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 specialize in the study of modern Japanese history, particularly the social transition from the Edo period to the Meiji era. 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 represents the element of violence. Success represents the element of competition. Gender represents the perspective of the separation or division of roles by sex. While modern Japan was born through violence, competition, and the reshaping of gender roles, it can also be thought that new forms of violence, competition, and gender roles were created as they intertwined with each other within the timeline of modernity and the social movements of Meiji Japan.

First, let's talk about 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 were holed up in Kaneiji Temple in Ueno, and the New Government forces. Despite the conflict, Yukichi Fukuzawa continued his lectures on Wayland's Elements of Political Economy. And he left behind those famous words: "Keio University has never closed for 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, from another perspective, managing the Keio students was truly exhausting. After the war, the number of people increased unexpectedly, but as for what kind of people they were, there were many young students who had gone to the front last year, fought extensively 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 and frightening characters; at first glance, they were almost impossible to handle."

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

And, in another famous episode from the Autobiography, 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 era. He recounts various instances where he was nearly assassinated, summarizing them by writing, "Of all the unpleasant, eerie, and terrifying things, assassination is the foremost. I don't think anyone but those who have been targeted can understand this feeling." For Fukuzawa, the fear of assassination continued from the anti-foreigner factions of the late Edo period well into the early Meiji era. 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. The next theme is how this situation arose. The direct theme is the Boshin War. This war between the New Government forces and the former Shogunate forces largely proceeded with various domains submitting to the New Government without fighting, but 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 and Shogunate armies 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 standing army under its direct control. 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 samurai, but participate with Western-style armies organized with cannons and rifles. Meanwhile, the Shogunate had also carried out military reforms just before and had basically established a Western-style military structure.

Edo-period armies used rifles, bows, and long spears in combination, but they operated on the premise that the final battle would be decided by hand-to-hand combat by samurai on horseback. Therefore, at the core were mounted samurai, surrounded by attendants. There were rifle and spear units in front of them, but they were composed of such combat units. This was the military organization systematized at the beginning of the Edo period, but during the Edo period, the ruling samurai class almost never actually engaged in combat.

However, as military tensions suddenly rose both domestically and internationally at the end of the Shogunate, 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 late Shogunate and Restoration periods were particularly revolutionary. A rifle has grooves inside the barrel, causing the bullet to spin when fired. The effective 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. This meant that the army that used rifles more efficiently would be stronger, and the Edo-style method of having rifle units in front of mounted samurai could no longer win. Therefore, it became necessary not only to introduce guns but also to reorganize the nature of the army itself. Military reforms dismantled the combat units of mounted samurai and attendants, leading to the introduction of Western-style military systems for group warfare, composed of two layers: officers as commanders and privates.

The reason military reforms were executed by the Shogunate and various domains at the end of the Edo period was that, as the possibility of actual war increased, they faced a situation where 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. It is important to note 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 its era, but it was the military reform of September, Keio 3 (1867), just before the Boshin War, that decisively dismantled the Edo-period military structure. The hatamoto (bannermen), who had been the basis of the army, were considered the core providers of the Shogunate's military power, but this reform dismantled their armies. Until then, they had been obligated to provide military service to the Shogun by riding horses and bringing subordinates according to their land's rice yield (kokudaka). However, they were told they no longer had to do that and should provide money instead; the hatamoto were to pay the Shogunate an amount corresponding to their respective territories. The Shogunate then used that money to hire soldiers. They attempted to create, so to speak, directly employed mercenaries.

The point is how they hired the soldiers at this time. In the Edo period, there were employment agencies called hitoyado, which brokered servants and provided labor for various places, including samurai residences and civil engineering projects. The Shogunate appointed influential hitoyado in the city of Edo as "Heads of Infantry Contractors" and had them gather infantry. Daimyo and hatamoto had originally taken in servants from the city as attendants through these hitoyado. When not at war, 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 convert this into military force. Thus, the Shogunate Infantry was created, but in reality, they were the urban poor hired through hitoyado, which in modern terms are labor dispatch agencies. Physical laborers were pooled at the hitoyado, and the infantry was organized by hiring the physically strong among them as soldiers.

The Shogunate Infantry was deployed to actual battlefields in the Battle of Toba-Fushimi and military clashes in Kyoto, but they 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 road. Upon returning to Edo, Yoshinobu Tokugawa took a submissive stance and basically did not resist. While maintaining a certain level of military force in the background, he showed a posture of basically not opposing. 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, hardliners emerged within the Shogunate, and some deserted while leading the infantry. Among the infantry, some appeared who thought they would just be unemployed anyway, so if someone was still saying they would fight, they would follow and fight, leading to a series of desertions from 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 side. 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 of 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 low-class ruffians with tattoos." Both sides suffered a considerable number of casualties on the battlefield, and when he went to see the condition of the fallen, many of the dead soldiers were harakuko (ruffians) with tattoos. This blatantly discriminatory expression deviates from the image of Itagaki as a leader of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, but the reason there were many tattooed ruffians was that the urban poor of Edo had joined the army. The Boshin War was a conflict where many such people were deployed to the battlefield.

Of course, not all privates in either the New Government or the former Shogunate armies were from the urban poor, but according to records, unit organizations dependent on labor contractors were seen in various domains. Particularly famous was the unit of the Owari Domain in Nagoya (Noboru Hasegawa, Gamblers and the Freedom and People's Rights Movement). Here, a boss of gamblers (bakuto) organized an army by bringing his subordinates. 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 crucial point is that people who could never have been combatants in the Edo period were out on the battlefield. This means that even before the Conscription Ordinance was enacted in the Meiji era and military service was made mandatory for citizens, people who were supposed to be non-combatants were already 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 providers of military force and, at the same time, the holders 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 parts of society were not functioning.

The fact that samurai alone could not wage war 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 would appear as part of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement in the 1880s. Furthermore, in a better-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 getting them to 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, while the previous organizational principle of society was based on the logic that samurai, as combatants, were the political rulers, 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 became a hero of the Boshin War and occupied a key position in the New Government, but he was forced out of the government in the political crisis of 1873 over the Seikanron (debate on invading Korea). Naturally, he felt a growing sense of dissatisfaction: why could he not remain 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 nation, they should have the right to have their say. There was a path where participating in violent combat led to winning demands for rights. 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, an expert in modern Japanese political history, argues that there have been multiple instances of post-war democracy in Japan (War and Politics in Modern Japan). In Japan, after every war, demands for democratization or the expansion of political participation have always occurred. This is because when a war is waged, the burden on the people 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 rights and demands of the people who bore it after the war. Through this mechanism, for example, after the Sino-Japanese War, political parties moved from being outsiders to being closer to the center of power, and after the Russo-Japanese War, the public 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. Mitani explains that it can be understood as a movement to accommodate the demands of a wide range of people that became active after the war because they had endured the burdens 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 this subsequently drew out political agency. In other words, I believe 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 nation.

The Freedom and People's Rights Movement began in 1874 with the submission of the Petition for the Establishment of a Popularly Elected Assembly, which developed what is called a critique of "yushi sensei" (despotism by officials). "Yushi" means bureaucrats or officials, but the logic used was to strike at the lack of legitimacy: why do people who have no particular basis and have not gained legitimacy through elections hold power? Why are those people the rulers and we are not? There must be a rational explanation for this. It was a logic brought out to challenge the 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 people—though in this case, it referred to a limited group—and that an assembly should be opened for that purpose spread rapidly, there were many people who felt they had the right to speak. I believe the Boshin War was one of the backgrounds that drew this out. On the other hand, this also shows that it was two sides of the same coin with the fact that the demand for political participation had the element of violence in its background at the time it arose.

Second, I will talk about the elements of success and competition. Returning to Fukuzawa's words, it is widely known that Fukuzawa burned with intense hostility toward the class system and advocated the theory of the independence of the individual. In my own words, the theory of the independence of the individual that Fukuzawa developed in Gakumon no susume (An Encouragement of Learning) can be summarized as a philosophy preaching that the foundation of society is for individuals to achieve independence by making their own intellectual judgments and becoming economically self-reliant, without depending on others, rather than through the fixing of status by birth. Naturally, this requires 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 includes following the rules as a member of society and contributing to society. To quote Fukuzawa's own words: "As human beings, we must not be satisfied merely with providing food and clothing for ourselves and our families; since human nature has a higher promise than this, we must enter the company of jinkan kosai (society) and, as members of that company, strive for the sake of the world" (Gakumon no susume (An Encouragement of Learning), Section 10). Here, Fukuzawa's concept of "jinkan kosai (society)," which is a translation of the concept of society and is also very well known, appears. The individual who has achieved independence is required to interact with others under a single set of moral rules as a companion in jinkan kosai (society) and a member of society.

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

So, where did the fever for rising in the world (risshin shusse), the desire and craving to raise one's social status through one's own efforts, which is said to characterize Meiji-era Japanese society, come from? This was born from the dismantling of the class society that Fukuzawa criticized. When I say class society, I don't necessarily have in mind something like a pyramid. The concept of "shi-no-ko-sho" (samurai, farmers, artisans, merchants) has long since ceased to be used in high school textbooks, but a class society is not just about a hierarchical order from top to bottom. I often explain it using the metaphor of "bags": Edo-period society was composed of status-based groups. I think the point is that it was a society made up of many such small social groups gathered like a mosaic.

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 (ninbetsucho). In a modern local government, basically anyone is a resident if they live there and have a resident record, 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 ryogawacho. People who owned land and houses, or machiya, in such places were townspeople (chonin). Being a chonin meant being a member of the town, but not all places in Edo had place names ending in -cho; 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 residential land, it had no address in the Edo period. There were chonin lands facing the roads in this vicinity, and such places were Mita XX-cho, but samurai residences were where samurai lived and not where chonin lived, so they were not called XX-cho. It was only in the Meiji era that place names were given to all locations in Edo.

Edo-period society was a mosaic of such small groups gathered together. 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 (saya).

Among these, the fundamental duty was the military service (gunyaku) performed by the samurai. The reason the providers of military force were the rulers was that the social organization was such that the samurai class bore the military service. The social organization of a class society is inseparable from the fact that the providers of military force are the samurai. If someone who was supposed to be bearing another duty became a provider of military force, it would no longer make sense. That is why, triggered by the Boshin War, the principle that the providers of military force are the rulers collapsed, and a situation arose where the dismantling of the class society was inevitably triggered.

This was not a case where the New Government made a plan to eliminate the class society with deep foresight and took steps one by one; rather, the class society rapidly crumbled 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 class society were put into effect.

Examples of this include the abolition of domains and establishment of prefectures in 1871 and the Conscription Proclamation in 1872. Here, universal conscription was proclaimed, and samurai became unnecessary. 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 providers of military force.

The Land Tax Reform was carried out from 1873, and this dismantled the system of village-wide responsibility for land tax (nengu murauke-sei), which had been a component of the class society. Until then, society was understood in small group units, and obligations 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 responsible. 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-wide responsibility system that had been applied to villages. In other words, tax payment became an individual responsibility. Under the previous village-wide system, if there was someone who could not pay the tax, someone else had to pay it for them. Village officials, such as nanushi or shoya, or wealthy people, supported the payment of taxes.

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 someone abandoned their farming and fled, someone else had to pay their tax. Under the village-wide system, there was a kind of "forced solidarity." 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 a kind of "forced independence of the individual."

In my metaphor, I call this "the bag tearing." People included 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 bursting out, whether they liked it or not, and this created extreme social fluidity. For some, this was naturally an opportunity. As previously non-existent opportunities opened up, those 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 is painful to become a completely isolated individual, attempts were made to rebuild the nature of society in some form. One of these 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 core, 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 associated with 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 class 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, the existence of what were called "struggling students" (kugakusei) was also born in society. Today, the term struggling student tends to refer to students who are enrolled in school but are struggling because they have to work many part-time jobs to pay tuition, 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, and studied for entrance exams at the same time.

There were people everywhere who wanted to receive higher education even if they had to struggle, and books that incited such people also sold well. One example is a guide book titled Self-Reliance and Self-Support: A Guide to Struggling Study in Tokyo. It contained information on schools and part-time jobs available if one came to Tokyo to study while struggling. To excerpt part of the preface of this book: "When you gentlemen rise up, do not rely on your parents, do not rely on your relatives; what you should 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 guaranteed no success. No matter how firm their determination when they came to Tokyo, many struggling students worked grueling part-time jobs like pulling rickshaws, and if you ask if they could study in their remaining time, they would fall asleep exhausted. Some dispatchers were even unscrupulous, gathering people under the guise of providing guidance for study and advancement, but in reality, making them engage in day labor and providing no opportunity for study.

Of course, there were a few successful people. Conversely, people who do not make an effort will never succeed in such a society. However, just because you make an effort does not mean you will succeed. Humans naturally have good and bad luck, and it is quite possible to be blocked by various circumstances such as illness 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 are people who made an effort. Then, looking only at successful examples, people come to believe that they will succeed if they continue 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.

Consequently, those who succeed are also considered morally correct, and those who fail become moral losers as well. In short, it becomes 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 said that you did something morally good and worked hard. When the idea becomes that it's fine as long as you succeed, 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 class society, one of the characteristics of the era, the rising-in-the-world boom, emerged.

Third, I will talk about gender and the division of roles by sex. Up to this point, it has basically been almost entirely about men. Men are the subjects who go to the battlefield and wish for success and rising in the world. So what about women? Here I return to the story of Fukuzawa, but Fukuzawa's theory of women is so profound that it is far beyond my meager scholarship. The points of contention are very diverse, and I believe 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 it is very obvious what Yukichi Fukuzawa was fighting against. In historiography, not just in modern Japanese history research, there is the concept of the modern family when referring to families, 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, such as 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 being a family where everyone, including the head of the household, the wife, the previous generation, and the next generation, works.

The Japanese "ie"-type family was generally based on patrilineal succession, where men inherited the headship and connected it vertically. In historiography, this is called the unity of family name, family property, and family business. Surnames were not allowed in the Edo period, but there were shop names (yago) like XX-ya, family property (kasan) which was the family's assets—land for farmers, a store for merchants—and the head of the household inherited these as an integrated whole from generation to generation. It was common to have a family business, such as the work of XX-ya being a certain thing, and if the parents were farmers, the children were also farmers.

This type of successional family, characterized by small-scale management and direct-line 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 based on the premise that descendants would perform memorial services—generally appeared in rural villages from the 17th century onward.

In contrast, the modern family is ideologically based on the separation of work and home. One leaves the house to work and works at a company or factory. This simultaneously involved a division of roles by sex. It was a division of roles where men worked outside and women were in charge of housework and childcare. As I will mention later, in reality, this was often not the case, but ideologically, 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 what you read, that Fukuzawa's main target of criticism was the nature of the "ie"-type family at that 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 and Meiji periods. Meiji-era society was overwhelmingly an agricultural society, and farm households were all "ie," and the world of urban small businesses or artisans and merchants in "ie" units existed thickly, while the world of factories and companies existed only partially.

Thus, 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 one. The goal was to become the master of an ie management entity, and regardless of whether it was a management entity, one image of rising in the world was to become the founder of one's own house.

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). Rather than staying for a long time and gradually moving up, it was considered the career peak for an artisan to move through various factories, acquire skills, and start their own factory. Becoming the head of a small business 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. In that case, "ie" management entities bet their survival on each other, and for example, farm households became labor-intensive. Under the command of the male head of the household, the degree to which women were required to contribute to the house in both production labor and domestic labor became stronger.

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 where they received a supply of thread, wove textiles, and received a labor fee, and women were in charge of this. In other words, they took a strategy of trying to survive by using every bit of surplus labor. Agricultural technology itself became considerably labor-intensive, and pressure increased toward a system 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, the mother's generation had more opportunities to work. It was possible to go out to the fields or paddies, and they could weave textiles or engage in cottage industries within the farmhouse. A distribution of labor was seen where the mother prioritized doing such things, and 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 with separated work and home gradually increased. However, recent research says that even after World War II, the shift toward 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 period of high economic growth. Even if work and home were separated, the labor culture where it was natural for women to continue working may have been quite widespread until after World War II. On the other hand, recent research points out that the norm of the division of roles by sex, 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, rising in the world in the Meiji period was a concept with men as the subject, and women were basically not included. However, the desire for 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 Kiyoko Iwano (née Endo).

There is detailed research on Iwano 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 using wording similar to men's rising in the world, and she chose a career of becoming a clerk, then a reporter, and making a name for herself 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 (kanri) as they were called then, in the Savings Bureau, a department that handled postal savings within the Ministry of Communications (Teishin-sho), 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 terms of rising in the world or promotion.

Through this, I would like to look at a part of the gender structure of modern Japan. In principle, in Meiji-era Japan, women did not have the qualification to be officials, which corresponds to today's 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 today's career bureaucrats, and hanninkan were like non-career bureaucrats. Below the officials were employees (koin) and laborers (yojin); koin was 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 government employees, and there were many women among the koin.

The prototype of the recruitment system for modern Japanese officials was decided by the Civil Service Appointment Ordinance and Civil Service Examination Rules of 1893, but this limited the eligibility for exams to men aged 20 and over, and women did not have the eligibility. However, as an exception, there were special appointment posts. Special appointment refers to positions where one can take a public servant post without going through an exam; for example, teachers at government schools are officials, but they do not take office by passing the civil service exam. 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 promoted to an official through an exam limited to that department.

In some government offices, women were incorporated into the framework of officials through a combination of special appointments and the track record of being a koin for five years or more. The first to do this was the Savings Bureau of the Ministry of Communications in 1906. 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 employees, and it was not feasible to conduct exam-based hiring for everyone. There was a judgment that it was not rational to hire all post office clerical staff through the civil service exam, and the hiring for such posts was carried out extensively only in 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 salaries are lower than men's, they are useful in proportion to their low cost." In a modern ministry, he would be fired immediately, but that was the gender consciousness of the time.

The number of people hired gradually increased, but their main job was to calculate savings using an abacus. Slips for withdrawals and deposits of postal savings made all over the country were sent on paper to the central Savings Bureau, and they performed the task 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 time were found. One I was able to investigate is a person named Omiki Miki, who was called a master of the abacus. Her maiden name was Shimizu, but when I found her in the historical records, I thought she must be married. 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 information.

Ms. Miki (Shimizu) was hired as a koin in 1904. She was promoted to 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 rising as a woman. However, there was a section chief above her, and no woman 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 at the front, but my wish was not fulfilled due to the age limit of 15. However, still wanting to do something for the country, I heard that the Savings Bureau, where a friend happened to be working, used the abacus, and since I was more than a little interested in the abacus, I immediately joined the bureau" ("Devoted to the Abacus"). There was the Russo-Japanese War, and she was a youngest daughter or something and did not receive much attention from her parents, so she was in a situation where she had to carve out her own future. She wanted to become a nurse at the front, 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 as it was also for the sake of the country. I would like you to note here as well that the element of rising is war.

She had a workplace marriage with Gentaro Miki, who was also a hanninkan in the same Savings Bureau. It is very interesting that the two of them moved up in similar careers, but eventually, children were born. When the first and second sons were born, Gentaro's mother, the mother-in-law for Omiki, did 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 designated post office. At that time, it was a 3rd-class post office, but since designated 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 promotion of women to 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: "They said, 'That child has finally risen in the world, and in the meantime, I hope to find her a good husband. I have heard about enlightenment (kaika) for a long time, but I never dreamed that child would become a hanninkan.'" The concept of rising in the world is clearly there. However, for a man to become a hanninkan is not rising in the world. Looking at the magazine Success, a magazine for men about rising in the world, it says: "If one becomes an ordinary hanninkan (...) one must be called a very trivial person. Therefore, I believe it is essential to study hard while holding that position and create qualifications for peace of mind in the future." It says that being a hanninkan is a trivial job, and since the top is fixed, one should study for qualification exams and engage in job-hunting.

An event that is called rising in the world for a woman is not rising in the world at all for a man. Here we see gender asymmetry. 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 it.

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. We can see that the themes Yukichi Fukuzawa and Keio University faced in the Meiji era still exist for us today as pressing themes, though in different forms.

For example, as a modern challenge, we can cite the issue of care labor and gender structure. The words "Keio University has never closed for a single day," which are said in commemoration of today—while this is strictly a symbolic expression—if Keio University truly never rested, the question of who was making meals or cleaning for the members of the Juku who did not rest would still be asked.

Has not 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 the temporal leeway for both men and women to participate in such care labor, the answer would be no. 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 there is the element of violence. How can we prevent competition from turning into the exercise of violence? Or how can we avoid a social system 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 (about 8 km) apart, and there was no worry about bullets flying over. But in today's world, which has become much narrower than in Fukuzawa's time, is Ueno far away? 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 Lectures on Wayland's Elements of Political Economy held at the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) on May 15, 2023. The original texts of Yukichi Fukuzawa in the text are based on The Collected Works of Yukichi Fukuzawa (Keio University Press).)