The Strategies The Meiji Government Used To

Achieve Economic Development? Essay, Research Paper

The Strategies The Meiji Government Used to Achieve Economic Development?

The Meiji government during the 1880’s created both an institutional

and constitution structure that allowed Japan in the coming decades to be a

stabile and industrializing country. Two major policies and strategies that

reinforced stability and economic modernization in Japan were the creation of a

national public education system and the ratification of the Meiji constitution.

Both these aided in stability and thus economic growth.

The creation of a national education system aided in creating stability

because it indoctrinated youth in the ideas of loyalty, patriotism, and

obedience. Japan’s education system at first stressed free thought and the ideas

of individual’s exploration of knowledge but by 1890 the education system of

Japan became a tool for indoctrination into what Peter Duus calls “a kind of

civil religion” with the Imperial Rescript on Education. This Rescript stressed

two things. First, it stressed loyalty to the emperor and to a lesser extant to

the state. In every classroom a picture of the emperor was placed. Second, the

education system stressed self sacrifice to the state and family. Filial piety

was taught in schools and applied not only to the family but also to the

national family which included father, teacher, official and employer. The

Japanese education system also created a system of technical schools and

universities both public and private that educated a growing class of Japanese

on how to use new western machinery, administrate government and run private

industries. The Japanese education system following the Rescript on Education

served primarily to teach people what to think and not how to think; and as

Edwin Reischauer stated, “Japan pioneered in the modern totalitarian technique

of using the educational system for indoctrination and was in fact decades ahead

of countries like Germany in perfecting these techniques.” Japan’s education

system was a tool in creating for Japan a reliable citizenry who respected the

government and had the knowledge to act as “technically efficient clogs” in the

new industries and administration that an industrializing state created.

The ratification of the Meiji constitution drafted in the summer of

1887 and signed into law in 1889 helped create a stable constitutional order in

Japan. The constitution was a gift of the emperor to the people and was made up

of a complicated set of checks and balances between the emperor, his cabinet,

and the Diet. The constitution although it granted voting rights to only one

percent of the population in Japan was well received by the people and played a

critical role in lending legitimacy to the oligarchy (Genro) who ran the

government. Before the constitution the Genro had little basis in theory for

their continued rule other then they spoke for the emperor. But the constitution

with its elections and bicameral diet lender legitimacy to the rule of the

oligarchy. The constitution also brought Japan at least in the minds of the

oligarchy to parity with western political institutions. Indeed, the ruling

group in Japan passed the constitution through not because of popular pressure

but because they thought a constitution and parliamentary government was a

necessary part of the political machinery that helped make western powers strong.

In the long term the parliamentary government of Japan and its constitution provided

a stable government with its mix of oligarchy, monarchy, and a little democracy

for the wealthy. It ensured investors and the Zaibutsu a say in government and

promoted growth by creating a stabile government that was critical to ensuring

investors will put capital in businesses. Both the new education and

governmental structure of Japan passed in the 1880’s and 1890’s was essential to

Japanese stability and economic and industrial growth.

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