Continuing from the previous episode, I go into more detail about the conversation I had with my Japanese host at Mt. Fuji about the Meiji restoration. This experience forced me to re-imagine not only Japanese history, but the history of Europe as well.
Hello everyone and welcome to the third episode of Baggage Allowance. As promised at the end of the previous episode, I am going to begin by retelling the conversation I had with my host at Mt. Fuji about the Meiji restoration. This conversation forced me to re-imagine not only Japanese history, but the history of Europe as well. I will spend the second half of this episode, sharing observations I made about European history, following my experiences in Japan. Let’s begin.
When I was in high school, I remember learning about the Meiji restoration, and it went something like this: “Japanese leaders realized that their nation would become an American or European colony unless they modernized their nation to compete with Western powers. Under the rule of Emperor Meiji, Japan began a period of rapid modernization known as the Meiji restoration. This period saw the centralization of power in the Emperor. By the early 20th century, Japan became a world power, the only non-European nation at the time to hold that position.”
I am sure there was more, but this is basically what I remember. Of all the things I studied (and forgotten) over the years, I remember this event. My teenage self got emotionally invested in Emperor Meiji. The way I understood it, he had the foresight to see his nation in danger, took decisive action to ready his nation, and emerged victorious. Who doesn’t like a good underdog story, and he seemed like a 5 star leader too.
As is often the case with childhood heroes though, you outgrow them. Before I visit a new place, I take the time to read up on its history. Locals are impressed and more talkative if I show knowledge of their city or nation. It also makes museums more interesting and inspires visits to historical sites off the beaten path. Japan was no exception, and I naturally took a deep dive into the Meiji restoration. An important fact that my teenage self ignored was that in 1853, the United States sent a fleet under the command of commodore Perry to persuade Japan to open its ports. It was in essence, gunboat diplomacy. Japanese leaders didn’t have some unique foresight into their future. They were staring at it down the barrel of a gun. And Emperor Meiji wasn’t as powerful as I initially thought. For most of Japan’s history, real power rested in the hands of the commander in chief of the armed forces, known as the shogun. It was effectively a military dictatorship that controlled a puppet emperor, who legitimized their rule. Only on occasion did the emperor wield any real power. These moments in Japanese history are known as “restorations,” with the Meiji restoration being the most recent.
After learning all this, I was curious how Japanese people view their own history. How do they view the Emperor? I posed these questions to several Japanese people while I was traveling, but I got my most direct answer from my host at Mt. Fuji. He commented that people tend to overlook many details concerning the imperial family, or Japanese history in general. That seems to agree with my observations. I went to several museums while in Japan, and they mostly avoided discussion about historical events. Instead, they organized exhibitions around time periods, and spoke about them more holistically. A room full of Samurai uniforms would showcase the Warring States period, but there would no mention of important events during this time period. There was no mention of major battles or the names of the most powerful feudal factions. There was also no mention of the attempted naval invasion of Korea at the end of the Warring States period. Even the Meiji period, which should been one of the proudest moments of Japanese history, made only passing reference to the Emperor or the government, choosing instead to focus on technological and cultural changes.
When I shared these observation with my host, he felt that I was overemphasizing the role of governments, wars, and battles in a nation’s history. He agreed though that museums in Japan are on the opposite extreme, turning a blind eye to many of the government’s policies and influences. This is by design, because an in-depth presentation of Japanese history could threaten the national myth. For example, Emperor Meiji is an icon of Japanese modernization, be in reality he didn’t really do anything. So rather than going into details that could damage his image, it is better to just mention him and the government in passing, and leave the rest to the people’s imagination. Not a bad strategy, seeing how it worked its way into my American World History textbook.
“So if Emperor Meiji didn’t do anything, what actually happened?” I asked.
In response to Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, the shogun attempted to reform his government, but many in the Japanese military felt that these reforms were too little, too late. However, a revolt would lead to civil war, so instead these reformers approached Emperor Meiji. The shogun needed the Emperor to legitimize his rule. If the Emperor asked the shogun to disband his army, he hypothetically had to do so. In practice, however, the Emperor had no army and was effectively a hostage to the shogun, so this never happened, until the reformers arrived at Emperor Meiji’s doorstep with their armies. The Emperor ordered the shogun and his armies disbanded. The shogun didn’t want to give up his power, but to fight meant going against the Emperor’s decree. His army would split and be demoralized, and wouldn’t stand a chance against the Emperor and his reformer allies. The shogun ultimately honored the Emperor’s request. Members of the military who supported the reformers early on became powerful men in the new government, and they profited greatly during the Meiji period. My host specifically mentioned Mitsubishi as an example. Mitsubishi is now a multinational corporation, but it was founded during the Meiji period as a trading company by a samurai. Many other companies that formed during this time were owned or operated by members of the military in exchange for them switching their loyalty from the former shogun to the reformers. My host claimed that this oligarchy maintains power in Japan even in the present day. I found this to be borderline conspiracy, and challenged him.
“Wouldn’t the American army have removed all these people during reconstruction?”
Everything he said after this point was refuted by my own research when I got home. However, everything up to that point was true. The overthrow of the shogun, a samurai founding Mitsubishi, and the military’s ownership of early industry: I was able to verify all of these. However, contrary to my host’s assertion, this oligarchy didn’t last long.
Oligarchies are inherently unstable. Those excluded from leadership are willing to risk everything to seize power and the wealth that comes with it. Coups and assassinations are the norm, so power tends to bounce around. Japan was no exception, with several coups and assassinations in the 1800s and early 20th century. Those early oligarchs were long gone by the time WW2 began.
With all this extra research, I began to understand why museums in Japan don’t talk much about the government or Emperor during the Meiji restoration. Japanese people look back at modernization with pride. The Meiji Restoration is when Japan “grew up” to become a strong and respected nation. However, this retelling of events must necessarily ignore the fact that the government during this time was basically an unstable military dictatorship. Furthermore, discussing the political realities of the time would force a discussion on Japan’s expansionism. The invasions of Korea, Taiwan, and China were a direct consequence of the military’s role in modernization. Land and resources that were captured in these invasions were funneled either into the military directly, or into industries and companies owned by members of the military and other key supporters. These spoils of war included people. Men were forced into service either as soldiers or as laborers, and women were forced into brothels to serve as “comfort women” for the Japanese army. All this was allowed and encouraged by the oligarchy, so as to maintain support and solidify their power. While Japan was particularly aggressive, it should be noted that the politics and motivations I described here influenced the behavior of all colonial powers of this time period.
When speaking with my Japanese host though, I chose not to discuss Japanese colonialism. He was one of the few people I met in Japan who was so open and knowledgeable, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize that by intentionally opening up the topic. I had no idea how he was going to respond, and there was really no point in bringing it up anyways. I already knew what I needed to know.
Now, this story should have ended the moment I left Japan and returned home, but it had a way popping up every now and then no matter where I went. The Japanese aren’t the only ones who ignore inconvenient truths about their nation’s history. That seems like an obvious statement, but if you ask people to give examples, they would almost universally cite ugly historical events. For instance, in the United States, the Indian Removal Act, slavery, interment camps, and nuclear weapons testing would be cited as examples of Americans overlooking historical inconveniences. However, my experience in Japan taught me that I should be even more careful with history that people take pride in. Look closely enough, and you will find things are being ignored to support the national myth.
And there is one origin myth in particular that I had to do a double take on: the European Union. Unlike Japan, the European Union is not a nation. It possesses no military nor does it have a unified foreign policy. I want to stress this, because I was once on a transatlantic flight with an American women sitting in the row behind me. She was just returning from a European vacation, and while talking with her neighbors about the trip, kept referring to the European Union as if it were a single federal republic with EU nations like Italy, France, and Germany being analogous to American states. Her neighbors, also American, didn’t bat an eye. This made me cringe. While there are those who want the European Union to become the United States of Europe, as of today, nothing could be further from the truth. I understand the confusion though. If you know nothing about politics, what you see is that within the EU, countries have no border controls, citizens of any nation can live in any other nation, they have a common currency, things like road signage are standardized, and it has a capital with a parliament and a president. But this is an illusion, and conceals a messier history.
After WW2, Europeans were dead sick of war, so France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands came together to form the European Coal and Steel Community. Coal and steel were the foundation of industry at the time. They were needed to maintain the national economy and build weapons of war. The purpose of the European Coal and Steel community was to take these resources out of the hands of individual nations and into the hands of a supranational organization. This made war infeasible. Over time this supranational organization evolved into the European Union. Its membership grew to include many more nations, and it expanded its jurisdiction from just coal and steel to effectively the entire economy. The justification for this is quite simple. Nations need resources to supply their industries and maintain their economies. If a nation is not in possession of these resources, it must acquire it from other countries, either through trade or through war. Thus global trade is the alternative to global war. You may disagree with this theory, but this was the founding ideology behind the European Union.
Much like Japan, this origin story is repeated over and over again in national museums across the EU, especially in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU. I have spoken to 100s of people over the years from every EU country, and the idea that the EU emerged from the rubble of WW2 as a peace organization is subscribed wholeheartedly by about half the people I spoke to, adjusting for demographics. This story is factually accurate, in the same way that it is factually accurate to say the Meiji restoration was the beginning of modern Japan. However, a closer look, reveals that Japan was an unstable military dictatorship, and not as strong, modern, or glorious as the myth might make it seem. A closer look at the European Union reveals that cold war politics and national interests played as much, if not a bigger role, in the creation and expansion of the EU.
And the biggest elephant in the room was the United States. Throughout the cold war, the United States was a major advocate of EU institutions. The United States wanted Western Europe politically united to face the Soviet Union. In 1948, the American Committee on United Europe was formed to support early European institutions, like the Coal and Steel Community, by funneling money from the CIA. Money also came transparently via the Marshal plan. Nominally, the Marshal plan gave Europe money and favorable trade agreements with the United States to help with reconstruction. However, it also served as a way to make the European nations economically tied and more loyal to the United States. This was part of the reason why Charles de Gaulle of France vetoed a few proposals in the early years of the EU, as he felt those proposals were a back door for the United States to exert its influence. And, of course, there is NATO. If you take a map of Europe shaded to show when nations joined NATO, and another map showing when they joined the EU, they are almost perfectly in sync. This is not necessarily a conspiracy. A nation’s motivations to join NATO overlap significantly with the motivations to join the EU.
I was traveling through Eastern Europe when the Russian invasion of Crimea broke out. While playing board games with a Czech and a Romanian friend, the topic came up. My Czech friend commented that he appreciates more than ever now being part of the EU. I asked him why he thought so, the Czech Republic is part of NATO, so an invasion was unlikely anyway. He replied that while an invasion might not happen, without the EU, Russia might try to exert influence in other ways. When I asked whether he thought being part of the EU had other benefits, my Romanian friend intervened and commented that most of the other benefits of being in the EU goes only to big nations like France and Germany. She works in Bucharest for a German bank and had to learn German for her work. Several people I came across in the Czech Republic and Poland were the same, learning German so they could work for German companies that set up offices or bought up local companies. Both of them saw “EU integration” as merely a way for bigger nations to export their standards and regulations onto their neighbors, so that their companies could more easily export their products.
I won’t comment on my own opinions on this matter, in fact I don’t have one. I am not a European; I am merely a traveler. What I took away from all this was that there is not one but two origin myths surrounding the formation of the European Union. Both of them are correct, but don’t tell the full story. The history of the European Union is complex. It is rooted both in a desire for peace and in pursuit or cold war interests. To ignore one or the other hides the full story. While traveling through Europe though, I found that people tend to subscribe to one origin myth or the other, and which myth they subscribe to is a good indication of their political affiliation. It also tends to reflect their nationality as well. Those from one of the six nations that formed the Coal and Steel community tend to view the EU as a peace organization. Those from nations that joined after the collapse of the Soviet Union tend to see it mainly as a political institution. Those who are from nations who joined inbetween are a bit more unpredictable.
So what about my own nation’s history? What origin myths do we have? What details are overlooked when retelling our proudest moments? Do our people subscribe to different or conflicting retellings of events? How does that reflect in our politics? Many questions, that I will leave you to answer on your own. That’s all for now. In the next episode, I shall take you to the city of Berlin, a city torn in half during the cold war by the iconic Berlin Wall, and how I observed the city, even today, reveals the ideological fault lines running through Germany and Europe.
Afterword: After recording this episode, I had a friend of mine review it for accuracy, and he pointed out that I omitted a very important detail regarding the European Union. The European Union, in its modern form, was formed by the Maastricht treaty in 1992. This was after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. This treaty greatly expanded the power of EU institutions, and it was arguably done to improve the economy of the EU nations in face of increased competition from the United States and East Asia. The trade for peace philosophy was not at the center of these conversations. The role of the EU is constantly evolving with changing times, and this is not something I explored very much in this episode, because I wanted to focus on origin myths, but this detail, I admit, was too important to overlook. So I am mentioning it here. Until next time.
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