Fraser, Andrew
Description
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...[Show more] 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.
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