Crump John. - The Anarchist Movement in Japan, 1906-1996

Of course, there is an (albeit one-sided) element of truth in the popular image of Japan and the Japanese. This has much to do with the way Japan modernised in the years of major social upheaval following 1868. In 1868 power had fallen into the hands of a narrow circle of young samurai who were determined to make Japan a wealthy and militarily strong country. In order to achieve this, they were intent on creating a highly centralised state, an industrialised economy and an overseas empire which would compensate for Japans lack of raw materials. These were ambitious goals for what was at that stage still a small, weak and backward country on the edge of world civilisation. To realise these ambitions the Japanese people had to be dragooned into conformity, partly persuaded and partly threatened into putting the states interests before their own, and fed an ideology of national pride and service to the Emperor.

For many years after 1868 the bulk of the population remained peasants, toiling on the land. Agriculture was the basis of the economy, since industries could only be established by squeezing wealth out of the peasants and channelling it into the factories, shipyards and mines which were set up with the states encouragement. To achieve this transfer of wealth from the agricultural sector of the economy to the developing industries a heavy land tax was imposed. One effect of this was that many peasants who could not pay their taxes were forced to sell their land and become tenant farmers. From a society composed mainly of peasant families engaged in the intensive farming of small parcels of land which they owned themselves, Japan was transformed into one where the bulk of the land was worked by tenants who surrendered typically half their crops in the form of rent to often absentee landlords. As the conditions of the agricultural population deteriorated in this way, some cut their links with the land, drifted into the towns and sought work in the mushrooming industrial and commercial enterprises.

It was among this emerging working class that the first attempts were made towards the end of the nineteenth century to organise unions, but the state reacted swiftly by introducing in 1900 a public peace police law which effectively outlawed all workers organisations and, needless to say, strikes.

Not only were the peasants for many years the backbone of the economy; they were also the mainstay of the sizeable conscript army which the new state rapidly established. The formative years of the average peasant or working class lad were spent being moulded and disciplined, first in elementary school and later in the army. The Emperors pronouncement of 30 October 1890, known as the Imperial Rescript on Education, well conveys the beliefs which the authorities attempted to implant in youngsters minds. It read in part:

Always respect the Constitution and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth. So shall ye not only be Our good and faithful subjects, but render illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers.

Peasant and working class girls escaped some of this organised brain-washing, partly because they were more likely than their brothers to be kept off school in order to help out around the home even during the few years of compulsory education. Nevertheless, the weight of convention burdened young women too, as they were urged to turn themselves into a good wife and a wise mother and were taught from an early age that a womans fate is to obey the three men in her life her father in her youth, her husband in her prime and her eldest son in old age.