When China Rules the World полностью

The Meiji Restoration bore some of the characteristics of a revolution. The purpose was to build a modern state and shed the country’s feudal legacy. The new ruling elite was drawn not from the daimyo but primarily from the samurai, including those sections of farmers that had been latterly incorporated into the samurai class, together with some of the merchant class. There was clearly a shift in class power. And yet, unlike in Europe, the new rising class, the merchants, neither instigated the change nor drove it: in fact, for the most part, they had not come into conflict with the old regime. [143] The leaders of the Restoration, instead, were part of the existing ruling elite, namely the warrior class, whose role had steadily been transformed into one of more generalized administrative leadership. [144] To emphasize this sense of continuity and in order to consolidate popular support and provide legitimacy for the new regime, the samurai restored the emperor to a more central role in Japanese life, an act symbolized by his transfer from Kyoto to Edo, now renamed Tokyo. It was a coup by the elite rather than a popular uprising from below. [145] Thus, although it had some of the attributes of a revolution, it is best described as a restoration, an act that sought to preserve the power of the existing elite in the name of saving Japan from the barbarian threat. It was designed to preserve and maintain as much as transform, its instincts conservative as much as radical. Japan is a deeply conservative country in which the lines of continuity are far stronger than the lines of discontinuity. Even when discontinuity was needed, as in 1868, it was instituted, unlike in France and China – both notable exponents of revolution – by the elite, who, mindful of the need for radical change, nonetheless sought to preserve as much as possible of the old order. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Restoration, certainly in contrast to most revolutions, was relatively bloodless. The ruling elite was to succeed in maintaining the way of life, traditions, customs, family structure, relationships and hierarchies of Japan to a remarkable extent. The Meiji Restoration is testimony to the resilience, inner strength and adaptability of the Japanese ruling elite and its ability to change course when the situation required. [146]

There is one other fundamental difference between the major revolutions in Europe and the Meiji Restoration. The French Revolution was, amongst other things, a response to an internal development – the rise of the bourgeoisie – whereas the Meiji Restoration was a response to an external threat, that of an expansionist West. This was the fundamental geopolitical difference between Europe and the rest of the world: Europe was the leader and, therefore, the predator, while the rest of the world was, in response, obliged to find a way of dealing with Europe ’s power and expansionist intent. This difference also helps to explain why the Restoration was instigated by a section of the elite rather than a rising antagonistic group: what obliged Japan to change course was not the rise of the merchant class but the external threat from the West.

Japan was the world’s first example of reactive modernization: of a negotiated modernity in the context of Western power and pre-eminence. Japanese modernization deliberately and self-consciously walked the tightrope between Westernization and Japanization. Nonethless, compared with later examples of Asian modernization, Japan was in a relatively privileged position: it could make choices – in particular, how and in what ways to modernize – that were not open in the same way to later-comers. As a result, it is a fascinating case-study: a country whose existing elite made a voluntary and calculated decision to Westernize in order to preserve what it perceived to be the nation’s essence.

At critical junctures, notwithstanding the long period of isolation under the Tokugawa, Japan has displayed an openness to foreign influences which goes back to its relationship with Chinese civilization in the fifth and sixth centuries. This willingness to absorb foreign approaches, as and when it has been deemed necessary, has been an underlying strength of Japanese society. Instead of an outright rejection of foreign ideas, the desire to preserve the Japanese ‘essence’ has instead been expressed by attempting to delineate what the Japanese writer Kosaku Yoshino has described as ‘our own realm’, namely those customs, institutions and values which are regarded as indigenous. As Yoshino argues: