Mutsuhito

Emperor of Japan (r. 1867-1912)

• Born: November 3, 1852
• Birthplace: Kyoto, Japan
• Died: June 30, 1912
• Place of death: Tokyo, Japan

As the first Japanese emperor in two and one-half centuries to exercise real power, Mutsuhito oversaw his nation’s rapid modernization and expanding contacts with the outside world after renewed contact with Western nations brought the collapse of the isolationist shogunate.

Early Life

Mutsuhito (mewt-sew-hee-toh) was the son of one of the many concubines of his father, Emperor Kōmei. At the time of Mutsuhito’s birth, the emperor was the titular ruler of Japan, but in reality all power was in the hands of an official known as the shogun, who theoretically governed in the emperor’s name. The Tokugawas—from whom all shoguns were selected—had been the de facto rulers of Japan since they had unified the island nation 250 years earlier, after a century of civil war.

Mutsuhito was the only one of Kōmei’s six children to survive to adulthood. By most accounts he was a somewhat spoiled, protected, and delicate child who was often prone to temper tantrums. He had a lively curiosity, however, and took great interest in things exotic and foreign. Unlike his father, he was attracted to the increasing number of Westerners who were entering Japan during the 1850’s and 1860’s. Until the mid-1850’s the Tokugawa shogunate had successfully kept most Westerners out of Japan since they had come to power. Japan’s isolation from the Western world lasted until an American flotilla under Commodore Matthew Perry forced open the country in 1854.

In early 1867, Emperor Kōmei died of smallpox at the young age of thirty-six, and Mutsuhito inherited his throne at the even younger age of fourteen, At that time, both the imperial court and the Tokugawa shogunate were growing panicky about growing Western influence in Japan, and the government was consequently in political confusion. The long period of seclusion and peace had greatly weakened the Tokugawa government, and its vulnerability became readily apparent when the ruling shogun was unwilling or unable to turn the Westerners away. Local and middle-level politicians—who saw what had happened to China and other Asian nations after concessions had been extracted by the West—feared for Japan’s survival. Young leaders of four southern domains set aside their differences with one another and revolted against the shogunate. In 1868, they called for the restoration of imperial power and abolition of the shogunate and seized the imperial palace in Kyōto. After the coup was completed, Mutsuhito authorized its actions, and his reign became known as the Meiji era, which means era of enlightened rule.

The new government, consisting of a coalition of revolutionaries from the rebellious domains and their sympathizers in the imperial court, gradually extended imperial control over the whole nation. In a symbolic twenty-two-day trek, the young emperor was carried on a palanquin to the new capital, Tokyo; the procession comprised three thousand soldiers and servants. Six months later, Mutsuhito returned to Kyōto to marry Princess Haruko, a woman two years older than him.

Life’s Work

The new Meiji government believed that only by emulating Western nations could it make Japan strong enough to stand up to the West. The government enacted a series of radical and draconian laws that almost instantaneously transformed all aspects of Japanese life. The rigid feudal class system was abolished, and the samurai gave up their swords to a conscripted European-style military. Compulsory education was established, and Western experts were recruited to teach in the new universities. Within only a few decades, Japan was transformed from an decentralized agrarian economy to a major industrialized power. A constitution was written and adopted, and an elected parliamentary legislative body, the Diet, was established for the first time.

Historians still debate the role that the Meiji emperor played in these dramatic changes. Some of his harshest critics have claimed that he personally did little more than drink sake, dally with his concubines, and watch sumo wrestling. However, they have underestimated his influence. Even if he did nothing else, his release of several important edicts set the moral tone of the Meiji state. His very progressive Charter Oath of April, 1868, established how the new government was to treat its citizens. It pledged equality for all people and promised that all “evil customs” of the past would be eliminated.

The Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors—prepared at the emperor’s direction in January, 1882—was designed to offer guidance to the military. As a code of ethics for the new armed forces, it demanded of commoner recruits loyalty to the emperor and the new Meiji state, rather than to local warlords or provinces. The emperor did several things to reinforce the symbolic connection between the military and his throne: He presented his edict directly to the army minister in an unprecedented ceremony at the imperial palace. He also often wore a military uniform himself and frequently attended military exercises, watched maneuvers, and presided over graduations at the military academies.

The emperor’s Imperial Rescript on Education of October 30, 1890, was one of the most far-reaching statements of policy of the Meiji state. It was read at school functions and ceremonial occasions, and students were required to memorize it. It was an unabashedly Confucian document, extolling the virtues of filial piety, unquestioned obedience to authority, and reverence for the imperial system. It claimed that the Japanese were a unique people, united and tied to the land by bonds of blood, common history, and the emperor. Nationalistic in outlook and intent, it served as a tool for political indoctrination in the schools until the end of World War II.

Significance

Probably no emperor in Japan’s fifteen hundred years of recorded history was more important than Meiji, and none experienced such sweeping change. Today the name Meiji is synonymous with progress and modernization, and he became the symbol around which the new state was both constructed and interpreted. If he was, as some have claimed, a figurehead of actors and politicians with their own agendas for a modern Japan, he played his role well. Both he and Empress Haruko were public figures, meeting heads of state, giving garden parties for foreign dignitaries, and even sometimes mingling with commoners. Both often wore Western dress, and Haruko was visibly active with social causes and charities, such as the Red Cross and education for girls. By their own actions, the emperor and empress were ambassadors for a new, Westernizing, Japan.

The Meiji emperor was also the nominal commander in chief of Japan’s armed forces, and he led them to victory in two major conflicts, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. These victories established Japan as a new force to be reckoned with in the eyes of the international community. The territories that he won gave the Japanese an overseas empire, an expansion that would not end until World War II. Moreover, as the head priest of the Shinto religion, the emperor gave spiritual legitimacy to the parochial nationalism of the new state.

Though Mutsuhito assumed the throne as an inexperienced youth, barely into his teens, he grew in stature during his reign, as did his nation in the world. The death of the Meiji emperor in 1912 symbolically represented the completion of Japan’s transformation from an isolated Asian agrarian society to one of the world’s most important economic and military powers at the start of the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Gluck, Carol. Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. A provocative study of the symbols and discourse of Meiji Japan. The chapter on the development of the modern emperor’s new roles is especially enlightening here.

Irokawa, Daikichi. The Culture of the Meiji Period. Translated by Marius Jansen. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. A classic account of the people and culture of Mutsuhito’s Japan by one of the country’s foremost historians.

Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. One of the best single-volume histories of modern Japan by one of its best Western historians. Jansen gives a wonderful explanation of how the imperial restoration occurred, and about one-third of the book is devoted to Meiji life and culture.

Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. This nine-hundred-page biography—drawing on the official Japanese record of the emperor’s life—is the definitive study of Mutsuhito in any language, written by America’s preeminent specialist on Japanese literature.

Lebra, Takie Sugiyama. Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. While focusing more on Mutsuhito’s successors, this ethnography and history of the imperial line by a noted Japanese anthropologist gives much insight into the daily life and manners of Japan’s extended royal family, many of whose structures came into formal existence during Mutsuhito’s reign.

Seagrave, Sterling, and Peggy Seagrave. The Yamato Dynasty: The Secret History of Japan’s Imperial Family. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. A controversial and scandal-focused history of Japan’s imperial family by two investigative reporters. The two chapters on Mutsuhito contain some colorful anecdotes not found in the usual references.