The Meiji Constitution and political modernisation

What the specification asks for

“Impact on economy and society of the fall of the Tokugawa. Political modernisation as represented in the Meiji Constitution.” — examined through change. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

Dismantling the old order

The new government moved with remarkable speed against the system that had produced it. In 1869 the lords were induced to return their domain registers to the Emperor; in 1871 the domains were abolished outright and replaced by prefectures with governors appointed from the centre. Japan acquired a national administration where it had had a federation of hereditary jurisdictions.

The samurai class was dismantled in stages. Stipends were reduced, then commuted into government bonds, and in 1876 the wearing of swords was prohibited. Conscription in 1873 replaced a hereditary warrior class with an army of commoners. A land tax reform in 1873 converted a variable levy in rice into a fixed cash tax on assessed value, which gave the government a predictable revenue and transferred the risk of a bad harvest to the cultivator.

These measures together are what made everything else possible: a central administration, a national army and a reliable income. They were also deeply unpopular in places, and the rebellions of the 1870s follow from them.

The Constitution of 1889

Pressure for representative institutions came from the freedom and popular rights movement of the 1870s, and the government responded by promising a constitution and then drafting one on its own terms. Ito Hirobumi studied European models and chose Prussia's, because it combined a parliament with a monarch who retained real power.

The Constitution was granted by the Emperor in 1889 as a gift rather than agreed with the people, which is itself a statement about where sovereignty lay. It created a bicameral Diet whose lower house was elected on a tax-paying franchise of roughly one per cent of the population, and which met for the first time in 1890. The Diet could reject a budget, but if it did the previous year's budget continued, which limited its principal weapon.

The crucial provision, however, concerned the executive. Ministers were responsible to the Emperor rather than to the Diet, and the army and navy reported directly to the throne through their own chiefs of staff, outside the cabinet's authority. By convention the service ministers had to be serving officers, so the army could bring down a government simply by withdrawing its minister and refusing to supply another.

The clause that mattered in the 1930s

That arrangement is the single most examinable thing on this key topic, because it connects 1889 to the crisis of the 1930s directly. A cabinet that cannot control the armed services, and that can be destroyed by them at will, is not a government in the ordinary sense.

In the 1890s and 1900s the problem was concealed by the fact that the same small group of Restoration leaders dominated both the government and the services. As that generation passed, the constitutional position was exposed, and the army in the 1930s used exactly the powers the Constitution had given it.

It is important not to overstate the point into determinism. Party cabinets did govern for much of the 1910s and 1920s, so the Constitution permitted parliamentary government without securing it. What it did was leave the door open, and the argument for a candidate to weigh is how much of the 1930s is explained by a document written forty years earlier and how much by the events of that decade.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1871

The domains are abolished and replaced by centrally governed prefectures. Why this date: It creates a national administration three years after the Restoration, which is the precondition for everything else.

1873

Conscription and the land tax reform are introduced. Why this date: They give the state an army of commoners and a predictable cash revenue, and both provoke serious resistance.

1889

The Meiji Constitution is granted, with the services reporting to the Emperor rather than the cabinet. Why this date: That clause is the constitutional reason civilian government could not control the army in the 1930s.

1890

The first Diet meets on a franchise of about one per cent of the population. Why this date: Representation was real and extremely narrow, which is the balance the strand has to hold.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• About 1 per cent — The share of the population enfranchised for the first Diet in 1890. (The franchise was extended in stages and reached universal male suffrage only in 1925.)
• 1871 — The abolition of the domains, three years after the Restoration.
• 1876 — The prohibition on wearing swords, completing the dismantling of samurai status.

The people to place

• Ito Hirobumi — Principal author of the Meiji Constitution; chose the Prussian model.
• Emperor Meiji — In whose name the Restoration was made and by whom the Constitution was granted.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'constitutional flaw' reading: The Constitution placed the services outside cabinet control and allowed them to destroy governments, so the collapse of civilian authority in the 1930s was written into the document of 1889. Contested by The reading that party cabinets governed successfully for two decades under the same constitution, so the 1930s require explanations from the 1930s — assassination, the Depression and the Manchurian crisis — rather than from a clause..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The Meiji Constitution made Japan a parliamentary democracy.

This: It created a Diet elected by about one per cent of the population, left ministers responsible to the Emperor rather than to parliament, and placed the armed services outside cabinet control.

Not this: The Constitution was won by a popular movement.

This: The popular rights movement created pressure, and the government then drafted the document on its own terms and had it granted by the Emperor as a gift, which is a statement about sovereignty.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Having a constitution and being constitutionally governed.

The distinction: Japan had a written constitution from 1889 and a cabinet that answered to the throne rather than the electorate. The document existed; parliamentary control did not follow from it.

Blurred: The Diet's power to reject a budget and to control policy.

The distinction: Rejection left the previous year's budget in force, so the Diet's strongest weapon produced continuity rather than a crisis. Overstating its leverage misdescribes the whole system.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer resists turning the 1889 clause into destiny. It made military independence possible and did not make it inevitable, because party cabinets governed under the same document for two decades — so the honest formulation is that the Constitution left a door open which the events of the 1930s then walked through.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: The service ministers' convention stated exactly: a serving officer, withdrawn at will, brings down the cabinet. One mechanism, and it explains forty years of Japanese politics.

The cap that bites here: The 8-mark question is held at 4 marks if only one cause is explained.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain TWO ways in which government in Japan after 1889 was different from government before 1868. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
2. Explain TWO causes of the adoption of the Meiji Constitution. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
3. Explain TWO causes of the weakness of civilian control over the Japanese army. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
4. How significant was the Meiji Constitution in the history of Japan, in the years 1868–1945? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. How far did the Meiji reforms transform Japan, in the years 1868–95? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: What best explains Japan's rise to great-power status and its destruction: the state the Meiji leaders designed, the constitution they wrote, or the resources the country did not have?.

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson, in key topic 1: The fall of the Tokugawa and the Choshu and Satsuma domains
• Next lesson: The end of the samurai and the Restoration Coalition
• Key topic 2 · Transformation, 1867–1895 · Japan in transformation, 1853–1945 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of Japan in transformation: Japan opening up to China and the West, 1853–67 · An emerging power, 1895–1919 · Political and economic challenges, 1919–31 · Depression, empire and collapse, 1931–45