HIEA 112 Week 1
Think about the way that the Meiji leaders (authors of the documents that have been assigned for lecture 2 above) depicted their predecessors — the Tokugawa regime — as well as the emperor. How do they legitimate their own right to rule? Does this indicate their desire to be “modern” rulers in the sense that was outlined in lecture 1?
The Meiji leaders point out some problems in their documents that happened in the past that they wish to fix. For example, in “Excerpts from the Document on the Form of Government (Seitaisho), 1868”, they note that “all the power of the government shall be restored to the Council of State” meaning that it wasn’t like that before and that this is something they wish to change for better or for worse.
When it comes to legitimizing their right to rule, they state that “one central body of government and one sovereign authority” must rule but that that central body is made up of all of the people in the nation. This way of explaining it prevents people from being angered by any arrogance of those ruling as thinking they are above the others. It also emphasizes the fact that they want the citizens to have a say in the government and have the ability to have a voice. When legitimizing their right to rule they also compare themselves to the Tokugawa regime and states that during the Tokugawa regime they didn’t include the citizens when making decisions regarding the government and how the state was run and they generally kept the power in the “old families and clans” and didn’t give many others a chance to rule.
One of the most noticeable aspects of the modern state that was shown through the Meiji leaders was the sense of community. This is evident in the fact that they try to include people in the government and allow people to have a voice. There is also a bureaucracy in place where there is a main group of people making the final decision which is the Council of State in this case. Due to all of these changes from prior to the Meiji period, it is clear that they are moving towards becoming more of a “modern” state.
