Histoire du Japon

As I’m crazy about the Japanese culture, I have also studied the country’s history, and I was impressed by how Japan has evolved from a feudal society to a modern and industrialized power within two or three decades, and that is what I chose as my topic.

From 1603 to 1867, Japanese were living in Edo era. This feudal time is known as a very strict and difficult time period, because of rigid laws that were ruling the country. The shogun was at the head of the state, and the emperor only had a symbolic role, with a religious meaning. All of the shoguns were members of the Tokugawa dynasty. Each part of the territory was led by a daimyo, a local lord, who was under the shogun’s control. In fact, daimyos lived a year in their region, and another year in Edo, by shogun’s side. The shogun exerted pressure on the daimyo, because daimyos’ wife and children always lived in Edo, with the shogun: so, if the daimyo didn’t want to obey the shogun’s orders, the daimyo’s wife was raped, and his children were killed. Edo’s society was shaped by a hereditary social hierarchy, the shinoukousho. There were four main social classes, the warriors, called bushi, the peasants, called nougyou, the artisans, called kougyou and the merchants, called shogyou. These social classes were hereditary, and no one could change it. Japan was also an isolated country because of the sakoku: it means the closure to the world. Nobody could go abroad, and foreign boats couldn’t approach Japan. Only a few could land in Nagasaki because this city was located on a peninsula: it was a sort of security vestibule for the rest of the country. That’s why Japan had an industrial backwardness. Moreover, shoguns wanted Japan to be Buddhist, and all of the Christians missionaries and converts had to be killed. There were also religious prohibitions so people during Edo were not allowed to eat meat. Edo era may seem cruel nowadays.

But then Meiji era came, with a coup d’état of some of the elite’s warrior clans, like the Satsumas, or the Tosas. The emperor’s power was restored, and he decided to modernize Japan by reforming lots of fields. The sakoku and the shinoukousho were ended, the privileges were abolished, and Japan wrote a Constitution, introducing a Parliament and a voting right based on tax qualification. Meiji era may be seen as a revolution, but not like a European revolution: it wasn’t led by the people but by a reformist elite. Then, about industrial backwardness, Japan caught up by being inspired by western nations. Thus in the 1900’s Japan became the first non-western nation to be industrialized. Meiji era was a revolution in many fields such as culture, religion, social hierarchy, economy, industry, and politics. The motto of the country was “Japanese spirit with western methods”.

But Meiji era also had bad consequences and violent backlashes, because Japan didn’t want to be colonized as China was, so Japanese people decided to be those who colonized other countries: the end of Meiji era is like the introduction to Showa era, with the emperor Hirohito, because of many military campaigns and wars in the Kurile islands against Russia, Korea, or China. So even if Meiji era is known as an enlightened period of Japan’s history (in Japanese Meiji means light, illuminated), it also had hard consequences, such as colonialism, or racism.

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