The question of what manner of culture would complement the new social order established through the virtual disestablishment of the domains and the samurai class arose as a clear issue that participants in the freshly
opened up spheres of public discourse took up with a passion. It is this context that provides the springboard for what we latter discuss under the rubric of “Bunmei Kaika”, a term commonly translated as “Civilization and Enlightenment” and associated most often with the Meirokusha which was established in 1873 some time after the Mission’s return. In the following chapter, I will argue in some detail why the use of such terminol- ogy is unhelpful to our understanding of this transitional period; however, before undertaking to clarify the contemporary significance of Bunmei
Kaika (or Kaika) in specifics, some broader consideration of the social and
cultural developments in the wake of the Restoration is necessary.
From 1869 onward, a movement to clarify the dimensions of a new sphere of cultural and political negotiation was already well underway, and not altogether with results that the new government would condone. One of the best introductions to where the impetus and es- sential character of the movement derived from has been expounded by Kosaka Masaaki. In a post- war work, re- edited and published as Meiji
Shiso Shi,41 he masterfully outlines the transformation of the worldview
that occurred in the years immediately following the Restoration. He depicts how public sentiment, which was still firmly grounded in notions of reverence for the Emperor coupled with the fanatical aim of expelling foreigners from the country came to be transformed to the extent that the public were embracing the program of opening the country and cultural refurbishment a mere three or four years later. The year 1869 was when Yokoi Sho-nan was brutally assassinated on a Kyo-to street by Tsuge Shirozaemon for disrespect to the Imperial throne and collaborating with foreigners, and that was perfectly in keeping with the dominant values of the samurai and indeed a greater proportion of the public at the time. The same year was also when the national administration took a great leap backward into the ancient past with the rebirth of the Taiho¯ Code.
Kosaka defines the decisive turning point away from the retrospective movement as 1871 with the implementation of the policy to abolish the Domains and the promotion of the Dajo¯kan above the Jingikan. More importantly, he notes the transformation of the daily lives of people in the cities: the first railways, the first postal services and, for the broader population, the implementation of (notionally at least) a national educa- tion system and a system of military conscription. The ultimate mark of personal transformation was, naturally enough, the cutting of hair in the Western style. None of these things are of course causally sufficient, but they indicate more precisely how the new- model Japanese citizen was beginning to emerge out of the chrysalis of the Restoration.
In reality, the lives of those living in the countryside varied to some extent depending on their proximity to major urban centers or profita- ble commodities; a substantial proportion, however, were to witness the effect of an influx of foreign- made goods that would drive many of the traditional artisans and manufacturers into penury, while also draining the nation of gold and silver reserves that were the main recourse for obtaining foreign currency. The urban public would experience the neg- ative impact of opening the internal markets as well but there was the consolation of new commodities and conveniences that had the undeni- able capacity to enthrall the popular imagination. There were tangible signs of “progress” in the form of new public buildings, post offices and railway stations—as well as new urban shopping precincts (such as the one at Ginza) with the newly established network of gas lamps. There was also the hitherto unimaginable convenience of new forms of transport such as the postal steamer and—albeit in relatively limited geo- graphical cases—the railroad. There were new modes of communication such as the daily newspaper and the telegraph. It did not particularly matter that not everyone could afford to personally utilize or experience these inventions in their personal lives, what mattered most was that it gave concrete expression to a new form of national lifestyle.42
The initial newspapers were extremely limited in geographical reach to the major urban centers of Kanto- and Kansai, yet they gradually came to be emulated in the countryside toward the end of the1870s. The advertisements of the first mass- produced newspapers were limited in the scope of their content to steamship companies and luxury items thereby suggesting that their readership was far from being among the urban rank and file. By contrast, private consumption did undergo an extraordinary degree of transformation through the proliferation of the distinctive packaging for daily items, especially the cans and bottles that were increasingly being produced en masse locally. These were rela- tively simple personal items that could be obtained by ordinary persons for daily use and were remodeled in a manner that fused traditional Japanese printing techniques with the Roman alphabet and foreign iconography.43 Early examples are found in the packaging of medicines
and cosmetics but later on, this came to include a boom in the con- sumption of matches and soap, two other items that were produced in substantial quantities domestically from the mid-1870s onward.
Of equal significance to this was the fact that the Meiji Emperor himself had been remodeled and repackaged as a modern sovereign. He and his retinue were presented in early Meiji prints predominantly in Western dress. He now rode a horse and dined on Western cuisine.
If the Emperor himself was undergoing these changes, it must have seemed little short of disrespect to not do likewise. It should also be noted that there was a decidedly military emphasis in the new profile being given to the throne. The Western attire was almost exclusively that of a military commander, the horse riding that he undertook was actually part of a daily regimen of training that included shooting practice and parade ground drills. This was part of the deliberate “trade-off” of tra- ditional forms and customs for the appropriation of Western military prowess, always one of the practical military objectives that unpinned the Sonno¯ Jo¯i movement. The regimen of military training was actually Saigo- Takamori’s idea and it provides an insight into how his concep- tion of what Restoration meant for national reconstruction differed in subtle ways to that of O–kubo and Kido.44
In conjunction with these changes among the commoner public and within the court, there was also a transformation of the intellectual outlook of the urban educated public, a significant portion of which was lower- ranking samurai. In this regard, Fukuzawa Yukichi is rightly highlighted as being one of the primary exponents of redefining that outlook. To use Kosaka’s terms, Fukuzawa mediated a “transformation of life’s purpose” within a new social arrangement where ability would count for much more than rank, not in absolute terms, but significantly enough to make the iron cage of unwarranted privilege disappear.45
Indeed there would be opportunities for samurai, and even the more able members from non- samurai castes, to find new vocations in either the newly formed system of national administration or the newly expanded horizon of the national economy, made possible as it was by the newly expanded network of cultural interaction.46
Fukuzawa’s other significant contribution to the new cultural movement was that he was one of the first to use the term Bunmei Kaika in print. That is not to say that there were not other cases than his, as it is clear that both terms were separately current prior to Fukuzawa writing Seiyo¯ Jijo¯ . Fukuzawa was a pamphleteer and popularizer par excellence, yet he was not the only one to enjoy publishing success and one also needs to bear in mind the fact that employing a phrase to denote a new social movement is not the same as actually creating it. Indeed the terms Kaika and Bunmei
Kaika had a separate life among the popular urban press where, perhaps
quite surprisingly, the tone was at times derogatory and derisive.47
Conseqently, Kaika was not exclusively concerned with the adaptation of Western technology and culture but was, perhaps more significantly, tied up with the clarification of an indigenous cultural reconfiguration. We are perhaps too quick to assume that by “Bunmei”, the Japanese were
referring to Western civilization. This was undoubtedly the case for some writers at the time (as well as a considerable portion of the reading pub- lic); however, we ought not to forget that, since the words “Bunmei” and “Kaika” were current before the Restoration, they had an intrinsic domain of meaning much broader than the post-1868 circumstances might tend to suggest.48 Naturally the fount of that learning up until the Bakumatsu
period was predominantly Chinese. With the opening of the country and the accommodation of non- Chinese letters into the first rank of study, certainly the purview of the term was transformed, but not altogether.
To locate the evolution of these words within the context of the milieu that Kosaka so vividly conjures up, especially in the sense of moving from profound seclusionism to an embracing of the outside world, we can even interpret “Bunmei Kaika” as the opening up of Japanese civili- zation, particularly in the realm of culture and learning. Bunmei Kaika was primarily a cultural movement, not a political movement; it was the intellectual correlate to kaikoku (栚⦌), opening the country.
Additional insights into the nature of this transformation of the world of letters in modernizing societies is provided by Ernest Gellner’s
Nations and Nationalism, one of the rare expositions of modernization
that accounts for the transformation of culture in the age of industri- alization and nationalism without recourse to ethnocentrism. Gellner aptly accentuates how a certain universalization and meritocratization of the mode of educating emerges in tandem with the rationalization of other aspects of industrialized societies. The imperative of the modern nation state is simply to meld the populace contained within a given geographical area to the seamless (i.e., unitary) state apparatus that exerts exclusive authority over it. This process of integration is inevi- tably complicated by religious and ethnic factors but what ultimately matters is that somehow an ethos of identification with the state is achieved; this is an open problem that each potential nation state has to resolve, and when it does so it often achieves it imperfectly, albeit on its own terms and largely in its own unique way.49
The key contention here is that this phase of cultural redefinition mediates a transition from elite- to- elite dissemination of knowledge— the maintenance of a “high tradition” of education and cultural repro- duction—to a mode of discourse that is altogether more homogenous, open and standardized; yet at the same time, this does not presuppose the necessity of a liberal or universalist content to that education.
The Bunmei Kaika movement was in essence the first stage of clear- ing the way for this melding process to come into effect. Whether the content of the new discourse was liberal or reactionary, universalist or
particularist, is naturally of interest yet it remains secondary to the mat- ter of creating the preconditions for developing a truly homogeneous
national culture.