Word: emperor
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...regions of Choshu and Satsuma in southwestern Japan. Young, ambitious, aggressive, these clan leaders had no intention of really restoring imperial rule, and they themselves were to govern as a new oligarchy for the next half-century. To symbolize the change, though, they decided to move the young Emperor, Mutsuhito, out of Kyoto and into the shogun's castle at Edo, which they renamed "eastern capital": Tokyo. A British infantry unit, on guard in a new European settlement, piped the Emperor to his new home to the tune of The British Grenadiers. The Emperor took for his reign...
...belief in their own cultural superiority despite repeated European humiliations, the Japanese decided early to learn the barbarians' ways. They sent inquiring envoys abroad and hired many foreign experts. Some of the lessons were basic. The Meiji rulers abolished feudalism in 1871, and all fiefs reverted to the Emperor. The samurai, warriors who had formed a ruling caste under the shogunate, were pensioned off. They were forbidden to carry swords or even to wear their traditional topknots. When the samurai rose in revolt, they were suppressed by new armies of conscripts (whom the French were training). With conscription came...
When the official in charge of the project went to Europe for expert guidance, he spent less time in London than in the Germany of Bismarck, and the Meiji constitution was Japan's parallel to Bismarckian conservatism: sovereignty belonged not to the people but to the Emperor. The Cabinet was responsible not to the legislature but to the throne...
Scarcely a half-century had passed since the barbarians aboard Perry's black ships had humiliated the shoguns, and now Japan was a politely pugnacious power. The Meiji Restoration (the Emperor died in 1912) was a miracle of national self-regeneration, but the lessons imperfectly learned from the imperialist powers of the 19th century contained, or perhaps simply intensified, some dangerous poisons: a hunger for autocracy, a reliance on force, a fear of isolation from the world, and a rankling sense of grievance. The world would hear more of them. -By Otto Friedrich
...telling point of conflict in the postwar years was the notion of shushin (moral education), which was at the center of the traditional curriculum and taught the value of filial piety, loyalty, nationalism and, above all, fealty to the Emperor. The American overseers saw shushin as part of the country's problem and banned it. In 1957, five years after the occupation ended, shushin was restored, minus its ultranationalist trappings and with the new name of dotoku. Again the aim was to instruct youngsters in the importance of respect for the common good. In a sense, it is what...