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    The Rise & Fall of Imperial Japan
    The Rise & Fall of Imperial Japan
    The Rise & Fall of Imperial Japan
    Ebook182 pages2 hours

    The Rise & Fall of Imperial Japan

    By Stephen Wynn

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    Nearly a century of Japanese Imperial rule, from the 1868 Meiji Restoration to the end of WWII, is explored in this sweeping history.

    Under Emperor Meiji’s rule, Imperial Japan established itself as a world power through rapid industrialization and militarization. Aligned with the Entente Powers during the First World War, Japan made a proposal for racial equality at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference—only to be overruled by American President Woodrow Wilson. In the 1920s, the empire began its military conquest of numerous countries and islands throughout Asia and the Pacific regions.

    Author Stephen Wynn examines Japan’s various military conflicts and colonial efforts, including its invasion of China that coincided with the Second World War. The book culminates with the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which finally brought about Japan’s surrender and the end of the war in Asia and the Pacific.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 30, 2020
    ISBN9781473865501
    The Rise & Fall of Imperial Japan
    Author

    Stephen Wynn

    Stephen is a retired police officer having served with Essex Police as a constable for thirty years between 1983 and 2013. He is married to Tanya and has two sons, Luke and Ross, and a daughter, Aimee. His sons served five tours of Afghanistan between 2008 and 2013 and both were injured. This led to the publication of his first book, Two Sons in a Warzone – Afghanistan: The True Story of a Father’s Conflict, published in October 2010. Both Stephen’s grandfathers served in and survived the First World War, one with the Royal Irish Rifles, the other in the Mercantile Marine, whilst his father was a member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps during the Second World War.When not writing Stephen can be found walking his three German Shepherd dogs with his wife Tanya, at some unearthly time of the morning, when most normal people are still fast asleep.

    Read more from Stephen Wynn

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      Book preview

      The Rise & Fall of Imperial Japan - Stephen Wynn

      CHAPTER ONE

      The Emperor Meiji

      Prince Mutsuhito was the son of the Emperor Komei and one of his concubines, Nakayama Yoshiko, a lady in waiting in the court of the Imperial House of Japan. At birth he was given the name Prince Sachi, or Sachinomiya. Meiji was the 122nd emperor of Japan and came to power on 3 February 1867, the first day of the Imperial Japanese Empire which lasted until 1947.

      When he was 7, on 16 August 1860, he was proclaimed prince of the blood and heir to his father’s throne. On the same day he was formally adopted by his father’s consort, Empress Dowager Eisho. A year later he became the Crown Prince and was given the adult name of Mutsuhito.

      In 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry of the American Navy arrived in Tokyo harbour, which at the time was known as Edo, with a squadron of ships. The purpose of Perry’s mission was to open up trade links between Japan and America. This caused much debate in Japan, and for the first time in 250 years the Shogunate made contact with the Imperial Court to consult with them about what should be done. Perry had not made a polite request in his desire to begin a trade agreement, instead he warned the Japanese that there would be military consequences if they did not agree. Japanese forces were no match for the Americans. Emperor Komei’s officials felt that they should agree to Perry’s request. Accordingly the Japanese agreed to trade with the Americans and even submitted to what were known as ‘Unequal Treaties’, which meant giving up tariff authority and the right to try foreigners in its courts.

      By the early 1860s the Japanese way of life and the very structure of its society was also under threat by internal conflict. This was because the main beneficiaries of international trade were the Shogunate, which displeased the Daimyos. With so much money being made from this trade, and more foreign governments seeking similar agreements, groups of Shishi (young samurai), supporters of the Emperor Komei, were all for direct acts of violence, against both the Shogunate and foreigners, favouring their expulsion from the country.

      Rather than uniting with the shishi and the Emperor so that they could all benefit from trade, the Shogunate did their best to divide the factions so that they remained in overall control of foreign trade. But the shishi had sufficient sway with the Emperor to persuade him to issue an ‘Order to expel barbarians’, which he happily did on 11 March 1863. Foreigners were given two months to leave: the final day was 11 May.

      For the Shogunate, this was a problem: for them, more foreigners meant more money. When the deadline came, attacks began against the Shogunate as well as foreigners. Rebels fired on foreign ships in the waters of the Shimonoseki Strait, the waterway that separates the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. There was no sanctuary on land either. The ronin, masterless samurai, joined the fight and killed a number of westerners and Shogunate officials.

      One of the westerners killed at this time was English merchant Charles Lennox Richardson, who had lived and traded in Shanghai since 1853. In September 1862, having made his fortune, Richardson decided to retire and return to England a wealthy man. On his way home, the ship he was on stopped off at the Japanese port of Yokohama. There he met a friend from Shanghai, a gentleman by the name of Woodthorpe Charles Clarke. They in turn met up with a fellow English merchant named William Marshall and his sister-in-law Margaret Watson Borradaile. Together they went on a sight-seeing tour on horseback, with their final destination being the 700-year-old Buddhist temple in Kawasaki Daishi, some twenty kilometres from Tokyo. As the four travelled through the village of Namamugi, they came across the Satsuma regent, Shimazu Hisamitsu, and his entourage, travelling in the opposite direction. An altercation of some description took place between the two groups which resulted in Richardson being killed and both Clarke and Marshall being wounded. At the inquest into Richardson’s death, Clarke and Marshall stated that as they were travelling through Namamugi they saw a group of samurai ahead of them but did not realise that they were part of a daimyo party. As they turned a corner they suddenly realised they were ‘twelve men deep into the procession and close to the daimyo’. But as they had not been shouted at or challenged by the samurai, they were confident that they would not be hostile towards them. But as they attempted to turn their horses, one of the samurai struck Richardson a blow with his sword, and then did the same to Marshall. Fearing for their lives the men reared up their horses and ran, receiving more wounds as they went. Richardson died later of his wounds.

      Fifteen years later an account from the Satsuma concerning the incident surfaced in the form of a pamphlet, written by American journalist E.H. House. It stated that Richardson was ‘notorious for his violent dealings with the Chinese while he had lived in Shanghai’. Different accounts of Richardson described him as being ‘reckless, stubborn, and arrogant’. All include the sentence, ‘Mr Charles Lennox Richardson, of Shanghai… was murdered in cold blood.’

      When he was 14, Crown Prince Mutsuhito was studying classical poetry. At the same time, Prince Tokugawa Yoshinobu, became the 15th and final Shogun. He was something of a visionary and a reformer who wanted to transform Japan in to a Western style nation, but not all of those around him agreed and he met with a degree of resistance.

      In January 1867, Emperor Komei became unwell and after a short illness he died. Three days later, in a brief ceremony in Kyoto, the Crown Prince ascended to the ‘Chrysanthemum Throne’ and was sworn in as the next Emperor of Japan. Despite his new status, Mutsuhito did not concern himself in political matters but continued with his classical studies.

      At the same time the new Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, struggled to keep the old ways together, and control over his subordinates. An agreement was reached which saw Yoshinobu lose his law-making powers but keep his title as Shogun, but on 9 November 1867, with the agreement having broken down, he resigned, officially tendering his resignation to the Emperor, and formally stepped down ten days later.

      On 4 January 1868, the Emperor read out a document before the Imperial court, proclaiming the restoration of Imperial rule:

      The Emperor of Japan announces to the sovereigns of all foreign countries and to their subjects that permission has been granted to the shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, to return the governing power in accordance with his own request. We shall henceforward exercise supreme authority in all the internal and external affairs of the country. Consequently, the title of Emperor must be substituted for that of Tycoon, in which the treaties have been made. Officers are being appointed by us to the conduct of foreign affairs. It is desirable that the representatives of the treaty powers recognise this announcement.

      Mutsuhito.

      The Charter Oath was presented to the Emperor on 7 April 1868, which in essence was a five-part statement of the intentions and the direction which the country would follow during the Emperor’s reign. It set out the legal stage for Japan’s modernisation, and it changed the structure of society by freeing peoples of all classes to change their jobs, so people from the countryside were free to look for work in the city, where they could obtain better jobs and more pay.

      The oath consisted of five clauses:

      1. Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion.

      2. All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state.

      3. The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent.

      4. Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the laws of nature.

      5. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of the Imperial rule.

      The final draft was not the original one. It had been written by Yuri Kimimasa, a senior councillor of the Imperial Court who dealt with the financial and monetary policy of the Meiji government, but was then toned down to make it sound less alarming. The final draft was written by Kido Takayoshi, a nobleman and a statesman of the Meiji Restoration.

      The oath was read out in the ceremonial hall of the Kyoto Imperial Palace in the presence of the Emperor and some 400 officials of the Imperial Court and the government. They praised the oath and swore to uphold and implement it. Eventually the document contained 767 signatures.

      Shogun Yoshinobu resisted pro-Imperial forces briefly, but by the end of 1869 the last of the ‘bakufu’ strongholds had been defeated, and in September 1870 the era was officially changed to Meiji, which in English means ‘enlightened rule’. It also became the Emperor’s name after his death, which marked the start of the custom of posthumously naming the Emperor after the name of the era during which they ruled.

      It is he who was largely responsible for turning Japan into one of the world’s great powers. At the time of his birth in 1852, the country was a feudal-dominated system which had been in place for centuries, split into more than 250 domains, each controlled by a warrior and his men. Collectively these were controlled by the Tokugawa Shogunate, which was a feudal military government, with the head being the Shogun. The Shogun in fact wielded more power than the Emperor did. Under them came the daimyo or feudal lords, who were also wealthy and powerful individuals.

      Emperor Meiji had the vision and desire to transform Japan in to an industrialised nation and a major power on the world stage.

      Sometime in May 1868, for the first time since his early childhood, the Emperor left the safety of his imperial home in Kyoto to take charge of his forces which were seeking out what was left of the bakufu armies. Because of the large crowds that had turned out to get a glimpse of their Emperor, it took him three days to travel from Kyoto and Osaka, a distance of 26 miles. His purpose wasn’t military, it was so that he could be seen by as many of his people and foreign envoys as possible. When he returned home, it was announced that he would take charge of state affairs, and that any further studies that he undertook would be done in his leisure time. From 1871 onwards he was educated in state affairs. He attended cabinet meetings and other government functions. His style was more to observe than to speak, although he did occasionally.

      On 19 September 1868 the Emperor announced that the city of Edo was to have its name changed to Tokyo, which means ‘eastern capital’, and embarked on a journey there by road, the first time he had been to the city. In Tokyo he visited the harbour, where he boarded a Japanese naval vessel for the first time. The next day

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