The evolution of the council in the Japanese government 1868-1890

Abstract

Between 1868 and 1890, Japan advanced from an agglomeration of feudal principalities rapidly escaping from central control to a modern, centralised state equipped with a constitution and a national assembly in line with the advanced states of the world. Centred on the person of the young Emperor Meiji, a government largely drawn from the samurai executives of a handful of feudal principalities slowly but steadily tightened its grip upon the country, until in 1890 a new regime had been established which lasted basically unchanged until 1945. The technical problem of building a centralised state involved new economic and social policies, such as new systems of taxation, new conscription laws and improved communications. The human problem was to attract leading men to the new government; and having done so, to get them work well together on a common policy and to rise above the factions and rivalries inevitable in a government dependent at the outset for its existence upon the support of several independent principalities, none of which was alone strong enoughto impose its will upon the rest. The Meiji government began with a civil war, but from the start it was of necessity a government based upon some measure of accomodation of different interests. The alternative to accomodation was further civil wars and a return to a discredited regime which in the past had left Japan at the mercy of foreign powers. The person of the young Emperor enabled his factious servants to formulate a new concept of national loyalty; the more so since in feudal Japan loyalties were to persons rather than to principles. The undivided sovereignty necessary for the creation of a modern centralised state could be convincingly attributed in their eyes to the young Emperor for whom they acted in trust. Thus while power had to be shared, all power could be attributed to the Emperor. It is in the Council, a body that changed its name and shape several times during this period but which never lost its control of the sovereign power, that these dilemmas may best be seen. While maintaining a Jealous control of sovereign power in the name of the Emperor, accomodation demanded that this control should never attain the dimensions of "preponderance". Behind the doctrine of the separation of Legislature, Executive and Judiciary, the one principle with which western political thought provided Japan, there lay the more immediately human concern to avoid the domination of the country in the name of the Emperor by a single person or faction, an evil of which the past history of Japan was largely made up. But before power could be shared, it had to be defined; and the course of constitutional progress between 1868 and 1890 is largely one of legal definition. This thesis is an attempt to describe the evolution of the Council between these dates. While tracing the steps towards the final definition in the light of the legal ordinances, an attempt will be made to describe the personal factors involved at each successive stage. The legal definitions had to be arrived at; but the personalities were ready-made. In the course of the evolution of the Council, the discrepancy between how things were intended to work and how they actually worked provides an essential commentary upon the forces of constitutional change.