One Japan, Zero Emperor (Japan 1902-1910)
The fratricidal war was at last over in the Japanese islands. Though the Great War had been responsible for many events, a lot of them awful and tragic, the realm which had been divided between Tokugawa Shogunate and Satsuma Shogunate was reunified. The ‘Chinese scenario’ where one dominant realm towered over a much weaker one dancing on the tune of foreign parties was avoided.
The first policies ordered by the victorious Southern Japanese were of course to rebuild. While the War of Reunification – the name the conflict on the Japanese Islands was given when Edo was captured – was a triumph, it also brought an incredible amount of devastation and deaths. In the plains, in the mountains and on the seas, Japanese had killed Japanese and modern artillery had rendered fertile lands uncultivable. Starvation was not unavoidable, but rationing didn’t end with a signature at the treaty of Manila. Large areas of central Honshu needed to be demined, their bunkers and trenches removed, and the former inhabitants found when they had not been slaughtered in the first offensives.
In second came the Southern efforts to erase the potential of a second civil war happening. The North had begun this war – a position which had the great advantage to be the truth – and the North had lost it. End of the story. The Emperor’s divine blood was evidently not divine enough to prevent him from giving his followers a great victory, and several newspapers and great authors hired by important figures of Nagasaki and Kagoshima took great care to unveil the problems generated by Tokugawa rule. Daimyos and senior figures of the Northern regime were tracked and searched for, and by 1906, those who had not fled their homeland were languishing in prisons for common criminals.
This had several effects in the Japanese culture. First, the title of Emperor was no longer to be used. There was some mysticism left, but this was mostly from the period preceding the era of Tokugawa rule. When Shogun Shimazu Teruhime died in 1904 of old age, her nephew Shimazu Takamori continued to be called Shogun. The title ‘Protector of the Japanese Lands and Seas’ was added to it, but Takamori would not seek divine justifications and neither would his descendants. No speech declared it in front of tens of thousands men, but the Japanese population wanted to be rule by a man, not by a semi-legendary figure they never saw or heard. The Northern nobility, which had remained several times more powerful than its Southern rival, was annihilated. Between the losses in the Great War, the revolts, the purges and the exiles, the daimyos families were but a shadow of themselves by 1905. And this led directly to the new status quo: Kagoshima was to remain capital of the new Japanese realm. There would be no official command to move the government’s seat to the old capital of Kyoto as it was proposed by several Northerners. Northern Japan was gone, the Tokugawa legacy was not one the Shimazu and their allies in the new Parliament wanted. Edo was not even chosen to be a provincial capital, when the new administrative reforms ended in 1907.
There was much discontent, but the numbers were supporting the Satsuma reforms. By 1902, the Japanese population on the mainland had descended to 41 million, but it was not a 50-50 repartition: there were twenty-six million ‘Southerners’ to prevail over fifteen million ‘Northerners’, a consequence of the short-sighted policies of the Tokugawa finance and agriculture rule. Worse, there were three million Chosen to add in this new nation and the survivors of the Tokugawa administration sent panicked secret messages overseas when they realised that, far from fighting each other, the Southern Japanese and the Southern Chosen population were allying to make sure no Northern influence would come to influence the new Japan they were building. For the Northern peasants who had been forgotten by their tyrannical masters, it was a neat period of improvement. The situation which developed for the rest of the decade didn’t improve the mood of those opposed to the rule of Kagoshima: industrial nodes rose from the earth by the hundreds, and the population skyrocketed, always with a good advantage for the South. By 1910, the Japanese Shogunate was home to fifty-one million inhabitants, and plenty of Southern men and women were moving north to export their way of life and find business opportunities.
The Emperor-in-exile, the exiled Tokugawa Shogun and his advisors, were front to confront the fact their hereditary enemies had broken the back of any potential fifth column well before they could be in position to stage a coordinated uprising.
And to pour salt on the injury, it was obvious the Satsuma Shogun and the reunified government were more preoccupied by two new potential enemies westwards rather than eastwards. The first was unquestionably Russia. In the beginning, the extension of Russian influence had been seen as a good thing, since it prevented a future Chinese reunification and having an Emperor next door demanding the return of Chosen. But as years passed, even the most optimistic General could not say there was a scenario where Beijing could emerge victorious if the Chuans mounted a new offensive. The Wu were a paper tiger, and the Japanese were beginning to remember who was currently occupying Hokkaido, preventing any Japanese expansion northwards.
Unfortunately, Chuan China was many things but not an ally. The anti-foreigner position was a strict one and Japanese were firmly anchored in it. The fact the Satsuma Shogun was year after year selling high-quality food and finished products out of its factories to Guangzhou and Shanghai never produced the warming-up in the relationships the politicians expected, guaranteeing Kagoshima continued to modernise its naval forces and renewed treaties with the French Empire. Encircled by potential hostile giants, the Japanese had little wish to provoke a war, but the tense diplomatic waters made obvious that sooner or later, there would a war to avenge the hatred created by the Great War...
The fratricidal war was at last over in the Japanese islands. Though the Great War had been responsible for many events, a lot of them awful and tragic, the realm which had been divided between Tokugawa Shogunate and Satsuma Shogunate was reunified. The ‘Chinese scenario’ where one dominant realm towered over a much weaker one dancing on the tune of foreign parties was avoided.
The first policies ordered by the victorious Southern Japanese were of course to rebuild. While the War of Reunification – the name the conflict on the Japanese Islands was given when Edo was captured – was a triumph, it also brought an incredible amount of devastation and deaths. In the plains, in the mountains and on the seas, Japanese had killed Japanese and modern artillery had rendered fertile lands uncultivable. Starvation was not unavoidable, but rationing didn’t end with a signature at the treaty of Manila. Large areas of central Honshu needed to be demined, their bunkers and trenches removed, and the former inhabitants found when they had not been slaughtered in the first offensives.
In second came the Southern efforts to erase the potential of a second civil war happening. The North had begun this war – a position which had the great advantage to be the truth – and the North had lost it. End of the story. The Emperor’s divine blood was evidently not divine enough to prevent him from giving his followers a great victory, and several newspapers and great authors hired by important figures of Nagasaki and Kagoshima took great care to unveil the problems generated by Tokugawa rule. Daimyos and senior figures of the Northern regime were tracked and searched for, and by 1906, those who had not fled their homeland were languishing in prisons for common criminals.
This had several effects in the Japanese culture. First, the title of Emperor was no longer to be used. There was some mysticism left, but this was mostly from the period preceding the era of Tokugawa rule. When Shogun Shimazu Teruhime died in 1904 of old age, her nephew Shimazu Takamori continued to be called Shogun. The title ‘Protector of the Japanese Lands and Seas’ was added to it, but Takamori would not seek divine justifications and neither would his descendants. No speech declared it in front of tens of thousands men, but the Japanese population wanted to be rule by a man, not by a semi-legendary figure they never saw or heard. The Northern nobility, which had remained several times more powerful than its Southern rival, was annihilated. Between the losses in the Great War, the revolts, the purges and the exiles, the daimyos families were but a shadow of themselves by 1905. And this led directly to the new status quo: Kagoshima was to remain capital of the new Japanese realm. There would be no official command to move the government’s seat to the old capital of Kyoto as it was proposed by several Northerners. Northern Japan was gone, the Tokugawa legacy was not one the Shimazu and their allies in the new Parliament wanted. Edo was not even chosen to be a provincial capital, when the new administrative reforms ended in 1907.
There was much discontent, but the numbers were supporting the Satsuma reforms. By 1902, the Japanese population on the mainland had descended to 41 million, but it was not a 50-50 repartition: there were twenty-six million ‘Southerners’ to prevail over fifteen million ‘Northerners’, a consequence of the short-sighted policies of the Tokugawa finance and agriculture rule. Worse, there were three million Chosen to add in this new nation and the survivors of the Tokugawa administration sent panicked secret messages overseas when they realised that, far from fighting each other, the Southern Japanese and the Southern Chosen population were allying to make sure no Northern influence would come to influence the new Japan they were building. For the Northern peasants who had been forgotten by their tyrannical masters, it was a neat period of improvement. The situation which developed for the rest of the decade didn’t improve the mood of those opposed to the rule of Kagoshima: industrial nodes rose from the earth by the hundreds, and the population skyrocketed, always with a good advantage for the South. By 1910, the Japanese Shogunate was home to fifty-one million inhabitants, and plenty of Southern men and women were moving north to export their way of life and find business opportunities.
The Emperor-in-exile, the exiled Tokugawa Shogun and his advisors, were front to confront the fact their hereditary enemies had broken the back of any potential fifth column well before they could be in position to stage a coordinated uprising.
And to pour salt on the injury, it was obvious the Satsuma Shogun and the reunified government were more preoccupied by two new potential enemies westwards rather than eastwards. The first was unquestionably Russia. In the beginning, the extension of Russian influence had been seen as a good thing, since it prevented a future Chinese reunification and having an Emperor next door demanding the return of Chosen. But as years passed, even the most optimistic General could not say there was a scenario where Beijing could emerge victorious if the Chuans mounted a new offensive. The Wu were a paper tiger, and the Japanese were beginning to remember who was currently occupying Hokkaido, preventing any Japanese expansion northwards.
Unfortunately, Chuan China was many things but not an ally. The anti-foreigner position was a strict one and Japanese were firmly anchored in it. The fact the Satsuma Shogun was year after year selling high-quality food and finished products out of its factories to Guangzhou and Shanghai never produced the warming-up in the relationships the politicians expected, guaranteeing Kagoshima continued to modernise its naval forces and renewed treaties with the French Empire. Encircled by potential hostile giants, the Japanese had little wish to provoke a war, but the tense diplomatic waters made obvious that sooner or later, there would a war to avenge the hatred created by the Great War...