Some of the things that contributed to the downfall of the
bakufu were:
a. Internal tensions
1853 Commodore
Perry enters Tokyo
bay.
1854 First Unequal
Treaty concluded.
1855 Earthquake
kills over 5,000 in
Edo.
Series of epidemics
from 1857-62.
1859 British
merchants begin to
supply arms to
Satsuma and Choshu.
1860 Top advisor to
the shogun, Ii
Naosuke is
assassinated.
i. Revolts in the countryside. Tax assessments
were not updated from about the middle of the
17th century. This meant that there was a lot of
production in villages that wasn’t being taxed.
This allowed for an accumulation of wealth in
the hands of a few rich landowners and these
were the targets of rebellions.
ii. Revolts in the city. These were also due to
perceived disparities in wealth and often found
targets in rich merchants, especially rice
merchants.
iii. Dissatisfaction of the lower samurai. There was
a large samurai class (about 5% of population)
who weren’t supposed to produce anything and
lived on a stipend. Although samurai were
supposed to be on the top of the social ladder,
this system kept many of them poorer than the
merchants.
iv. Famine and plague. Countrywide famine in the
1830s and a series of epidemics in the late
1850s.
There’s an
autobiography by a
samurai that I really like
called “Musui’s Story”.
Some other ides for
teaching literature can be
found at the National
Clearing House for USJapan Studies,
http://www.indiana.edu/
~japan/
1864 Shogunate
forces clash with
rebels from the Mito
domain.
b. External pressures
1866 Shogunate forces
try to put down a large ,
organized rebellion in
the Choshu domain, but
fail.
Choshu and Satusma
form a secret alliance
against the shogun.
1867 The last shogun
hands over power to the
reigning emperor, who
changes his name to
Meiji.
i. Contact with western nations increases through
the first half of the 1800s. News from China
alerts the bakufu to the intention of imperial
powers.
ii. Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in 1853 and
the shogunate is forced to conclude an unequal
treaty in 1854. The authority of the shogun is
undermined in the eyes of the commoners and
the domainal lords and the treaties cause
financial stress.
Lessons about the arrival of
Commodore Perry from the
Virtual Japan website.
http://www.usjapan.org/jsnc/virtualjapan/in
dex.html
The site that hosts this is part
of the Nat’l Ass. of JapanAmerica Societies.
http://www.us-japan.org/
Some more funny pictures:
http://core.ecu.edu/hist/tucker
jo/Modern%20Japan_files/v3
_document.htm
iii. Britain begins to supply the Western domains
of Choshu and Satsuma with weapons.
2. What was the Meiji Restoration?
1868 Meiji
Restoration.
The Meiji Restoration occurs in 1868. The reason it’s called a
restoration is that the emperor was restored to power as the
head of government. But in 1868 nobody was quite sure what
this actually meant or would come to mean. From about the
time of Perry’s arrival in 1853, the prestige of the Emperor
came to be used as a pawn in the bids for power of the domains
of Satsuma and Choshu. When the elite samurai of these
domains succeeded in ousting the shogun they had to begin
constructing a new kind of government and polity. Although
restoration is still the accepted term, coup d’etat and revolution
are also words sometimes used to describe it.
3. Making a Nation: 1868 to about 1910
1868 Emperor
Meiji moves
from Kyoto to
Tokyo
1871 Iwakura
mission departs
for 18 month
study tour.
1871 Samurai and
1881-5 Matsukata
aristocrats
allowed
Deflation.
to marry Fiscal
tightening causes
commoners.
Class
economic
of
outcastestrife.
is
abolished.
Japan found itself coming onto an international scene that was
dominated by nation states vying with each other for colonial
power. In order to protect itself it took on the project of
building a modern nation state from what had been a fairly
decentralized collection of domains.
The process by which Japan constructed itself as a modern
nation can be seen as falling into two broad periods. The first
was a period of openness to the west, whereas the second was
increasingly nationalistic and autocratic.
What is Japan and where is
it? Some interesting
collections of maps: from U
of T at Austin,
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ma
ps/map_sites/country_sites.ht
ml
and Kyushu University,
http://www.rc.kyushuu.ac.jp/~michel/serv/eujap/m
aps/index.html
1872 Compulsory elementary
education established.
1885. Cabinet system
adopted. Ito Hirobumi
becomes first prime
minister.
a. Civilization and Enlightenment: 1868 to about 1890
1889 Meiji Constitution
promulgated.
i. Charter Oath of 1868. This was delivered when
the Emperor Meiji assumed power and shows
the liberal ideals of the time.
1890 Imperial
Rescript on Education
issued.
1894 Commercial
treaty with English
abolishes extraterritoriality.
1894-5 Sino-Japanese War.
1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki.
Japan gets large indemnity,
and gains Taiwan, the
Liaodong Peninsula, and the
Pescadores.
1904-5. Russo-Japanese War.
1905. Treaty of Pourtsmouth.
Russia recognizes Japan’s
claims to Korea. Japan gets
the Sakhalin and the South
Manchurian Railway.
1906 Japan Socialist
Party formed.
ii. Lots of contact with and learning from the
west. Ways to foster learning included sending
government missions, sending Japanese
students to study in foreign countries, and
inviting foreign experts to teach and advise in
Japan.
iii. The four tier class system is abolished.
Everyone becomes a “commoner.” Universal
mandatory education and conscription
consolidate this new idea of being a member of
a nation.
iv. Media and information create a public. The
Emperor Meiji makes a tour of the country.
Newspapers spring up. A telegraph system is
established.
b. Nationalism and Empire: 1889 to about 1910
i. The Meiji Constitution (1889) and the Imperial
Rescript on Education (1890) are two
documents that show the shift to a more
authoritarian idea of government.
1910 Korea made a
Japanese colony.
1910 Great Treason
Incident. Anarchist
Kotoku Shusui executed
for alleged plot to
assassinate Emperor.
1911 Tariffs imposed by
unequal treaties
abolished.
1912 Meiji Emperor
dies.
ii. Internationally, the Japanese gain more power.
The unequal treaties are renegotiated in 1894.
Japan defeats China in 1895 and Russia in
1905. Begins to establish hegemony over Korea
and Manchuria.
iii. Especially surrounding the Russo-Japanese
War, the public becomes increasingly
mobilized towards nationalism.
Find a text of the Charter
Oath at Columbia’s
excellent Asia for
Educators site:
http://afe.easia.columbia.
edu/
Learning was both ways:
look at this lesson plan
about how western
painters were influenced
by Japanese art from the
Five Colleges Resource
Center,
http://www.smith.edu/fc
ceas/home.html
Can see some
photographs with the
new telegraph system in
this photo database:
http://oldphoto.lb.nagasa
ki-u.ac.jp/unive/
4. Taisho Democracy: 1912 to about 1930
1912 Taisho
Emperor
assumes throne.
1918 Hara Kei
becomes the
first prime
minister who is
from a political
party. Begins
era of party rule.
Through most of the Meiji period, a small group of oligarchs
held a lot of power behind the scenes. Made up mostly of
samurai from the Satsuma and Choshu regions, they were
instrumental in instituting the monumental changes of the
Meiji era. By the 1910s many of them were dead or dying and
political parties began to have a more substantial role in
government. The bureaucracy and the army continued to have
an important role in government, however, so it’s a matter of
debate how democratic this period actually was.
1923 Great Kanto
Earthquake. Over
100,000 die.
1925 Universal
Male Suffrage Law
passed.
Peace Preservation
Law passed.
1926 Emperor Taisho
dies. Hirohito
becomes Emperor.
1927 Severe
depression.
1928 First election
under universal male
suffrage.
Crackdown on left
wing political
organizations.
a. Universal manhood suffrage was established in 1925
and the first election under this was held in 1928.
b. At the same time, there was increasing government
effort to control socialists and communists. 1925 also
saw the passage of the Peace Preservation Law which
made it a crime to threaten the “kokutai” or nation.
c. This period saw increasing urbanization and a
flowering of cosmopolitan culture. The urban middle
class grows.
d. At the same time, this is the period when Japan is more
tied to the international economy. Boom and bust
cycles exacerbate the division between haves and
have-nots. Labor and farm unrest grows.
5. Empire and Total War: about 1931 to 1945
1931
Manchurian
Incident.
Taisho democracy proved to have some structural weaknesses.
What turned out to be one of the most significant deficiencies was
1932 Puppet the inability to reign in the power of the military, which claimed
state
to have authority directly from the Emperor, rather than by dint of
established in
Manchuria. democracy.
1932 Japan sends
troops to Shanghai.
Prime Minister Inukai
assassinated by naval
officers.
1937 Second SinoJapanese War begins,
lasting until 1945.
Rape of Nanking.
a. Japanese imperialism began in 1876 when it first
imposed an unequal treaty on Korea. During the 1930s
the boundaries of the empire expanded dramatically
into China and SE Asia.
b. This imperial expansion was fiercely anti-western. The
Japanese saw themselves as liberators of Asia from the
1938 National Mobilization
Law. Government starts to
regulate all media production,
industrial output and
consumption.
A database of prewar
political posters from
Hosei University can give
some idea of the political
activity of the many parties
in Japan at this time.
http://oohara.mt.tama.hosei
.ac.jp/poster/english.html
1940 Japan signs Tripartite
Pact with Germany and
Italy.
1941 Japan attacks
Pearl Harbor.
Aug 6 and 9 US drops
atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
Aug. 15, 1945
Japanese surrender.
tyranny of the west, and espoused a kind of Pan-Asian
nationalism (with them at the top).
c. Military begins to dominate the country’s destiny.
Imperial expansion and war in China is never officially
authorized but is rather the result of insubordination on
the part of the armed forces.
d. Freedom of expression increasingly imperiled. Strong
police surveillance and censorship first puts an end to
dissent and then actively mobilizes artists and the mass
media for wartime propaganda.
6. Occupation: 1945 to 1952
Sept. 1945. US
Occupation begins.
a. Initially the American occupation was focused on
making it impossible for Japan to wage war again.
1946 Hirohito renounces
his divinity.
Constitution promulgated.
Yoshida Shigeru becomes
first Prime Minister.
1947 Occupation govt bans
a strike. Signals beginning
of reverse course.
i. Very liberal constitution, including a clause
renouncing the use of military force.
ii. Socialists and labor organizations are very
active.
iii. Wartime leaders are purged from government
and some of them prosecuted for war crimes.
b. In 1947 the occupation changes its policy, a change
known as the reverse course. In the face of Soviet
intransigence, the US realizes that keeping Japan
strong against communism is the most important thing.
i. Occupation forces crack down on socialist and
communist leaders.
ii. Some previously purged leaders are reinstated.
1951 San Francisco
Peace treaty signed.
Japan becomes
independent country.
Security treaty with
US.
1952 Occupation ends.
iii. Developing big industry becomes a priority in
the push to redevelop the Japanese economy.
Big industry and government come to work
closely together towards common goals.
Project on censorship: offered
through Stanford University’s
SPICE program.
http://spice.stanford.edu/ind
ex.html
The atomic bombs: find some
links at Japan Guide,
http://www.japan-guide.com/
A good documentary in English
is “Why the Bomb Was
Dropped” which can be found
at the Asian Educational
Resource Guide,
http://www.aems.uiuc.edu/inde
x.las
7. Postwar: to about 1990
1955 LDP forms.
Beginning of 1955
system.
1957 Former Class A
war crimes suspect,
Kishi, becomes Prime
Minister.
a. In 1955, a conservative-center coalition is built when
the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party join forces.
The newly formed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
held power until 1993 in what is called the “1955
system.”
b. In 1960 the Prime Minster Hayato announces an
“income doubling” plan, but actually growth through
the 1960s outstrips even this goal.
1960 Massive
demonstrations against
renewal of security treaty
with the US. Kishi resigns.
Ikeda Hayato announces
income doubling plan.
1964 Summer Olympics in
Tokyo.
1972 Nixon shocks: US
normalizes relations with China
and devalues the dollar.
US returns Okinawa to Japanese
control.
1973 First oil shock.
1980s Bubble
economy develops.
Japan emerges as
economic
superpower.
i. Growth in GDP and per capita income changes
people’s everyday lives very quickly. People in
Japan in the ‘60s and ‘70s become familiar with
most of the consumer commodities that
Americans do in the same time period, but they
started from being on par with Sri Lanka and
the Philippines.
ii. A very large middle class comes into being.
But there are still differences within this: only
about 30% of the workforce (which is almost
all male) enjoys lifetime employment at big
corporations.
iii. Urbanization, especially around Tokyo. More
than 1 mil. people a year move into urban
areas, coming to live in large apartment
complexes. Rural areas become depopulated.
c. Citizen activist groups are active from the early
postwar up until the present day. Fighting against
things like pollution, nuclear weapons, remilitarization,
alliance with the US, sexism and segregation, and
forgetting Japan’s wartime atrocities, these groups
form dedicated grassroots networks.
8. Postwar: to the present
1989 Showa Emporer
dies. Son Akihito
succeeds him,
inaugurating the
Heisei era.
a. The end of the cold war puts Japan in a different
international position. It finds itself having to account
for itself beyond its alliance with the US.
1993 LDP loses majority in
the Diet.
Lesson ideas for teaching the
economic recovery from
Ohio State University:
http://www.acs.ohiostate.edu/internationalstudies/
japan/japaninstitute/index.ht
ml
What are Japanese cities
like? Lesson idea from the
wonderful Ask Asia site:
http://www.askasia.org/
Also a subway map from
Teaching and Learning about
Japan:
http://www.csuohio.edu/histo
ry/japan/index.html
What do people do to protect
the environment in Japan?
Kid’s Web Japan has a nice
introduction: http://webjapan.org/kidsweb/index.html
What is contemporary
Japan like, what are
students lives like? Take a
snapshot tour at the Japan
Society’s site:
http://www.japansociety.or
g/journey/
1995 Kobe earthquake.
Aum subway attack.
2000 Unemployment
reaches 5%.
b. The economic downturn of that started in the late ‘80s
and early ‘90s continues for over a decade, shaking
confidence in the Japanese postwar system.
c. The earthquake and subway attacks in 1995 further
shake confidence.
IV. Conclusion and Further Leads
•
A good book to start with is Andrew Gordon’s A Modern History of Japan:
from Tokugawa Times to the Present. It has a bibliography for further reading
that can be accessed by clicking here.