MEIJI REFORMS

Amongst the early reforms instituted by the Meijis: There were reforms in the area of the Army, Education, as well as major reforms in the Economy.

MILITARY REFORMS:

• The leaders saw clearly that military strength was a crucial factor not only for the central government’s control over the nation, but also in the effort to defend Japan from the West. The early Meiji leaders according to Andrew Gordon were clear they needed military reforms from bottom
• At the time of its victory over the Shogunate, the new government had only a few small volunteer units under its direct control and had been forced to rely on the support of domain armies, principally those of Choshu and A much larger and more centrally controlled military was an obvious necessity.
• Key figures from Choshu like Kido Koin, Omura Masajiro and Yamagata Aritomo were impressed with superior performance of the mixed farmer samurai militias in the restoration Thus they advocated the creation of a conscript army drawn from the whole population. A disagreement between the leaders of the Satsuma and Choshu domains took place, as Satsuma leaders-were against the conscription of ordinary peasants and thought that only loyalist samurais should be incorporated in the army. This was because Satsuma men came from a domain where only 1/4th of the population was samurai, and they feared arming the ignorant peasants. Okubo Toshimichi one of the main leaders from Satsuma was a major champion of this view. Initially in 1871 the Satsuma men succeeded and created an Imperial army which comprised 10,000 samurai drawn from domain armies of Satsuma, Choshu and Tosa and were trained along French lines.
• In 1872, it divided the Ministry of Military Affairs into army and navy ministries. The new navy was made up of ships from the Shogunate fleet and from the various domains but was largely officered by men from Satsuma. Meanwhile the new army came under the leadership of men from Choshu, particularly Yamagata
• The most important military innovation, however, came with the issuance on January 10, 1873, of a conscription law, carefully prepared by Yamagata, who soon thereafter became Army This reform was drew its inspiration from the Prussian and French conscript armies and the idea was to establish a modern army based on universal conscription.
• According to this law –
  1. Beginning at the age of twenty, all men, regardless of social background, were made liable for three years of active military service followed by four in the
  2. Like the French model, there were some exemptions, for household heads, criminals, the physically unfit, students and teachers in many prescribed schools, and government officials.
  3. It also allowed people to buy their way out for a huge fee of 270
• Also conscription could mobilize the energies of the people behind the state and forge ties of loyalty between the government and its Socially, the conscription was another step in disfranchising the samurai estate and creating a society based on equality of opportunity, and militarily it vastly strengthened the regime’s authority by creating a force capable of providing internal security.

• By 1873-74 angry crowds who detested conscription attacked registration centres with nearly 10000 people being arrested. However the law was maintained and in later years a strong discipline and loyalty was shown by Japanese soldiers, as a patriotic spirit was drummed into the masses, which was a key to modern In 1877 the army successful put down the major Satsuma Rebellion.
• In 1878, the Imperial Army General Staff Office, was established directly under the Emperor and was given broad powers for military planning and
• An Imperial Rescript of 1882 called for unquestioning loyalty to the Emperor by the new armed forces and asserted that commands from superior officers were equivalent to commands from the emperor Top-ranking military leaders were given direct access to the Emperor and the authority to transmit his pronouncements directly to the troops.
• Thus, by the mid-1890s Japan’s military was strong enough to move from the task of keeping order at home to that of imposing its will

EDUCATIONAL REFORMS:

• The influence of Western ideas was crucial in the period of early reforms. Several hundred Japanese were studying in the United States and Europe and an even greater number of foreigners lived in Japan. By the 1870s many Meiji leaders looked to the West for lessons about how to organize political institutions, create economic wealth, and foster social Others were fascinated by the political vitality, military invincibility and science and technology of Western nations. This led to an era of ‘bunmei kaika’, which literally means civilization and enlightenment.
• The influence of this was seen most in the area of education, where the Meiji government instituted a new system of education influenced by Western ideas and bunmei kaika. The new leaders clearly saw that an organized, system of education was a fundamental aspect of a modernized
• The Confucian-oriented domain schools for the samurai and the “temple schools”, where commoners learned to read and write, all withered away. The disappearance of most of the earlier schools left the government free to develop a new and modernized system of
• The focus was now on the promotion of self-reliance. Observation of European and American societies convinced leaders such as Kido Koin that mass schooling, was a fundamental source of the economic and military power of the West. At the outset the government announced that schools were to encourage practical learning as well as independent Under the influence of men like Fukuzawa, Mori Arinori the centralized French system was somewhat decentralized and remodelled along American lines.
• As early as 1871 created a Ministry of Education to develop such a system. It first adopted a highly centralized system of education along French lines. Sixteen months of schooling were made compulsory for children of both sexes. Compulsory education was extended to three years in 1880 and to six years in 1907. The elementary schools were to be financed by a 10% local surcharge to the national property
• Liberalization of education was also fostered by the rapid development of a great number of private schools founded by missionaries. Such Christian schools were particularly important in the field of secondary education for girls, which was somewhat neglected by the There were also many secular private schools many of which became in time distinguished universities.

• A shift back toward a more centralized, authoritarian educational system came in the 1880’s and reached its height in 1890 with the Imperial Rescript on Education. Part of the new educational policy was a desirable return to Japanese and Chinese literature, history, and thought, to balance the hitherto almost exclusive concern with Western Other aspects of the new policy were an increasing emphasis on indoctrination in education, standardization of the curriculum, and increased government control over private educational institutions, especially at the lower levels.
• The government school system was expanded and their prestige over the private schools was enhancement. As a result, private elementary and secondary schools shrank to relative
• The Confucian “University” in Edo, the medical school, and the language programs were united in 1869 into a single government institution. The non-Western aspects of the cur- riculum were dropped and in 1877 the school was renamed Tokyo Other government universities, thereafter known as Imperial Universities, were added including Kyoto, Tohoku, Kyushu and Hokkaido
• The unchallenged prestige of the government institutions, which had the lowest tuition rates, made Japanese education more egalitarian than schools of Western countries. The system was open to all who had the desire and ability to make use of it and became the chief device for selecting the leaders of the
• The system, however, had serious drawbacks too. It was so carefully tailored to fit the needs of the state, that it did not adequately meet all the educational needs of Japanese society as it Women’s higher education, for example, grew up largely outside the official educational structure, and the rapid growth of private universities showed that there was a greater demand in Japanese society for higher education than that deemed adequate by the government. There was also a cramping conformity and a possibility of uniform indoctrination that were to prove extremely damaging to Japan in the long run.
• However in the long run just as serving in the military became linked to nationalism, so did By the end of 1905, 95% boys and 93% girls attended elementary schools. Thus the Meijis were successful in bringing about two major reforms in a very short span of time which were necessary for nation building.

LEGAL REFORMS –

• The Japanese reformed their legal institutions along Occidental lines, to win acceptance with the West. Legal renovation was also fundamental to technological modernization and was necessitated by the abolition of the old class structure and other great changes taking
• Western concepts of individual rather than family ownership of property were adopted, although for purposes of formal registration of the population, the law continued to recognize the old extended family, or “house”, consisting of a patriarch and those of his descendants and collateral relatives who had not legally established a new “house”.
• Concepts of legal rights, as opposed to the traditional emphasis on social obligation, came to permeate the new
• The structure and procedures of the courts were made to conform to those of the West, and torture as an accepted legal practice was abolished in
• Most of the legal reforms ware instituted piecemeal and a thorough re-codification of the laws proved a difficult and slow Drafts, drawn up largely under French influence, were

submitted in 1881 and again in 1888. A complete code, revised largely on the basis of German legal precedent, finally went into effect in 1896.