Politics and education in Japan, 1870s-1890s
Fukuzawa was a unique figure in modern Japanese history, not just because of his "rags to riches" story, working himself from a low-ranking samurai to an indispensable civil servant to the bakufu government, and finally, a best seller and popular figure in the Meiji era. He was expert at seizing new opportunities for growth: from Dutch learning to English (Western) learning, (Japanese/English) dictionaries, best-selling books on Western learning, founding a private university. Fukuzawa also firmly held to a principle he set for himself: independence of thought. This independence, however, was in a way provided for him by the Meiji state in the opportunities of writing and education. he saw shrewdly that the latter path would provide greater benefits to him than service in the government office. So he navigated against the mainstream trend to work for the state and held on to his own. Hopper tries to argue that through working outside of government office and bringing pressure on the state, Fukuzawa was helping to bring greater democracy to Meiji Japan.
1. Japanese politics in the 1870s-1890: political activism and conservative backlashes.
Hopper depicts the Japan in the 1870s as polarized between political activism that argued for democracy and popular rights on the one hand, and conservative politicians who wanted to restore the status of the former samurai on the other hand. The latter was reflected in the petition for a Korean expedition to subdue the Koreans who refused to open up Korea to Japan as Japan had done to the West, in 1973. When the Council of State, the group of behind-the-scene advisers to the emperor, turned down the idea because they felt Japan was not ready for it yet, a rebellion was staged in 1877 against the Meiji government, to be put down at a great cost, including the assassination of Okubo Toshimichi, Home Minister and the chief opponent of the Satsuma rebellion, in 1878. At the other end of the political spectrum was the popular rights movement that presssed for a real democratically elected government. The Meiji Charter Oath of 1868, by stating that "Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by public discussion," gave many the impression that Japan was going to have an elective government, leading to many popular debates about what form this elective government was going to take. Moreover, both the conservatives and popular rights advocates were led by (sometimes former) members of the Council of State, in particular, the Satsuma rebellion was led by Saigo Takamori, and the popular rights movement by Itagaki Taisuke, both former samurai that helped in the process of the Meiji Restoration, especially Saigo. This meant even among the elites, there was a wide range of opinions over where Japan was going to go.
Indeed, in the 1870s Japanese statesmen, advisers to the emperor, held a wide range of views toward the future constitutional government. They included:
Ito, the chief drafter of the constitution, represented the middle-of-the-road approach among the statesmen: he wanted sovereignty to be lodged with the emperor, governing authority delegated to a cabinet of state ministers responsible only to the emperor and totally independent of the legislature, and a bicameral legislature with a popularly elected lower house with only limited powers (James McClain, Japan (2002), 194-195). Ito prepared the way for the new constitution through establishing a new peerage (and repealing the social distinctions made in 1869 where the former samurai were still treated as a separate group from the commoners even though they were no longer nobles), including some old nobles, and civil and military officers, in 1884. In 1885, the Council of State was abolished and replaced by a modern cabinet system.
The greatest challenge facing Ito, however, was to prevent a political "chaos"--the people triumphing over the state, when an electoral system was put in place. In the face of the popular rights movement, this need seemed more imperative. Ito and his colleagues wanted the reform to follow the agenda of the Council of State, or after its abolition in 1885, a select group of politicians in the government. Therefore, as the time was drawing nearer to the promulgation of the constitution, more laws were put in place to keep people away from active political involvement. In his final drafts of the constitution, Ito more than before emphasized the unique symbolic significance of the emperor in Japan: "the crown was an institution far more deeply rooted in the national sentiment and in our history than in other countries. It was indeed the very essence of a once theocratic State." Therefore, even though in the constitution the emperor reigned but seldom ruled, "the first principle of our constitution is the respect for the sovereign rights of the emperor." Ito "was determined that Japan's quest for political modernity proceed on its own terms and in a manner congruent with the most hallowed traditions of its past."(McClain, 201) In 1875 the Press Law was also promulgated that held individual publishers responsible for what was aired in their publications. In 1887, the Peace Preservation Ordinance regulated the mass media and mass meetings, tightening censorship laws. In 1890, a law denied women's participation in politics and, although loosened in 1922, women continued to be barred from voting or running for office.
2. Japanese education, 1870s-1890
A similar approach of reform conducted within government control was practiced in modern Japanese education. In 1872, Japan implemented its first nation-wide modern school system, patterned after the French system because the latter was highly centralized. Schools from the primary to the tertiary levels were divided into districts, with the (state) universities taking the leadership of the primary and middle schools in a certain region and one elite state university leading national education. Therefore there were only a select number of universities (the initial plan for state universities was eight) compared with hundreds of thousands (over 50,000) primary schools and a significantly smaller number of high schools (256 by the initial plan), forming an educational hierarchy that would produce students who would finally be fed into state bureaucracy.
In 1879, a new educational ordinance was implemented that was a conservative backslash against the liberal readings on some Japanese school campuses, including Keio. In 1890, this conservatism, just as the conservatism more directly apparent in politics, was the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education, calling on loyalty to the emperor and the evocation of many other traditional values. Education became more conservative while politics was about to become more open.
3. Fukuzawa Yukichi and reform
Like so many other Japanese of his time, Fukuzawa was neither a complete reformer nor a radical conservative. On the whole, he was at the forefront of reform, emphasizing a new platform of Western learning and values, including "personal dignity, self-respect, independence, education, health and exercise, and the individual's duty as a citizen to serve in the army." (Hopper, 132) He wanted a constitutional, representative government for Japan, and wanted to introduce greater equality to women. But at the same time he was against popular rights and mass political participation, and his reform of women's lot was confined to only certain segments in society. Moreover, his reform agenda for women was not applied to his own daughters. His limitations contrasted with his own dogged individualism throughout his life, including his establishment of private primary and secondary schools when the government implemented (or announced the implementation of ) universal education from primary to secondary schools. The inner conflicts and contradictions within Fukuzawa shows that even with some of the most reform minded Japanese, reform was a very complex process.