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The events of the Meiji reconstruction strangely illustrate the action of such instinct in the face of peril, the readjustment of internal relations to sudden changes of environment. The nation had found its old political system powerless before the new conditions; and it transformed that system.
Y. Kamada maintained that "patriotism in Japan was the outcome of foreign intercourse. Patriotism, that is to say, love of country not merely of fief and readiness to sacrifice everything for its sake, was a product of the Meiji era."
I imagine that Greek children, three thousand years ago, must have watched, like the Japanese children of to-day, for a chance to steal some of the good things offered to the ghosts of the ancestors; and I fancy that Greek parents must have chidden quite as gently as Japanese parents chide in this era of Meiji, mingling reproof with instruction, and hinting of weird possibilities.*
This is not, however, the original place of the tomb, which was moved by imperial order in the sixth year of Meiji to its present site. A lofty fence, or rather stockade of heavy wooden posts, painted black, incloses a piece of ground perhaps one hundred and fifty feet long, by about fifty broad, and graded into three levels, or low terraces. All the space within is shaded by pines.
Thus, at one stroke, the lands and titles of the hereditary aristocracy were annulled, just as was destined to be the case in the Meiji era, twelve centuries later. *Everyone having a right to use public-service horses was required to carry a token of his right in the shape of a small bronze bell, or group of bells, indicating by their shape and number how many horses the bearer was entitled to.
This insurrection in the south severely taxed the resources of the Central Government. The Satsuma samurai were led by Saigo Takamori, but it has always been claimed for him that he undertook the command, not for the purpose of overthrowing the Meiji Government, but in the hope of restraining his followers. Ultimately, however, he seems to have been swept away by the tide of their enthusiasm.
Though cases of junshi have occurred even within this present era of Meiji, the determined attitude of the Tokugawa government so far checked the practice that even the most fervid loyalty latterly made its sacrifices through religion, as a rule. Instead of performing harakiri, the retainer shaved his head at the death of his lord, and became a Buddhist monk.
He lisped and laughed and held out his arms, being evidently used to petting; and while playing with him I looked closely at the tablet. It was a Shinshu ihai, bearing a woman's kaimyo, or posthumous name; and Manyemon translated the Chinese characters for me: Revered and of good rank in the Mansion of Excellence, the thirty-first day of the third month of the twenty-eighth year of Meiji.
By degrees, however, the Government's credit improved, and thus, though the issues of inconvertible notes aggregated sixty million yen at the close of the first five years of the Meiji era, they passed freely from hand to hand without discount.
The way in which Japanese regard the transformations produced by the "restoration" of the present Emperor, upon the overthrow of the "Bakufu," or "Curtain Government," may be judged from the following graphic paragraph from The Far East: "The Restoration of Meiji was indeed the greatest of revolutions that this island empire ever underwent. Its magic wand left nothing untouched and unchanged.