THE ROOTS OF WARRIOR IDEALS AND IDEOLOGY IN MEIJI ARMY

Murat KADIOGLU

Murat Kadioglu

Abstract

This paper analyses the use of ideology and the creation of a warrior ideal in the Japanese army following the Meiji Restoration. While it has been a common misconception in popular culture and public imagination that the Japanese warrior culture and ethics continued into the modern era without alteration in many aspects of Japanese life, especially the army, this paper tries to look into the roots of the "modern" warrior culture and ideology that was actually created during the Meiji restoration.

Keywords: Japan, warrior, Samurai, Meiji Restoration, military ideology

Japanese modernization has been the focus of historians as well as sociologists and other academics from the social sciences field since the early 20th century. Many aspects of Japanese modernization in the areas including but not limited to its economy, culture, military and industrial technology, judicial system, social structure, art, architecture, literature etc. Have been the subject of meticulous research for over a century by now. However, there is a common conception that the Japanese ideology and intellectual culture did not change much since the transition from the Tokugawa to Meiji Restoration, and that Japan despite receiving Western technology, still remained as a "closed country" to the western ideologies and thought. However, the fact is that, Japanese ideology druing the modern era was largely influenced by the ideas stemming from Europe, and the military warrior cuts and the connected warrior ideals that were imposed on the soldiers were no exception as this paper will try to demonstrate.

The most commonly used word in Japanese for warrior code today is bushido. The meaning of the word is "the way of the warrior". However, the word itself became popular in Japan after the publication of a book in English language in the United states by a Japanese author with the aim of introducing Japanese culture to the American readers. The book was written by Inazo Nitobe and was published in 1900 under the title of Bushido: The Soul of Japan. This book was later on translated into Japanese and became very popular in Japan becoming one of the classics to be read for understanding the samurai culture and virtues of the past. however, most of the ideals and the concepts in the book were actually Meiji Era inventions and adaptations. The concept of an unchanging warrior etiquette and culture was in this respect, a pure imagination. First of all, the feudal armies of the Edo Period and previous periods were mostly made up of the professional warriors called under different names such as bushi and samurai. These warriors were more like the landed aristocracy of the European medieval armies than the modern armies. While the Japanese armies has for the first time become a national army after the Meiji restoration, it consisted of two types of soldiers at the beginning. At the top were the new officers the majority of whom used to be feudal samurai belonging to the local daimyo armies of various han, below them were the newly recruited soldier the great majority of whom were paesants and merchants who were previously denied any right to even carry weapons, not to mention becoming soldiers, following the unification of Japan and the strict observation of the laws brought by Toyotomi Hideyoshi prohibiting people from changing their class, joining the army, leaving the army if one was already a soldier, and carrying weapons if one was not a soldier. In fact, even the ranks of the soldiers passed from father to son for centuries. In this respect, the social, economic and political background of the premodern and modern Japanese armies were very different from each other. As a result, most of the premodern Japanese warrior ideals did not necessarily appeal to the new soldiers coming from agrarian or merchant family and social backgrounds. In fact, there were differences between the warrior ideals of the different periods in Japanese history, and the unchanging idea of a bushido, or a warrior code is again nothing but an illusion. In order to understand the Meiji Era ideology that stipulated the large peasant and merchant population to behave and think in accordance with the imagined or invented warrior codes of the Edo and more previous periods, we must first briefly have a look at the warrior codes of conduct in the previous eras.

As in most other cultures of the world, Japan was governed by elites coming from military backgrounds from the very early times onwards. Although we do have archeological findings suggesting the dominance of a military class from prehistoric times onwards. However, with the introduction of Confucianism and Confucian ethics from Korea. In fact, the eight samurai virtues are actually the Confucian virtues that are deemed to exist in gentleman. Especially beginning with the Heian Period (794-1185), thanks to the advanced shipping technology brought to China by the Muslim merchants that allowed safer journey on the ocean the interactions between Japan and China accelerated as a result of direct exchanges rather than through Korea. Thus, the Japanese nobility who came from a military aristocracy best represented by the imperial Yamato clan as seen in Kojiki and Nihonshoki began adopting Buddhism and more importantly Confucianism. However, the dissemination of the Chinese culture was initially limited to this military nobility in Heian, and until the inclusion of the local warriors outside of Heian into politics and the usurpation of power by these new military men called "samurai", the concepts deriving from China were limited to the educated nobility of Heian city. Thus, when the samurai warrior class began to...