Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

In Japan history presents a basic solidarity of outlook and of purpose, punctuated with brief conflicting outbursts which seem to be contradictory and inexplicable. The explanation of this is to be found in the fact that there was, indeed, a solidarity of outlook but that this solidarity was considerably less solid than it appeared, for, beneath it, Japanese society was filled with fissures and discontents. The solidarity of outlook rested on the ideology which we have mentioned. This ideology, sometimes called Shintoism, was propagated by the upper classes, especially by the Meiji oligarchy but was more sincerely embraced by the lower classes, especially by the rural masses, than it was by the oligarchy which propagated it. This ideology accepted an authoritarian, hierarchical, patriarchal society, based on families, clans, and nation, culminating in respect and subordination to the emperor. In this system there was no place for individualism, self-interest, human liberties, or civil rights.

In general, this system was accepted by the mass of the Japanese peoples. As a consequence, these masses allowed the oligarchy to pursue policies of selfish self-aggrandizement, of ruthless exploitation, and of revolutionary economic and social change with little resistance. The peasants were oppressed by universal military service, by high taxes and high interest rates, by low farm prices and high industrial prices, and by the destruction of the market for peasant handicrafts. They revolted briefly and locally in 1884-1885, but were crushed and never revolted again, although they continued to be exploited. All earlier legislation seeking to protect peasant proprietors or to prevent monopolization of the land was revoked in the 1870’s.

In the 1880’s there was a drastic reduction in the number of landowners, through heavy taxes, high interest rates, and low prices for farm products. At the same time the growth of urban industry began to destroy the market for peasant handicrafts and the rural “putting-out system” of manufacture. In seven years, 1883-1890, about 360,000 peasant proprietors were dispossessed of 5 million yen worth of land because of total tax arrears of only 114,178 yen (or arrears of only one-third yen, that is, 17 American cents, per person). In the same period, owners were dispossessed of about one hundred times as much land by foreclosure of mortgages. This process continued at varying rates, until, by 1940, three-quarters of Japanese peasants were tenants or part-tenants paying rents of at least half of their annual crop.

In spite of their acceptance of authority and Shinto ideology, the pressures on Japanese peasants would have reached the explosive point if safety valves had not been provided for them. Among these pressures we must take notice of that arising from population increase, a problem arising, as in most Asiatic countries, from the introduction of Western medicine and sanitation. Before the opening of Japan, its population had remained fairly stable at 28-30 million for several centuries. This stability arose from a high death rate supplemented by frequent famines and the practice of infanticide and abortion. By 1870 the population began to grow, rising from 30 million to 56 million in 1920, to 73 million in 1940, and reaching 87 million in 1955.

The safety valve in the Japanese peasant world resided in the fact that opportunities were opened, with increasing rapidity, in nonagricultural activities in the period 1870-1920. These nonagricultural activities were made available from the fact that the exploiting oligarchy used its own growing income to create such activities by investment in shipping, railroads, industry, and services. These activities made it possible to drain the growing peasant population from the rural areas into the cities. A law of 1873 which established primogeniture in the inheritance of peasant property made it evident that the rural population which migrated to the cities would be second and third sons rather than heads of families. This had numerous social and psychological results, of which the chief was that the new urban population consisted of men detached from the discipline of the patriarchal family and thus less under the influence of the general authoritarian Japanese psychology and more under the influence of demoralizing urban forces. As a consequence, this group, after 1920, became a challenge to the stability of Japanese society.

In the cities the working masses of Japanese society continued to be exploited, but now by low wages rather than by high rents, taxes, or interest rates. These urban masses, like the rural masses whence they had been drawn, submitted to such exploitation without resistance for a much longer period than Europeans would have done because they continued to accept the authoritarian, submissive Shintoist ideology. They were excluded from participation in political life until the establishment of adult manhood suffrage in 1925. It was not until after this date that any noticeable weakening of the authoritarian Japanese ideology began to appear among the urban masses.

Resistance of the urban masses to exploitation through economic or social organizations was weakened by the restrictions on workers’ organizations of all kinds. The general restrictions on the press, on assemblies, on freedom of speech, and on the establishment of “secret” societies were enforced quite strictly against all groups and doubly so against laboring groups. There were minor socialistic and laborers’ agitations in the twenty years 1890-1910. These were brought to a violent end in 1910 by the execution of twelve persons for anarchistic agitations. The labor movement did not raise its head again until the economic crisis of 1919-1922.

The low-wage policy of the Japanese industrial system originated in the self-interest of the early capitalists, but came to be justified with the argument that the only commodity Japan had to offer the world, and the only one on which it would construct a status as a Great Power, was its large supply of cheap labor. Japan’s mineral resources, including coal, iron, or petroleum, were poor in both quality and quantity; of textile raw materials it had only silk, and lacked both cotton and wool. It had no natural resources of importance for which there was world demand such as were to be found in the tin of Malaya, the rubber of Indonesia, or the cocoa of West Africa; it had neither the land nor the fodder to produce either dairy or animal products as Argentina, Denmark, New Zealand, or Australia. The only important resources it had which could be used to provide export goods to exchange for imported coal, iron, or oil were silk, forest products, and products of the sea. All these required a considerable expenditure of labor, and these products could be sold abroad only if prices were kept low by keeping wage rates down.

Since these products did not command sufficient foreign exchange to allow Japan to pay for the imports of coal, iron, and oil which a Great Power must have, Japan had to find some method by which it could export its labor and obtain pay for it. This led to the growth of manufacturing industries based on imported raw materials and the development of such service activities as fishing and ocean shipping. At an early date Japan began to develop an industrial system in which raw materials such as coal, wrought iron, raw cotton, or wool were imported, fabricated into more expensive and complex forms, and exported again for a higher price in the form of machinery or finished textiles. Other products which were exported included such forest products as tea, carved woods, or raw silk, or such products of Japanese labor as finished silks, canned fish, or shipping services.

The political and economic decisions which led to these developments and which exploited the rural and urban masses of Japan were made by the Meiji oligarchy and their supporters. The decision-making powers in this oligarchy were concentrated in a surprisingly small group of men, in all, no more than a dozen in number, and made up, chiefly, of the leaders of the four western clans which had led the movement against the shogun in 1867. These leaders came in time to form a formal, if extralegal, group known as the Genro (or Council of Elder Statesmen). Of this group Robert Reischauer wrote in 1938: “It is these men who have been the real power behind the Throne. It became customary for their opinion to be asked and, more important still, to be followed in all matters of great significance to the welfare of the state. No Premier was ever appointed except from the recommendation of these men who became known as Genro. Until 1922 no important domestic legislation, no important foreign treaty escaped their perusal and sanction before it was signed by the Emperor. These men, in their time, were the actual rulers of Japan.”