A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (98 page)

5
The text of the Charter Oath is given in Tsunoda 64, v.2, pp136–7.

6
See Henshall 99, pp75–7, for further discussion of the Ogasawaras, and Jansen 00, p277, regarding Perry and the Ry
ky
s.

7
The following is from Gavin 01, pp83–4, and is Gavin’s translation. See Gavin’s Part Four for further details of Shiga’s voyage to the South Seas.

8
The main text of the 1868 constitution is given in Tsunoda 64, v.2, pp137–9.

9
At this stage there were 77 prefectures (as opposed to 260 domains at the end of the Tokugawa period), but this was reduced to the present number of 47 in 1889. For a discussion of the overall dismantling of the
han
(domains), see Umegaki 86.

10
The tax reform and its consequences are discussed in Yamamura 86.

11
This was one of a number of ‘study tours’ to learn from the west. The Iwakura Mission, which visited America and Europe, also attempted – unsuccessfully – to modify the ‘unequal treaties’ signed by the sh
gunate in its final days.

12
See also Morris 75, p254.

13
However, the following year the government sent 3,500 men on a punitive expedition to Taiwan, whose aboriginals had killed some shipwrecked fishermen from the Ry
ky
Islands. The expedition was mainly aimed at asserting Japan’s claim to the Ry
ky
Islands over that of China by treating the murdered islanders as Japanese nationals, and it was eventually successful in this. It was also an opportunity for former samurai to feel a sense of worth, but was less successful in this regard.

14
Saig
had a fatalistic fascination with death. He was also an extreme patriot opposed to westernisation, and a true old-school samurai in his opposition to commercialisation and industrialisation. See Morris 75, pp217–73.

15
The date 1 January 1873, for example, corresponds to 6 December 1872 – the 6th day of the 12th month of Meiji 5 – in the old lunar calendar. The correlation between the two calendrical systems is very complicated owing to intercalary (extra) months and leap years, and it is advisable to use conversion tables such as those in Tsuchihashi’s
Japanese Chronological Tables
.

16
However, the first modern paper was in English and was started by foreigners in Nagasaki in 1861.

17
Hirakawa 89, p471. The emperor himself almost always wore western clothes.

18
The percentage of men with western haircuts rose from 10 per cent in 1872 to 98 per cent in 1887. The lyrics of a popular song of early Meiji ran ‘Tap a cropped head and it plays the tune of civilisation and enlightenment’. See Mita 92, p198.

19
See Henshall 89 for detailed discussion of transport developments during Meiji.

20
Shibusawa 58, p229.

21
Rickshaws were invented not in ancient China but in T
ky
in August 1869 by Akiba Taisuke, and rapidly spread from there not only throughout Japan (around 150,000 being in use nationwide within a decade) but through much of Asia.

An account of some early western entrepreneurs in both steamships and stagecoaches is given in Henshall 94.

22
Meiroku Zasshi
, p125, n. 1.

23
Meiroku Zasshi
, p115.

24
See Shibusawa 58, p231.

25
See, for example, the short story
The Girl-Watcher
of 1907, by Tayama Katai (1872–1930). Sexual molestation on trains is a major problem in present-day Japan, with more than 90 per cent of regular women travellers becoming victims at some point.