Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia · CHAPTER 4 ·
Early Meiji reforms (1868–77)
Chapter 4 of Remaking the State: Meiji Japan 1600–1912 and Post-Soviet Russia 1964–2000: “Dismantling the Old Order”
The Charter Oath of April 1868 promised assemblies, but Japan’s new leaders put central power first: the lords surrendered their land registers in 1869, and on 29 August 1871 the domains were replaced by prefectures under governors from Tokyo. The state gained one army, one tax and one school system.
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The map above is the world of Japan, April 1877 — The Satsuma Rebellion.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1880 · Europe in 1880.
Part of IB History: Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia →
SHORT EXPLANATION
The men who restored imperial rule inherited a country divided among roughly 260 domains. Each daimyo, or hereditary lord, governed a territory with its own taxes and soldiers, much like a state in a loose federation. The leaders concluded that Japan could not be strong while power remained divided this way. Their five-article Charter Oath of April 1868 promised assemblies, an end to the “base customs” of the past, and a search for knowledge throughout the world. It was a statement of aims, like a government manifesto; the immediate task was to secure central authority. In 1869 the lords surrendered their land registers to the emperor. On 29 August 1871 a decree abolished the domains, replacing them with prefectures governed by officials sent from Tokyo. The map shows the result in one step: the grey-tan patchwork of 1869 becomes a single red state.
The settlement gave the lords reasons to accept their loss. The government assumed their debts and paid generous pensions, while troops from Satsuma, Chōshū and Tosa stood ready in Tokyo. The samurai, the hereditary warrior class, lost much more. Compulsory military service replaced their role in 1873; in 1876 their hereditary rice stipends became government bonds and their right to wear swords in public ended. Farmers faced a cash land tax of 3% of each plot’s assessed value, payable even in bad years. In 1877 Saigō Takamori, a hero of the restoration, led Satsuma samurai in rebellion, shown by the hatched south. Conscripts held Kumamoto Castle, and Saigō died at Shiroyama in September. The new state had dismantled the class from which its own leaders came.
The full story
In April 1868 the fifteen-year-old emperor swore the Charter Oath, a five-article statement drafted by former samurai. It promised assemblies where “all matters decided by public discussion”, the abandonment of the “base customs of the past”, and a search for knowledge throughout the world. The promise of assemblies was vague enough to reassure the lords. The other articles gave the leaders room to contemplate extensive change.
Their first steps left familiar figures in place while changing the source of their authority. In 1869 the lords, led by those of Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa and Hizen, handed their land and population registers to the emperor. The daimyo continued to govern their old territories as appointees, receiving a tenth of domain revenue for their households. Like former owners kept on salary after a company is nationalized, they appeared to carry on much as before. The principle had changed: land and people now belonged to the state.
The government made that principle effective in August 1871. Ōkubo Toshimichi, Kido Takayoshi and Saigō Takamori assembled an imperial guard of about 10,000 men from their three domains. On 29 August the emperor summoned the former lords to Tokyo and announced the abolition of their 261 domains. More than 300 prefectures took their place; by the end of the year these had been merged into 72, governed by officials from outside the territories. On the map the patchwork turns red in a single step.
The settlement combined compensation with the possibility of force. The government assumed domain debts, continued samurai stipends for the time being, and made the lords wealthy, titled residents of the capital. Many domains were close to bankruptcy, so the lords surrendered responsibilities they could no longer afford as well as power. The guard stood behind the decree. Together, these arrangements allowed the government to transform local rule without fighting every lord.
The next reforms reached households directly. Conscription, compulsory military service, began in January 1873. Household heads and those who could pay were exempt, leaving poor farmers’ younger sons to bear much of the burden. In July the land-tax reform replaced rice levies with a cash payment of 3% of assessed land value and gave owners title deeds. Land could be sold, and the state gained a steadier income; the payment remained due when a harvest was poor. Riots followed both measures. Protests in 1876 helped force a reduction of the tax to 2.5% in 1877.
Samurai lost their hereditary rice stipends, converted into bonds worth five to fourteen years’ income, and their swords. Former samurai rose at Saga in 1874 and in three western towns in 1876. In 1877 Saigō’s army besieged Kumamoto, but the rebellion was crushed by September. Meanwhile the 1874 expedition to Taiwan and the arrow to Ganghwa Island in 1876 show the new state using force abroad. At home, Saigō’s defeat ended the prospect that samurai could fight their way back to power.
FULL EXPLANATION
Why the lords gave up their domains
Why did the lords surrender territories they had governed? Many faced a financial crisis. They owed merchants large sums and had issued paper money they could not redeem. The government offered to assume those debts, while giving the lords generous incomes and titles in a new peerage. They became rentiers, living on investments rather than ruling domains. Their retainers were not immediately deprived of income: samurai stipends were left in place at first. The imperial guard supplied a further reason to comply, as did the record of the leaders who had won the civil war three years earlier. Some lords were furious. Shimazu Hisamitsu, Satsuma’s former regent and a supporter of the restoration, is said to have set off fireworks in protest on the night of the decree. Marius Jansen and Mark Ravina emphasize how few officials expected abolition so soon; the speed left little time to organize resistance.
Conscription and the land tax: who paid
The reforms of 1873 asked farming households to supply both men and money. The conscription rescript called military service a “blood tax”, borrowing a French phrase. Rumors spread that the state would literally take blood, although historians now regard the burden of service as the chief grievance. Crowds attacked offices and schools in several prefectures that year. Household heads, heirs and men able to pay 270 yen were exempt, leaving the poorest sons especially exposed. The land tax demanded cash at 3% of assessed value plus local surcharges, regardless of the harvest. When rice prices fell, farmers had to find the same payment from a less valuable crop. The tax supplied the government’s main income through the 1870s and 1880s. Stephen Vlastos’s research shows that rural protest won concessions, including the reduction to 2.5% in 1877. The government depended on the countryside, and its leaders knew it.
Saigō and the end of the samurai
The samurai class included about two million people counting families, and only a minority rebelled. Many former samurai entered the bureaucracy, police, officer corps or teaching; some joined the movement for an elected assembly that began in 1874. Others became poor as inflation reduced the value of their bonds. The government offered business funding and resettlement in Hokkaido. Saigō Takamori followed an unusual course. Having helped abolish the domains, he left government in 1873 after colleagues rejected his proposed mission to Korea. Many contemporaries, and some historians since, believed that he intended to provoke war. In Kagoshima he ran private military schools with thousands of students. Mark Ravina’s biography portrays him as a reluctant rebel, pushed into the 1877 rising by students after government agents tried to remove weapons from the local arsenal. The conscript army’s victory demonstrated its strength, while opposition increasingly took the form of press campaigns and petitions.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
The domains kept the new state weak. The government that emerged in 1868 directly controlled only confiscated shogunal lands and relied on domains for revenue and soldiers. Its leaders had traveled abroad or read Western works, and saw that the nation-states threatening Japan raised national armies and taxes. More than 260 lords still held their own samurai and collected rice levies. The restoration’s ambition to create a strong state pointed toward ending that division.
The unequal treaties made centralisation urgent. Japan could seek revision of the 1858 treaties from 1872. Its leaders believed Western powers would accept equality only if Japan had modern laws, courts and armed forces. Those institutions required a government able to legislate throughout the country. Foreign pressure made centralization urgent and gave its supporters a patriotic case that even reluctant lords found difficult to oppose.
Many domains were bankrupt. Borrowing over decades, the costs of alternate attendance and military spending in the 1860s left many domains deeply indebted to Osaka merchants. Their paper money was often of doubtful value. The government’s offer to assume debts and guarantee the lords an income therefore offered rescue as well as taking away authority. Financial weakness helped make peaceful abolition possible.
The state needed a fixed money income. Rice levies varied across domains and from year to year, leaving the central government without a dependable budget. It needed cash for an army, schools, railways and inherited samurai stipends, which accounted for roughly a third of spending in the early 1870s. A national cash tax on assessed land value promised predictable income; imposing it required ending the domains.
THE TURNING POINT
The domains abolished, 29 August 1871. The restoration of 1868 had replaced the rulers at the top while leaving local lordships in place. On 29 August 1871 a decree ended those semi-independent lordships, nearly three centuries old, in one afternoon. A national army, tax, school system and market could follow. The map records the change from the grey-tan patchwork of 1869 to a single color: a change of rulers had become a change in the state itself.
What it changed
One army, one tax, one school system. Once the domains were gone, the Education Ordinance of 1872 aimed at compulsory primary schooling for boys and girls. Conscription and the land tax followed in 1873. Each measure connected households directly with the state; together they helped create a large, literate and obedient conscript population available for mobilization in industry and war.
Opposition moved from swords to petitions. Armed samurai resistance ended with Saigō’s defeat in 1877. Some former samurai had already chosen another route: Itagaki Taisuke of Tosa and others petitioned for an elected assembly in 1874. After Saigō’s death the Freedom and People’s Rights movement expanded nationally through newspapers, speeches and political societies, seeking a share of power through a constitution.
Japan began to push outward. The state also acted beyond Japan. It sent an expedition to southern Taiwan in 1874, settled its northern border with Russia in 1875 by exchanging its claim to Sakhalin for all the Kurils, and forced Korea to open its ports in 1876. The red dot at Busan marks Japan’s first settlement imposed on a neighbor. Japan was beginning to treat Korea as Western powers had treated Japan.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Why did Japan’s centralising revolution of 1871–77 cost so much less blood than most revolutions that remove an entire ruling class?
The leaders gave the strongest potential opponents a settlement they could accept. Lords received debt relief, titles and incomes; samurai stipends continued long enough for the first change to settle. Many domains were bankrupt, so losing authority also meant relief from obligations. The leaders acted quickly and together, used imperial authority to make resistance appear disloyal, and had an army capable of enforcing their decisions. But the transition was not bloodless. Thousands died in samurai revolts, perhaps 12,000 or more in the Satsuma Rebellion alone. Farmers faced taxes and conscription and protested, as Stephen Vlastos has documented. To judge the speed and scale of the change, we must also count these costs and ask who bore them. The powerful could bargain for compensation; much of the price fell on people who could not.
An interesting fact
No confirmed photograph of Saigō Takamori survives. His familiar image was drawn after his death from the features of relatives. The government pardoned him in 1889, twelve years after he died as a rebel, and in 1898 unveiled a bronze statue in Tokyo’s Ueno Park. It depicts him walking his dog in a plain cotton kimono. His widow Itoko reportedly objected at the unveiling that her husband had never appeared like that in public. The man who fought the state had become a national hero honored by it.
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