War, Success, and Gender: The Foundational Processes of Meiji Japan

2023/07/27

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here today. I research modern Japanese history, specifically the social transition from the Edo to the Meiji period. For someone like me, speaking from the podium of the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) is a special occasion. Needless to say, the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) was one of the earliest sites in modern Japan where systematic attempts were made to shape society through verbal communication. For that reason, I would like to speak today as if I were an orator myself.

How exactly was the prototype of modern Japan created? Reflecting on my own research and learning from the work of many predecessors, I would like to present my own perspective today. As the title "War, Success, and Gender" suggests, there are three pillars. Abstractly speaking, war is the moment of violence. Success is the moment of competition. Gender is the perspective of gender role separation or the gendered division of labor. It can be considered that modern Japan was born through violence, competition, and the remaking of gender role separation; at the same time, within the timeline of modernity and the social movements of modern Japan, new forms of violence, competition, and gender role separation were created while intertwining with one another.

First, regarding war. The reason today is commemorated is the Battle of Ueno. On May 15, the 4th year of Keio (July 4, 1868), a battle took place between the Shogitai, who had barricaded themselves in Kaneiji Temple in Ueno, and the New Government forces. Despite being in the midst of this, Yukichi Fukuzawa continued his lectures on Wayland's Elements of Political Economy. And the famous words of Yukichi Fukuzawa remain: "Keio University has never closed for even a single day" (The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa).

There is a very striking passage following this section in The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa.

"That aside, looking at it from another perspective, managing the Keio students was truly exhausting. The number of people increased unexpectedly after the war, but as for what kind of people they were, there were many young students who had gone to the front last year, fought in the Oshū region, were finally discharged, and instead of returning to their home provinces, threw away their rifles and came straight to the Juku. (...) They were truly bloodthirsty, scary characters, and at first glance, there was simply no way to handle them."

Episodes follow about how those who participated in the war were integrated into the educational environment of the Juku, and from this, we can see how the atmosphere of war was flowing into Keio University at the time.

Also, in a famous episode from The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, Fukuzawa speaks frankly about the fear of assassination he held for a long period from the end of the Edo period to the early Meiji period. Various episodes of attempted assassinations appear, and summarizing them, he writes, "Of all unpleasant, eerie, and terrifying things, assassination is number one. I don't think anyone but those who have been targeted can understand this feeling." For Fukuzawa, the fear of assassination continued from the pro-expulsion factions at the end of the Edo period well into the early Meiji period. From the Autobiography, we can read that during the founding period of Keio University, Fukuzawa paid great attention to protecting himself from violence and controlling violence within Keio University (Yuri Kohno, "Assassination and Politics").

My position is that we should not underestimate the fact that the expansion of the use of violence and the unpredictable nature of when it would be exercised existed within the political and social movements known as the Meiji Restoration during Japan's transition from the early modern to the modern era. How such a situation arose is the next theme. The direct theme is the Boshin War, but this war between the New Government forces and the former Shogunate forces proceeded in many parts without actual combat as various domains surrendered to the New Government; however, localized battles occurred in various places, including the Tohoku and Northern Kanto regions.

In terms of military history, the Boshin War is characterized by the fact that both the New Government forces and the Shogunate forces fought not with Edo-period methods, but with modern Western-style military systems and soldiers (Toru Hoya, The Boshin War). The New Government did not have a direct army. Since the abolition of domains and establishment of prefectures had not yet occurred, they gathered the armies of various daimyo, commanded them, and waged war. However, when gathering them, the New Government requested that the daimyo not come with Edo-style armies of mounted warriors, but participate with Western-style armies organized with cannons and rifles. Meanwhile, the Shogunate had also carried out military reforms just before that, basically establishing a Western-style military structure.

Edo-period armies used rifles, bows, and long spears in combination, but the final battle was predicated on being settled by hand-to-hand combat by warriors on horseback. Therefore, at the core were mounted warriors, surrounded by attendants who supported them. There were also rifle units and spear units in front, but they were composed of such combat units. This was the organization of military power systematized at the beginning of the Edo period, but during the Edo period, the ruling samurai almost never actually engaged in combat.

However, as military tensions suddenly rose domestically and internationally at the end of the Edo period, the possibility of exercising force increased. By that time, military technology abroad had reached a completely different level, and the rifles that flowed into Japan during the Bakumatsu and Restoration periods were particularly revolutionary. A rifle has grooves carved inside the barrel, and the bullet rotates when fired. The range for accurate hitting was completely different from previous guns, increasing dramatically. As the possibility of military conflict rose, the Shogunate and various domains naturally introduced them. Consequently, the army that used rifles more efficiently became stronger, and the Edo-style method of having rifle units in front of mounted warriors could no longer win. Therefore, it became necessary not only to introduce guns but also to reorganize the nature of the army itself. Through military reform, the combat units of mounted warriors and attendants were dismantled, and a Western-style military system for group warfare, consisting of two layers—officers as commanders and privates—was introduced.

Military reforms were executed by the Shogunate and various domains at the end of the Edo period because, as the possibility of actual war increased, they would lose if they did not adopt Western styles. This was also a kind of competition, and they adopted them as if competing with each other. The Boshin War was a war that occurred during the transition from Edo-period armies to modern armies, and it is important that it was not just a war fought with technically newer weapons, but a war in which the very nature of society changed significantly in conjunction with military reform.

The Edo Shogunate carried out military reforms several times at the end of the Edo period, but the one that decisively dismantled the Edo-period military structure was the reform of September, Keio 3 (1867), just before the Boshin War. The hatamoto (bannermen), who were the basis of the army, had been considered the core bearers of the Shogunate's military power, but this reform dismantled the hatamoto armies. Until then, they had been obligated to provide military service to the Shogun by riding horses and leading subordinates according to their rice stipend, but they were told they no longer had to do that and should provide money instead. The hatamoto were to pay the Shogunate an amount of money corresponding to their respective territories. The Shogunate then used that money to hire soldiers. They attempted to create what could be called directly employed mercenaries.

The point is how they hired the soldiers. In the Edo period, there were labor brokers called hitoyado, who arranged servants not only for samurai residences but also for various places like civil engineering works. The Shogunate appointed influential hitoyado in the city of Edo as "Infantry Contract Chiefs" and had them gather infantry. Daimyo and hatamoto had originally taken in servants from the city as attendants through these hitoyado. When not in combat, the demand for servants changed for each daimyo, so the hitoyado adjusted the numbers. Samurai residences basically relied on dispatch agencies. The Shogunate's plan was to transfer this to military power. Thus, the Shogunate Infantry was created, but its reality, in modern terms, was urban lower-class citizens hired through hitoyado, who were labor dispatchers. Those pooled in hitoyado were physical laborers, and the infantry was organized by gathering the physically strong among them and hiring them as soldiers.

The Shogunate Infantry was deployed to actual battlefields in the Battle of Toba-Fushimi and military clashes in Kyoto, lost to the New Government forces such as the Satsuma Domain, and returned to Edo. At that time, Yoshinobu Tokugawa returned from Osaka to Edo by warship, but the Shogunate Infantry returned via the Tokaido. Upon returning to Edo, Yoshinobu Tokugawa took a submissive stance and basically did not resist. He showed a posture of basically not defying the government while having a certain degree of military force in the background. Consequently, the members of the Shogunate Infantry had no work. By the time they returned, it seemed war was no longer likely to happen. In that context, a hardline resistance faction emerged within the Shogunate, and some appeared who led the infantry to desert. Among the infantry, since they would only become unemployed anyway, some appeared who said if there were people still saying they would fight, they would follow them and fight, leading to a series of desertions by the infantry.

Their main battlefield became the fighting in Northern Kanto. In April, Keio 4, the New Government forces and the remnants of the Shogunate Infantry clashed quite violently in Northern Kanto. At this time, Taisuke Itagaki of the Tosa Domain was a staff officer for the New Government forces. Itagaki later became famous as a leader of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, but at this time, he was participating in the Boshin War as a leader of the Tosa Domain, and his name became known for his military exploits, particularly in the Aizu War. He was also in command on the battlefield during this battle in Northern Kanto.

In Itagaki's memoirs, there is a passage about fighting the former Shogunate army: "When examining the enemy's dead soldiers, many were base ruffians with tattoos." Both sides suffered a considerable number of casualties on the battlefield, and when he went to see the situation of the dead, many of the dead soldiers were harakuko (ruffians) with tattoos. This blatantly discriminatory expression diverges from the image of Itagaki as a leader of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, but there were many tattooed ruffians because the urban lower class of Edo had joined the army. The Boshin War was a war in which many such people were deployed to the battlefield.

Of course, not all privates in either the New Government or the former Shogunate forces were urban lower-class citizens, but according to records, unit organizations dependent on labor contractors in some form can be seen in various domains. Particularly famous is the unit of the Owari Domain in Nagoya (Noboru Hasegawa, Gamblers and the Freedom and People's Rights Movement). Here, a boss of gamblers led his subordinates to organize an army. The world of gambler bosses and hitoyado mediation was quite similar, and war was conducted by incorporating many physically strong people into the military. The total number of such people is unknown, but the essential point is that people who could not have been combatants in the Edo period were out on the battlefield. Before the Conscription Ordinance was enacted in the Meiji era and the duty of military service was imposed on citizens, people who were supposed to be non-combatants were already out on the battlefield as mercenaries. In other words, it is important that this greatly shook the organizational principles of Edo-period society.

In Edo-period society, samurai were the rulers. Samurai were the bearers of military power and, at the same time, the bearers of political power. This was the basic organizational principle of Edo-period society. This scheme collapsed in the Boshin War. The Boshin War made it clear that the fundamental part of society was not functioning.

The fact that war could not be waged by samurai alone led to the diffusion of violence. People other than the samurai class were deployed to the battlefield, and from among them emerged people who would later participate in the Freedom and People's Rights Movement. For example, people from armies like the one organized by the gambler boss of the Owari Domain mentioned earlier would appear as part of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement in the 1880s. Furthermore, in a more well-known example, Hironaka Kono from Miharu, Fukushima, who would later be known alongside Itagaki as a leader of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, was at least not from a samurai family. However, he was quite active on the New Government side during the Boshin War. The Miharu Domain was originally part of the Ouetsu Reppan Domei and in a hostile relationship with the New Government, but he took pride in having been quite active in making them defect to the New Government side.

Such people developed a desire to be more active after the war because they had been active during the war. In other words, the organizational principle of society until then was based on the logic that samurai, as combatants, were the political rulers, but when various people went to the battlefield, everyone wanted to participate in the arena of political decision-making. There was a logical path that transformed into a movement seeking the right to vote.

However, not everyone on the winning side of the Boshin War was given appropriate treatment. Taisuke Itagaki and others became heroes of the Boshin War and occupied key positions in the New Government, but they were driven out of the government in the political crisis of 1873 (Meiji 6) over the Seikanron (debate on invading Korea). Naturally, dissatisfaction accumulated in him, wondering why he could not be at the center of power when he was contributing to the politics of the Meiji government. This did not stop at mere dissatisfaction. He began to make stronger demands for rights, believing that since they had contributed to the state, they should have the right to have a say. There was such a path of winning demands for rights by participating in violent combat. I call this situation in the Meiji era, where the Freedom and People's Rights Movement began, "Boshin Post-War Democracy."

When we say "post-war democracy," it generally refers to the democratization or democratic movements after the end of the Asia-Pacific War, but Taichiro Mitani, a specialist in modern Japanese political history, argues that there have been multiple post-war democracies in Japan (War and Politics in Modern Japan). In Japan, after every war, demands for democratization or expansion of political participation have always occurred. This is because when a war is waged, the burden on the citizens increases, both in terms of tax burden and direct deployment to the battlefield. The increase in burden acts as a force that makes it necessary to recognize the political demands for rights of the people who bore it after the war. Through this mechanism, for example, after the Sino-Japanese War, a situation arose where political parties moved from being outsiders of power to the center of power, and after the Russo-Japanese War, a situation arose where the masses engaged in street activities. Or, if we consider the post-Russo-Japanese War period as the era of Taisho Democracy, the situation of Taisho Democracy can also be understood as a kind of post-war democracy situation. Mitani explains that it can be understood as a movement to accept the demands of a wide range of people that became active after the war due to having endured the burden of war.

My term "Boshin Post-War Democracy" was conceived by taking Mitani's idea that "there are multiple post-war democracies" and tracing it back one step further. I argue that something similar might have actually happened during the Boshin War. A considerable number of people who were not supposed to be involved in war were involved, and through that, political agency was subsequently drawn out. In other words, I think the condition for the Freedom and People's Rights Movement was the existence of many people who could strongly demand that their rights be recognized because they had contributed to the government and the state.

The Freedom and People's Rights Movement began in 1874 (Meiji 7) with the submission of the Petition for the Establishment of a Publicly Elected Assembly, and what was developed in this was the so-called criticism of "yushi sensei" (despotism by officials). Yushi means bureaucrats or officials, but it was a logic brought out to point out the lack of legitimacy—why people who have no particular basis and have not gained legitimacy through elections are holding power, why those people are the rulers and we are not. It was a logic used to strike at the lack of legitimacy of power and the basis of rule.

In the soil where the logic that for the government to have legitimacy, it must be supported by the voices of the majority of the citizens—though in this case, it was limited to certain people—and that an assembly should be opened for that purpose spread all at once, there were many people who believed they had the right to speak. I believe one of the backgrounds that drew this out was the Boshin War. This also shows that it was two sides of the same coin with the fact that at the point when demands for political participation arose, they had the moment of violence in their background.

Secondly, I will talk about the moments of success and competition. Returning to Fukuzawa's words, it is widely known that Fukuzawa burned with great hostility toward the status system and advocated the theory of the independence of the individual. In my own words, I think the theory of the independence of the individual that Fukuzawa developed in Gakumon no susume (An Encouragement of Learning) can be summarized as a thought that preached that the foundation of society is for individuals to achieve independence by making intellectual judgments for themselves and becoming economically self-reliant, without depending on others, rather than through the fixing of status by birth. Here, naturally, there is a requirement for individual effort, and those who do not make a certain effort cannot become independent. That is precisely why one must learn.

However, "independence of the individual" in Fukuzawa is a very comprehensive concept and is not limited to economic independence. It is a concept that also includes following the rules as a member of society and contributing to society. To quote Fukuzawa's own words: "A person must not be satisfied merely with providing food and clothing for one's own person and family; since human nature has a higher promise than this, one must enter the circle of jinkan kosai (society) and, as a member of that circle, strive for the sake of the world" (Gakumon no susume (An Encouragement of Learning), Part 10). Here, Fukuzawa's concept of "jinkan kosai (society)," which translated the concept of society and is also very well known, appears, and the individual who has achieved independence is required to interact with others under a single moral rule as a companion in jinkan kosai (society) and a member of society.

However, what Fukuzawa preached and the act of making one's way in the world had different nuances in modern Japan and were caught somewhat one-dimensionally. Hiroaki Matsuzawa, famous for his research on Fukuzawa, states that despite Fukuzawa's efforts to put a brake on the idea that "in short, it's fine as long as you are economically independent," "the desire for the pursuit of self-interest continued to spread uncontrollably. The irony was that Fukuzawa's appeal for the independence of the individual through Gakumon no susume (An Encouragement of Learning) played a role in promoting such movements" (The Intellectual Struggle of Yukichi Fukuzawa).

Now, I would like to consider where the fever for rising in the world, the desire and craving to raise one's social status through one's own efforts—concepts said to characterize Meiji-era Japanese society—came from. This was born from the dismantling of the status society that Fukuzawa criticized. When I say status society, I do not necessarily have in mind something like a pyramid. The concept of "shi-no-ko-sho" (warrior-farmer-artisan-merchant) has long since ceased to be used in high school textbooks, but a status society is not just about having a hierarchical order from top to bottom. I often explain it using the metaphor of "bags," but the point is that Edo-period society was composed of status-based groups. It was a society made up of many such small social groups gathered in a mosaic pattern.

Each small group, or bag, was given a status-based positioning. For example, there were about 60,000 "villages" in the Edo period, and these were small social groups of people with the status of peasants. Since it was a society with the separation of warriors and farmers, samurai basically lived in castle towns, but even if a samurai was within the boundaries of a village for some reason, he did not become a villager. He would not be entered into the village's population register. In a modern local government, basically anyone is a resident if they live in that municipality and have their resident record there, but it was not like that.

In cities, they were called "machi" (towns), but a machi was much smaller than a modern 1-chome; it referred to one block on both sides of a single road—called a ryogawa-machi. People who owned land and buildings, or townhouses, in such places were the townspeople (chonin). Being a townsperson meant being a member of the town, but not all places in Edo had place names ending in -machi; samurai residences did not have town names.

The place where the Mita Campus is located now has the address Mita 2-chome, but since it was originally samurai residence land, it had no address in the Edo period. There were townspeople's lands facing the roads in this vicinity, and such places were Mita XX-machi, but samurai residences were where samurai lived and not where townspeople lived, so they were not called XX-machi. It was only in the Meiji era that place names were given to all locations in Edo.

Edo-period society was a collection of such small groups gathered in a mosaic. Each status bore a "yaku" (duty) imposed by the lord. In a town where artisans lived together, duties were set according to their skills. For example, in a town called "Minami-sayacho," there was a duty to undertake the work of making sword scabbards.

Among them, the fundamental duty was the military service (gunyaku) borne by the samurai. The reason the bearers of military power were the rulers was that the social organization was such that the samurai status bore the military service. The way of social organization called the status system was two sides of the same coin with the samurai being the bearers of military power. If someone who was supposed to be bearing another duty became a bearer of military power, it would no longer make sense. That is why, triggered by the Boshin War, the principle that the bearers of military power are the rulers collapsed, and a situation arose where the dismantling of the status society was inevitably triggered.

This was not a case where the New Government planned to eliminate the status society with deep foresight and took measures one by one; rather, the status society rapidly collapsed and became unsustainable, and the government acted in response. While trying to figure out how to deal with it, they had to rebuild new systems from scratch, and various laws and reforms to dismantle the status society were put into effect.

Examples of this include the abolition of domains and establishment of prefectures in 1871 (Meiji 4) and the Conscription Proclamation of 1872. Here, universal conscription was proclaimed, and samurai became unnecessary existences. The reason samurai, who were supposed to bear military service, were said to have become mere idle eaters who did nothing but receive a salary was that they had lost their previous role as the bearers of military power.

The Land Tax Reform was carried out from 1873, and this dismantled the nengu murauke (village tax collection) system, which had been a component of the status society. Until then, society was understood in small group units, and duties were borne in group units. However, such a society became unsustainable, and as social groups broke down, there was no choice but to make individuals bear responsibility. The Land Tax Reform involved measuring every piece of land in the country in principle, assigning a land value, and taking a certain percentage of that as a tax called land tax, so it was no longer the village tax collection system that had been applied in village units. In other words, tax payment became an individual responsibility. Under the previous village collection system, if there was someone who could not pay the land tax, someone else had to pay it for them. Village officials, such as nanushi or shoya, or wealthy people supported the advance payment of land tax.

It is hard to believe that people in the Edo period were kinder than people today, but there was such a mechanism of collective responsibility as a social system. For example, if a person abandoned their farming and fled, someone else had to pay that person's land tax. There was something like a "forced solidarity" under the village tax collection system. However, when the responsibility for paying land tax fell on the individual, if that person could not pay, their property and land would be seized and put up for auction. It became something like a "forced independence of the individual."

In my metaphor, I call this "the bag tearing." The people contained in the bag of a social group could be said to have been confined on one hand. People who could be said to have been confined or enveloped within it ended up coming out all at once, whether they liked it or not, and this created extreme social fluidity. For some people, this was naturally an opportunity. As opportunities that did not exist before opened up, people who bet on such possibilities tried to seize the path to rising in the world. For others, they could no longer continue their previous lives, and it became nothing but anxiety.

In such a situation, since it was painful to become a completely scattered individual, attempts were made to rebuild the nature of society in some form. One of those was the association (kessha). The first half of the Meiji period is known as an era when various associations were born. Learning associations were the main ones, but many associations created for economic purposes or for researching agricultural techniques were born in both central and local areas. Needless to say, Keio University was also a place created with the philosophy of such an association, and the fact that the word Keio Gijuku Shachu continues to be used today to refer to those related to the Juku has this background.

However, group formation by such conscious people had its limits, and as a result, it could not play the role of a breakwater for everyone amidst the rapid dismantling of the status society. Individuals who had no group to rely on sought to rise in the world through their own efforts. The desire and craving for success became so high that the term "success fever" emerged.

In this context, existences called "struggling students" (kugakusei) were also born in society. Today, the term struggling student tends to refer to students who are enrolled in school and are struggling because they cannot pay tuition and have to work many part-time jobs, but struggling students in the Meiji era were used for the stage before entering school. In other words, it referred to people who went to the city to enter school, worked to save up for school expenses while studying for entrance exams.

There were people everywhere who wanted to receive higher education even if they had to struggle, and books inciting such people also sold well. One example is a guide book called Self-Reliance and Self-Support: Tokyo Struggling Student Guide. It is a book that says if you come to Tokyo to struggle and study, there are these kinds of schools and part-time jobs. To excerpt part of the preface of this book: "When you all rise up, do not rely on your parents, do not rely on your relatives; what you rely on is a determination like iron and an enthusiasm like fire. (...) As long as you have a healthy body and a spirit of independence, you can manage your school expenses without worry." However, in reality, effort did not guarantee success at all. No matter how firm their determination when they came to Tokyo, many struggling students worked harsh part-time jobs like pulling rickshaws, and if you ask if they could study in their remaining time, they would fall asleep exhausted. Among them were unscrupulous dispatchers who gathered people under the pretext of providing guidance for study and advancement, but in reality made them engage in day labor and gave them no opportunity for study.

Of course, there were a few successful people. Conversely, people who did not make an effort would never succeed in such a society. However, just because one made an effort did not mean they would succeed. Humans naturally have good and bad luck, and it is quite possible to be blocked by various circumstances such as falling ill or family matters. However, in a society where you do not succeed unless you make an effort, as a result, all the people who succeeded were people who made an effort. Then, looking only at the successful examples, people became convinced that they would succeed if they continued to act morally correctly. Looking only at the results and saying that you will succeed if you work hard is what is now called survival bias.

Then, those who succeeded became morally correct, and those who failed became moral losers as well. In short, it became a story of "you probably didn't work hard enough." Furthermore, everyone knows that working hard doesn't necessarily mean you'll succeed, but as long as you do succeed, it is retroactively considered that you did something morally good and worked hard. When it becomes a matter of just succeeding at any cost, the logic becomes inverted. Then, people stop choosing their means, and in some cases, a competition for success unfolds where people use dishonest methods or don't mind kicking others down. Thus, from the dismantling of the status society, one character characterizing the era, the rising-in-the-world boom, emerged.

Thirdly, I will talk about gender and the gendered division of labor. Up to this point, it has basically been almost entirely about men. The subjects who go to the battlefield and wish for success and rising in the world are men. Then what about women? Here again, I return to the story of Fukuzawa, but Fukuzawa's theory of women is so profound that it is beyond the reach of my meager scholarship. The points of contention are very diverse, and I think there are multiple points of contention and multiple ways of reading it, such as property rights, marriage, or issues of sexuality.

However, one point is clear, and only what Yukichi Fukuzawa was fighting against is very distinct. In history, not just in modern Japanese history research, when we say family, there is the concept of the modern family, and there is a distinction between the modern family and others. In modern Japanese history, it is common to assume the "ie"-type family as something that is particularly not of the modern family type. The ie-type family has an image of small-scale management like traditional shops (XX-ya), including farm households. In other words, the ie is not just a place for consumption and life, but a place for family labor to carry out the livelihood for earning an income and living. It is a way of family where everyone, including the head of the household, the wife, the previous generation, and the next generation, all work.

The Japanese "ie"-type family was generally based on male patrilineal inheritance, where the man succeeded to the headship and connected it vertically. In history, it is called the integrity of house name, house property, and house business. Surnames were not allowed in the Edo period, but there were shop names (yago) like XX-ya, house property (kasan) which was the property of the house, land for farmers, and stores for merchants, and the head of the household inherited these as an integrated whole from generation to generation. It was common to have a house business (kagyo), such as the work of XX-ya being a certain thing, and if the parent was a farmer, the child was also a farmer.

This type of succession-based family, with small-scale management and patrilineal inheritance, is thought to be the way of the Japanese family that spread at the beginning of the Edo period. This is clear when looking at graves; before the Edo period, it is difficult to find ancestral graves. Graves that began to be created continuously, that is, graves predicated on being worshipped by descendants, generally appeared in rural villages from the 17th century onward.

In contrast, the modern family ideally assumes the separation of work and home. One leaves the house to work and works at a company or factory. This simultaneously involved a gendered division of labor. It was a gendered division of labor where men worked outside and women were in charge of housework and childcare. As I will mention later, the reality was often not like that, but ideally, such a thing is called a modern family. The family is not a place of production or business, but is simplified into a unit of consumption.

I think there is no room for doubt, no matter which one you read, that Fukuzawa's main target of criticism was the nature of the "ie"-type family at the time. There are various ways of reading what kind of thinking he took toward the modern family, and I don't know well either, but the "ie"-type family was very, very common in both the Edo period and the Meiji period. Society in the Meiji era was overwhelmingly an agricultural society, and farm households were all "ie," and the world of small urban businesses or artisans and merchants in "ie" units existed thickly, while the world of factories and companies existed only partially.

In this way, even in the Meiji era, the modern family style where work and home were separated was a small minority, and the "ie"-type family was regarded as the standard. Men inherited, maintained, and developed the house, and those who could not inherit the house established a new house. The goal was to become the master of a house management entity, and regardless of whether it was a management entity or not, one image of rising in the world was to become the founder of a house oneself.

For factory workers in the Meiji period, the career goal was not to accumulate promotions within a company, but was widely thought to be eventually becoming independent and having a workshop like a small factory (Konosuke Odaka, New Edition: The World of Artisans, The World of Factories). Instead of staying for a long time and gradually moving up, it was regarded as the career peak for an artisan to move around various factories, acquire skills, and establish their own factory. Becoming the master of a small management entity was set as the goal. The "ie" existed widely even in modern times, and in that sense, "modern family" is a somewhat misleading concept, so I don't want to use it much, but I use it for convenience.

The "ie" was a basic unit in Edo-period society as well, but as I mentioned earlier, it was subsumed within social groups. However, upon entering the Meiji era, status-based social groups disappeared, and direct mutual competition between houses was born. When that happened, "ie" management entities staked their survival against each other, and for example, farm households became labor-intensive. Women were required to contribute to the house to a stronger degree in both production labor and housework under the command of the male head of the household.

It is easy to understand if you think about farm side jobs, but farm households did not only do farming. During the off-season, for example, side jobs were carried out such as receiving a supply of thread, weaving cloth, and receiving a labor fee, and women were in charge of that. In other words, they took a strategy of trying to survive by using up all the surplus labor. Agricultural technology itself became considerably labor-intensive, and pressure increased toward a mechanism where as many people as possible in the family earned as much as they could.

Naturally, full-time housewives did not exist. As is often seen, while children were small, there were scenes where the mother's generation could work more. It was possible to go out to the fields or paddies, and they could weave cloth or engage in cottage industries within the farmhouse. Mothers prioritized doing such things, and a distribution of labor was seen where the grandmother's generation was in charge of childcare and housework. There was a structure where the mother was not always in charge of child-rearing, and everyone was just working all the time.

After World War I, as the industrial structure changed, modern family-type families where work and home were separated gradually increased. However, recent research says that even after World War II, the trend toward becoming full-time housewives was not actually that prominent. It is not the case that the style of women entering the home and not working outside became generalized during the high economic growth period. The labor culture where it was natural for women to continue working, even if work and home were separated, may have been quite widespread until after World War II. On the other hand, recent research points out that the norm of the gendered division of labor, where women bear the responsibility for care in the home—that is, preparing meals for the family, doing laundry, and cleaning—is strong (Isamu Mitsuzono, Women Who Care for Consumers).

In this situation, success in the Meiji period was a concept with men as the subject, and women were basically not included. However, the desire for success and rising in the world also existed among some women, and there were people in the Meiji period who spoke of their own careers using the same words. For example, among the members of Seito, there was a person named Kiyoshi Iwano (née Endo).

Regarding Iwano, there is detailed research by Hiromi Sakai (The Gender Dynamics of the 'Struggle for Love'). She was a school teacher in the provinces, but when she returned to Tokyo, she used the words, "I have returned to the capital again to stand in the arena of the struggle for existence." This meant she had the intention to actively participate in the arena of competition with her own abilities. She tried to talk about her career with wording similar to men's rising in the world, and she chose a career of becoming a clerk, then a reporter, and making her way as a writer.

While there are such cases, as another way of being talked about with the words rising in the world—this is my own research—there were female bureaucrats, or officials as they were called then, in a department called the Savings Bureau that handled postal savings within the Ministry of Communications, which later became the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and is now part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. There is a phenomenon where these people are talked about in the form of rising in the world or success.

Through this, I would like to look at one end of the gender structure of modern Japan. In Meiji-era Japan, in principle, women did not have the qualification to be officials, which corresponds to current national public servants. The status of pre-war officials was divided into three from the top: chokuninkan, soninkan, and hanninkan. Chokuninkan were high-ranking people like vice-ministers or bureau chiefs, soninkan were like current career bureaucrats, and hanninkan had an image like non-career bureaucrats. Below the officials were employees (koin) and laborers (yojin); koin was a word used mainly for clerical workers, and yojin for operational workers. These people did not have special duties or status guarantees toward the state like officials; in modern terms, they were people close to non-regular employment government office staff, and there were many women among the koin.

The prototype of the modern Japanese official appointment system was decided by the Civil Service Appointment Ordinance and Civil Service Examination Rules of 1893 (Meiji 26), but this limited the examination qualification to males aged 20 and over, and females did not have the examination qualification. However, as an exception, there were so-called special appointment posts. Special appointment refers to jobs where one can take a public servant post without going through an examination; for example, teachers at government schools are officials, but they do not take office by taking the civil service examination. Therefore, it was possible for women to take positions as teachers at government schools. For example, music teachers at the Tokyo Music School or teachers at women's higher normal schools were officials because they were teachers at government schools. Furthermore, there was a regulation that if one continued as a koin for five years or more, they could be appointed as an official through an examination limited to that department.

In a form like a combination of special appointment and the track record of being a koin for five years or more, some government offices began to incorporate women into the framework of officials. The first to do this was the Savings Bureau of the Ministry of Communications in 1906 (Meiji 39). The reason the Savings Bureau of the Ministry of Communications was able to appoint women to hanninkan posts was that there were special appointment posts there from the beginning. The Ministry of Communications had a vast number of staff, and it was not feasible to conduct examination-based hiring for everyone one by one. There was a judgment that it was not rational to hire all post office clerical staff through the civil service examination, and the hiring for such posts was increasingly carried out only within the Ministry of Communications. Regarding the hiring of women in 1906, Hiroshi Shimomura, who was the Director of the Savings Bureau at the time and served as the President of the Board of Information at the end of the war, gave a blunt explanation in the newspaper: "Since their salary is lower than men's, they are useful in proportion to being cheap." In a current ministry, he would be fired immediately, but that was the gender consciousness of the time.

The number of people hired gradually increased, but the main work of these people was to calculate savings using an abacus. Slips for withdrawals and payments of postal savings made all over the country were sent on paper to the central Savings Bureau, and they were doing the work of calculating all of these to produce the total amount. Since it was a fairly competitive environment, there were abacus competitions to compete for the speed of flicking the abacus, and abacus users were gathered in the large auditorium of the Ministry of Communications to compete in how many seconds it took to calculate 100 slips while the Minister and Vice-Minister watched. Among them, people who had served for a long period were found. What I was able to investigate was a person named Omiki Miki, who was called a master of the abacus. This person's maiden name was Shimizu, but when I found her in the historical materials, I thought she must be married. This is because it is hard to imagine giving the name Omiki to the surname Miki. In other words, I thought she had served long enough to be married, and when I followed this person, I found out quite detailed things.

Ms. Miki (Shimizu) was hired as a koin in 1904 (Meiji 37). She was appointed as a hanninkan in 1911 and retired in 1932, so she served in the Ministry of Communications for 28 years. She rose to the position of group leader and had male subordinates. As of 1932, the other group leaders in the same section were men. In such a situation, she was succeeding as a woman. However, there was a section chief above her, and no woman ever became a section chief.

She left a memoir. According to it, "At that time, our country was at war with Russia, and even as a young woman, I wanted to work for the sake of the country and volunteered to be a nurse in the army, but my wish was not fulfilled due to the age limit of 15; however, still wanting to do something for the sake of the country, I heard that they were using abacuses at the Savings Bureau where a friend happened to be working, and since I was more than a little interested in the abacus, I immediately joined the bureau" ("A Life of Abacus"). There was the Russo-Japanese War, and she was a youngest daughter or something and her parents didn't pay much attention to her, so she was in a situation where she had to carve out her own future, but she wanted to become an army nurse, contribute to the country, and carve out her own path, but it was not possible due to the age limit, and since the Savings Bureau was recruiting, she wrote that she took the job because it was also for the sake of the country. I would like you to notice here as well that the moment of success is war.

She had a workplace marriage with Gentaro Miki, who was also a hanninkan at the same Savings Bureau. It is very interesting that the two of them moved up with similar careers, but eventually children were born. When the first and second sons were born, Gentaro's mother, the mother-in-law for Ms. Omiki, was doing the child-rearing. When the third son was born, the mother-in-law was elderly, so Ms. Miki recalls that she decided to retire at this timing. Her husband also retired later and became the postmaster of a special post office. It was a class 3 post office at the time, but since special post offices are a kind of family business, they probably became a small-scale management family.

What I want to focus on here is the gender asymmetry when women participate in rising in the world. The appointment of women as hanninkan in 1906 was reported quite extensively. In the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun on July 30 of the same year, there was an interview article with the family saying, "They say that child has finally succeeded in the world, but in the meantime, I hope to find a good husband for her; I had heard about enlightenment for a long time, but I never dreamed that child would become a hanninkan," and the concept of success is clearly there. However, for a man to become a hanninkan was not success. Looking at the magazine Success for men, it says, "To become an ordinary hanninkan (...) must be said to be a very trivial person, therefore it is believed to be essential to study hard while holding that position and create qualifications for peace of mind for another day." It says that being a hanninkan is a trivial job and since the top is fixed, it's better to study for a qualification exam and do job-hunting activities.

An event called success for a woman is not success at all for a man. Gender asymmetry can be seen here. Furthermore, from Miki's career, we can see a structure where three-generation cohabitation existed when a woman worked in a government office for a long period, and she was supported by that.

Above, I have looked back at modern Japan from the podium of the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall), a place with special meaning for modern Japan, and we can see that the themes Fukuzawa and Keio University faced in the Meiji era exist as urgent themes for us today, though in different forms.

For example, as a modern challenge, we can cite the issue of care labor and gender structure. The words said in commemoration of today, "Keio University has never closed for even a single day," although this is strictly a symbolic expression, if Keio University really does not rest for even a single day, the question of who makes meals and cleans for the members of the Juku who do not rest will still be asked.

Hasn't the structure where a single full-time male worker supports the household continued to reproduce gender imbalance? In a cutthroat competitive society, if you ask if there is time for both men and women to participate in such care labor, there probably isn't. If so, we return to the question of what the nature of society and the connections between people that make this possible should be. The experience of modern Japan is full of materials that evoke such questions.

And the moment of violence. How can we prevent competition from turning into the exercise of violence? Or how can we avoid a social mechanism where people placed in a disadvantageous position cannot participate unless there is an exercise of violence? On the day of his lecture on Wayland's Elements of Political Economy, Fukuzawa wrote that Shinsenza, where Keio University was located at the time, and Ueno were two ri apart, and there was no worry of bullets flying over, but in today's world, which has become much narrower than in Fukuzawa's time, is Ueno far? Can we say that the sound of cannons anywhere is no longer far from us? I also think we should share the sensitivity toward violence of Fukuzawa, who spoke vividly of the fear of terrorism. Thank you for your attention.

(This article is based on a lecture given at the Commemorative Lecture for Yukichi Fukuzawa's Wayland's Elements of Political Economy Lectures held at the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) on May 15, 2023. The original texts of Yukichi Fukuzawa in the text are from The Collected Works of Yukichi Fukuzawa (Keio University Press).)