Andrea J. Horbinski (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ahorbinski) wrote2014-03-05 10:56 am
ahorbinski) wrote2014-03-05 10:56 am
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Book review: Rebellion & Democracy in Meiji Japan
Bibliographic Data: Bowen, Roger W. Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan: A Study of Commoners in the Popular Rights Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Main Argument: This study attempts to take the people who participated in the violent incidents (gekka jiken) of the Freedom & Popular Rights era seriously, arguing that they "were rebellions, not only in the sense that their goal was 'liberation' from certain economic and political injustices, but also in the sense that they were less than revolutionary in effect (as opposed to intent), or, from another perspective, they were revolutions which failed in the attempt to establish a 'foundation of freedom'" (5).
Historiographical Engagement: Previous discussions of the FPR in both English and Japanese
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Bowen outlines the "failure thesis" of Japanese democracy (i.e. fascism and ultranationalism were probably properties of the system, and democracy failed in prewar Japan) and argues that "the main weakness of the 'failure thesis' lies in its neglect of the practice of politics at different levels of society" (4). This is a losers' history, but it is also a history of ideas, and it is one that shows that "rebellion, in other words, says something very definite about the nature of the order against which rebels take up arms" (5).
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter lays out the timelines of the Fukushima (1882), Kabasan (1884) and Chichibu (1884) incidents. Although these were different (law-abiding in the case of the first, mass-based in the case of the first and third), they share four central tendencies: "the lawful approach adopted by the activists toward the handling of the conflict," and, when this failed, "the choice between taking no action at all and taking violent action," which led in all cases to the formation of a radical faction advocating the latter, although this did not prevail in the Fukushima Incident (68). The third common feature is "the alliance struck between local Jiyûtô branches and the farmers of the region" (69), while the fourth is the actual question: whether "the farmers in the Fukushima and subsequent incidents began manifesting a collective consciousness of their political rights vis-a-vis the authorities" (ibid). As Bowen notes, "Rebellion is rebellion whether people fight for a new type of society or for the restoration of an idealized version of the old, but the character of the rebellion and its consequences will certainly differ according to the level of political consciousness exhibited by the rebels" (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter is looking for the background forces that led to these rebellions: 1) the Tokugawa tradition of peasant rebellion; 2) the nature of the Japanese economy in the 1880s; and 3) the political climate of the 1870s and 1880s and the rise of the popular rights movement. Bowen concludes that "the rebellions of the 1880s serve as evidence of a farmer consciousness of possessing certain political rights vis-a-vis the authorities" (115-16). The early Meiji period represented a qualitative change from the moral and political economy of the Tokugawa era, and farmer consciousness changed along with it; Bowen argues that, "now equal and free to enter into contractual relations, the early Meiji farmer transferred the new economic principles of the market to the political realm. Just as the moral economy of his forefathers legitimized the right of subsistence, and the rebellion necessary to reaffirm this right, the moral economy of Meiji capitalism no less informed the political consciousness of the market-oriented farmer who judged political and economic relationships as contractual. … The early market liberalism of Meiji, in other words, formed the basis of the rise of a liberal-democratic consciousness" (124).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples In this chapter Bowen looks at the people who participated in the rebellions, arguing that "simple participation in the various incidents is perhaps a better means to trace the collective action of heimin than is membership in an established political party or society" since the latter was more likely to be exclusive than inclusive (126). The leaders came from a few certain geographical areas within the regions of the incidents, as did their followers; most of both appear to have been young; and most were legally commoners. Moreover, most of them were what we might call, with Uncle Karl's forgiveness, the petit bourgeois of the agrarian classes; not peasants, but farmers on the low end of the middle stratum who had fallen on hard times and who had an "awareness on their part that their depressed economic condition might have its origins in politics rather than in Nature" (174).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the fact that "behind each incident there existed one or more organizations, held together by customary and political ties, which had formulated their immediate targets and long-term goals with an exactitude not usually recognized by most North American students of the period" (177). In terms of ideologies, all of them were influenced by the sovereign idea of natural rights, which "helped them to express in universal terms the way things ought to be, and to condemn in absolute terms the way things were. … That the rebels could employ the language of natural rights as artfully as they did, moreover, bespeaks a type of rising political consciousness that could only be manifest in capitalist society, that is, a consciousness of the idea that political obligation to the State rested upon the State's recognition that property and freedom are the basic indivisible and inalienable rights of all men. … The economic interests of commercial farmers dictated the political language they could use with advantage, and their political language in turn defined their vision of that their relationship with the State should be in the future." (281-82). Although the Chichibu rebels expressed their ideas in older idioms, their methods of organization were wholly new; "they rebelled as members or affiliates of a supravillage political party which had as its basic ideological position the idea that all men should have political rights because they were men" (284). The rebels of Fukushima and Kabasan were even more democratically minded.
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter demarcates the rebels' fate and the consequences of their actions: "the rebels of all three incidents were victims of a pattern of political oppression that was well established by the time of the rebellions and indeed was itself in large measure a reaction to the advances made by the popular rights movement" (285). Bowen also argues that "democracy did not fail and that it was in fact 'tried'" in Japan, "especially at the lower levels of society and politics" (286, 303). In other words, those who conclude that democracy was not practiced in Japan [and here we must make allowances for the fact that Bowen was writing in 1980, with work such as Andrew Gordon's yet unpublished] are focusing at the wrong level: elites did not attempt democracy until much later and only to a questionable extent, but democracy was very much put into practice in the freedom and popular rights movement itself--to say nothing, one might add, of the movement for imperial democracy from 1905-18. Rebellions and riots were political acts, and these rebellions were backed by political organizations. Moroever, "for the farmers who rebelled, rebellion was a positive action that circumstances and principles required them to take. It was a positive expression of solidarity, made in the midst of a political situation that would not allow them to employ peaceful means with any hope of success" (310).
Critical assessment: This is a massive book, perhaps needlessly so, but it's quite good, particularly considering the period in which it was written. Bowen does an excellent job of restoring agency and intelligence to the farmers who rose up to demand their rights in the 1880s, whose actions should not be consigned to the category of "failure," or lightly forgotten.
Further reading: Gordon, Imperial Democracy; Kim Kyu Hyun, The Age of Visions and Arguments
Meta notes: But the human microphone will find a voice/And a change is gonna come/Said the signal to the–
Main Argument: This study attempts to take the people who participated in the violent incidents (gekka jiken) of the Freedom & Popular Rights era seriously, arguing that they "were rebellions, not only in the sense that their goal was 'liberation' from certain economic and political injustices, but also in the sense that they were less than revolutionary in effect (as opposed to intent), or, from another perspective, they were revolutions which failed in the attempt to establish a 'foundation of freedom'" (5).
Historiographical Engagement: Previous discussions of the FPR in both English and Japanese
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Bowen outlines the "failure thesis" of Japanese democracy (i.e. fascism and ultranationalism were probably properties of the system, and democracy failed in prewar Japan) and argues that "the main weakness of the 'failure thesis' lies in its neglect of the practice of politics at different levels of society" (4). This is a losers' history, but it is also a history of ideas, and it is one that shows that "rebellion, in other words, says something very definite about the nature of the order against which rebels take up arms" (5).
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter lays out the timelines of the Fukushima (1882), Kabasan (1884) and Chichibu (1884) incidents. Although these were different (law-abiding in the case of the first, mass-based in the case of the first and third), they share four central tendencies: "the lawful approach adopted by the activists toward the handling of the conflict," and, when this failed, "the choice between taking no action at all and taking violent action," which led in all cases to the formation of a radical faction advocating the latter, although this did not prevail in the Fukushima Incident (68). The third common feature is "the alliance struck between local Jiyûtô branches and the farmers of the region" (69), while the fourth is the actual question: whether "the farmers in the Fukushima and subsequent incidents began manifesting a collective consciousness of their political rights vis-a-vis the authorities" (ibid). As Bowen notes, "Rebellion is rebellion whether people fight for a new type of society or for the restoration of an idealized version of the old, but the character of the rebellion and its consequences will certainly differ according to the level of political consciousness exhibited by the rebels" (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter is looking for the background forces that led to these rebellions: 1) the Tokugawa tradition of peasant rebellion; 2) the nature of the Japanese economy in the 1880s; and 3) the political climate of the 1870s and 1880s and the rise of the popular rights movement. Bowen concludes that "the rebellions of the 1880s serve as evidence of a farmer consciousness of possessing certain political rights vis-a-vis the authorities" (115-16). The early Meiji period represented a qualitative change from the moral and political economy of the Tokugawa era, and farmer consciousness changed along with it; Bowen argues that, "now equal and free to enter into contractual relations, the early Meiji farmer transferred the new economic principles of the market to the political realm. Just as the moral economy of his forefathers legitimized the right of subsistence, and the rebellion necessary to reaffirm this right, the moral economy of Meiji capitalism no less informed the political consciousness of the market-oriented farmer who judged political and economic relationships as contractual. … The early market liberalism of Meiji, in other words, formed the basis of the rise of a liberal-democratic consciousness" (124).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples In this chapter Bowen looks at the people who participated in the rebellions, arguing that "simple participation in the various incidents is perhaps a better means to trace the collective action of heimin than is membership in an established political party or society" since the latter was more likely to be exclusive than inclusive (126). The leaders came from a few certain geographical areas within the regions of the incidents, as did their followers; most of both appear to have been young; and most were legally commoners. Moreover, most of them were what we might call, with Uncle Karl's forgiveness, the petit bourgeois of the agrarian classes; not peasants, but farmers on the low end of the middle stratum who had fallen on hard times and who had an "awareness on their part that their depressed economic condition might have its origins in politics rather than in Nature" (174).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the fact that "behind each incident there existed one or more organizations, held together by customary and political ties, which had formulated their immediate targets and long-term goals with an exactitude not usually recognized by most North American students of the period" (177). In terms of ideologies, all of them were influenced by the sovereign idea of natural rights, which "helped them to express in universal terms the way things ought to be, and to condemn in absolute terms the way things were. … That the rebels could employ the language of natural rights as artfully as they did, moreover, bespeaks a type of rising political consciousness that could only be manifest in capitalist society, that is, a consciousness of the idea that political obligation to the State rested upon the State's recognition that property and freedom are the basic indivisible and inalienable rights of all men. … The economic interests of commercial farmers dictated the political language they could use with advantage, and their political language in turn defined their vision of that their relationship with the State should be in the future." (281-82). Although the Chichibu rebels expressed their ideas in older idioms, their methods of organization were wholly new; "they rebelled as members or affiliates of a supravillage political party which had as its basic ideological position the idea that all men should have political rights because they were men" (284). The rebels of Fukushima and Kabasan were even more democratically minded.
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter demarcates the rebels' fate and the consequences of their actions: "the rebels of all three incidents were victims of a pattern of political oppression that was well established by the time of the rebellions and indeed was itself in large measure a reaction to the advances made by the popular rights movement" (285). Bowen also argues that "democracy did not fail and that it was in fact 'tried'" in Japan, "especially at the lower levels of society and politics" (286, 303). In other words, those who conclude that democracy was not practiced in Japan [and here we must make allowances for the fact that Bowen was writing in 1980, with work such as Andrew Gordon's yet unpublished] are focusing at the wrong level: elites did not attempt democracy until much later and only to a questionable extent, but democracy was very much put into practice in the freedom and popular rights movement itself--to say nothing, one might add, of the movement for imperial democracy from 1905-18. Rebellions and riots were political acts, and these rebellions were backed by political organizations. Moroever, "for the farmers who rebelled, rebellion was a positive action that circumstances and principles required them to take. It was a positive expression of solidarity, made in the midst of a political situation that would not allow them to employ peaceful means with any hope of success" (310).
Critical assessment: This is a massive book, perhaps needlessly so, but it's quite good, particularly considering the period in which it was written. Bowen does an excellent job of restoring agency and intelligence to the farmers who rose up to demand their rights in the 1880s, whose actions should not be consigned to the category of "failure," or lightly forgotten.
Further reading: Gordon, Imperial Democracy; Kim Kyu Hyun, The Age of Visions and Arguments
Meta notes: But the human microphone will find a voice/And a change is gonna come/Said the signal to the–