Chapter 4
Changing City, Changing Lives
In June 1901 the city of Tokyo passed an ordinance forbidding citizens to venture outside of their homes without footwear.[1] The stated intent was to improve public hygiene, but it seems more likely that, in keeping with the crucial political, economic, and military goals set by the architects of Meiji Japan, the concern was for the appearance of kindai Nippon (modern Japan).[2] This concern was the social complement to the nation's geopolitical objectives, which, once achieved, would guarantee it a position of equality with the industrial capitalist countries. This ordinance reflected the many others that, from the early Meiji period on, prescribed proper action for members of a unified, homogeneous, orderly, and above all urbane society. Limitations were placed on behaviors such as mixed-gender bathing or nakedness, which up to that time had not been considered unusual or unnatural.[3] Lifestyles were being altered, not only because of Japan's push to become a wealthy capitalist power but also because the government made specific demands that people assume different roles now than in the past. The process was no more convulsive than changes wrought in other times or places, but it was difficult nevertheless. Countless aspects of Japanese citizens' daily material and affective lives—their ways of acting, thinking, experiencing, evaluating, responding, and relating with each other—were being transformed.
One of the changes that occurred in Tokyo was the construction of an urban mentality. Born of an indigenous Tokugawa city culture, it
converged with the outlook of the many who came to Tokyo from the provinces. More important, it was colored by the drive to create kindai Nippon. Japan was not an exception to the rule that great shifts of population take place during periods of industrialization; statistics show that the non-native-born population of Tokyo hovered between one-third and one-half of the total between 1891 and 1920.[4] From 1898 to 1907 between 40,000 and 60,000 people migrated to Tokyo annually, twice as many as the number of migrants to Osaka.[5] In 1908, 60 percent of Tokyo's population and 65 percent of its labor force was non-native.[6] In addition to the classic rural-to-urban migration of the agricultural poor, young and ambitious individuals flocked to the city seeking entry into middle schools, colleges, and universities, the government bureaucracy, businesses, and the publishing and literary worlds.[7] They were not the elite but those aspiring to the churyukaikyu[*] (middle class), a designation coined shortly before the Sino-Japanese War. Their response to social change in Meiji Japan was to move to the city with the expectation that life would improve, a crucial factor in the shaping of the new mentality of the Tokyo citizen. Large-scale relocation took place in the opposite direction, too, as city people moved to the provinces as teachers, administrators, and the like. They constituted part of the national unification effort by the state to educate and homogenize, an important facet of the shifts of population taking place throughout the country. For these people, coming from Tokyo conferred special status and privileges; the appellation Tokyojin[*] — native of Tokyo—became increasingly common after the Sino-Japanese War. In the early Meiji years this designation was not consciously class-defined, although implicitly it had to do with class, for it called attention to a new breed of people who strove to adjust and conform to changing economic and social conditions. The fact that they came from the capital city, not "the country," signified their circumstances rather than their class aspirations.
The concept of the city as a distinctive and influential place was not new, but its role as the birthplace of a national culture to be disseminated to the rest of the nation was. The pioneering folk anthropologist Yanagita Kunio, writing in 1929, observed that in the past the emblems of knowledge—books and education—originated in the capital city, Kyoto, and could be appreciated only by the confident and ambitious who, "with book bags on their backs," traveled to the city to acquire learning.[8] Kyoto was "precious," the one city in the whole country until foreign trade and commerce spurred the growth of other cities.[9]
The literate were the agents of Kyoto culture, which was to be unconsciously absorbed or consciously imitated. However, the city did not have an exclusive and "inseparable relationship" with learning and the arts, for the roots of these endeavors reverted to the ancient rural past, long before cities became part of the landscape: "They go back to ancient times when each one of our ancestors resided among the rice fields. These themes were piled into flower baskets from remote places to end up decorating the homes of aristocrats."[10] In this process, two currents developed—"folk" and "aristocratic." The former became vilified as "vulgar," whereas the latter was esteemed as "refined" and flourished as the sole representation of the culture of the city. Yanagita lamented the arbitrary subordination of folk culture and dedicated his whole life to discovering, exploring, and revitalizing Japanese folk traditions. In Toshi to noson[*] he assessed contemporary, politicians as "unequivocally shallow" in matters concerning culture and criticized their establishment of Tokyo as the rallying point for education, writing, and all other forms of the arts merely because that city was the locus of governmental power.
The transformation Yanagita wrote about is a point of departure in defining the Tokyojin. The urban/rural dichotomy still prevailed, but in kindai Japan culture was to derive from the city; it was no longer "folk."[11] The urban shoved its way into the rural, and the provinces became the recipient of Tokyo's influence, far more pervasive because the national mentality originated as state policy in Tokyo. That process, in turn, gave existence and meaning to the Tokyojin, a species qualitatively different from citizens of other cities and areas in Japan. They possessed a strong geographic alliance, a sense of superiority, an attitude of tolerance or disdain toward those from less well-endowed localities, and an acute awareness that they were natives of the political, economic, and ideological center of the nation. The modern Tokyojin, however, was not a descendant of the Edokko (native of Edo) of the previous period, nor an elegant and polished product reborn from the old Edo culture, a factor that made it easier in some ways to assume modern qualifies.[12] The use of the word Tokyo divorced the Tokyojin from their pre-Meiji counterparts.[13] The old Tokugawa regime had been overthrown by forces from the provinces, and the Meiji government was in the hands of outsiders.[14] Likewise, the old Tokugawa nobility was replaced by another, curious and even willing to take on some ways of "the barbarians." Edo signified a past that had run its course and a culture that had diminished. Tokyo signified the present and the
future—Meiji, not Tokugawa. By early Taisho the meaning of Tokyojin had established itself firmly in the minds of the Japanese people.
The geographic mind-set of the Tokyojin is described vividly in Botchan, a satirical 1906 novel by Natsume Soseki[*] (1867-1916) about a young man from Tokyo who goes to teach in a distant provincial school.[15] As a Tokyojin, he reacts with scorn, based on preconceived notions about the area and its people. His initial impressions are as follows:
As the boat came to a stop with a deep blast of its siren, a barge pulled away from the shore and made towards us. The lighterman was completely naked except for a red loincloth. What a barbaric place! Though, of course, nobody could have worn a kimono in that heat. . .. The place was a fishing village and looked about the size of the Omori[*] area in Tokyo. What a fool they'd taken me for to bring me here! No one could stand a place like this. . . .
When we arrived I was also the first to jump ashore and, grabbing a snotty-nosed kid who was standing there, I asked him where the middle school was. He looked blank and said he didn't know. Dimwitted clod! How could anybody not know where the school was in a pint-sized place like this?[16]
The superiority and arrogance of this young Tokyojin was not unusual. During the middle Meiji and Taisho years, various features that defined kindai Japan came to be concentrated in Tokyo. In addition to being chosen as the seat of government in 1868, the city became the central location of banks and houses of finance, many business establishments, prestigious universities, the book-publishing world, the chemical, paper, and machinery industries, and almost every other major field of social and economic endeavor. Osaka retained a key position in the national economy as a commercial city with a sizable textile industry, but it lost its status as the chief financial center to Tokyo in the early Meiji period.[17] The big fire of 1872, dubbed "the blossom of Tokyo," engulfed the heart of the city and destroyed old feudal structures, government buildings, and official residences.[18] It prompted the requirement that new construction in the center of Tokyo be of bricks or stone. Under the supervision of a British engineer, a brick-paved road, one of the first of its kind and later the major shopping street in the Ginza area, was completed in 1877.[19] Army headquarters, the police office, and a community of European-style government buildings appeared one by one in the large, razed space near the Imperial Palace. The construction of "Mitsubishi Londontown," a bastion for the busi-
ness and financial combine, began in 1892 and lasted until 1905.[20] This area, known today as Marunouchi, was adjacent to the Imperial Palace and the site of the soon-to-be established Tokyo Central Station, the transportation hub of the nation.
As Edo, Tokyo had been the home of the Tokugawa shogun government, but its choice as the new capital placed it in direct contrast to the old capital of Kyoto. It was designed not to have the latter's detached, aristocratic, and aesthetic quality, which was important only in the execution of official and formal pronouncements and rituals. Tokyo was to assume a far more prominent place as the showplace of the nation, nurturing a political and economic existence appropriate to a modern capital city. A formal Tokyo metropolitan government was set up, enabling the city to operate as an autonomous unit and subordinating any semblance of self-government.[21] This was the same as other political units in Japan, but Tokyo's position as the capital gave it an exclusive and unique identity that no city—Osaka, Nagoya, or Kyoto—could claim.[22]
One of Tokyo's legacies was the relationship of people to space. The city was by far the most crowded in the country. A population of more than a million in the 1890s doubled to more than 2 million by 1920 and, if suburban expansion is taken into consideration, tripled to over 3 million.[23] The center of mercantile Edo, home to the merchants, craftspeople, and laborers who catered to the aristocrats and their followers in the Tokugawa period, was squeezed onto the two banks of the Sumida River, which ran from north to south in the eastern part of the city. It still remained crowded in the Meiji period, even as the population expanded and the metropolitan border stretched toward the suburban south, west, and north. The density of this section, Shitamachi (low district), was never alleviated.[24] In 1903 two-thirds of Tokyo's total population and close to three-quarters of the dwellings were in Shitamachi. In 1920, 60 percent of Tokyo's people lived there.[25]
Parts of Shitamachi remained the marketplace of the city, but its identity was transformed by new ways of conducting commerce and utilizing capital. The demise of the Tokugawa economy, the opening up of the country to foreign trade, and the subsequent outflow of gold and silver proved a fatal blow to the powerful merchants and wholesalers who had reaped profits by manipulating money and credit. Two large establishments dating back to the Edo period were able to survive the traumatic changes of the early Meiji period by actively supporting and financing undertakings for the new government.[26] Some lesser
merchants lived on their reputations for awhile, but as it became clear that the clientele was changing, their operations changed, too. The first department store made its appearance in 1886, to be followed by Mitsukoshi, formerly the two-century old Mitsui textile outlet, Echigoya.[27] These stores adapted to mercantile transformations and catered to increasing numbers of urban customers by stocking a variety of consumer items, including kimono and an assortment of Western merchandise—clothing, hats, and leather goods. They displayed them in show windows and glass cases, utilized a variety of advertisement methods, and offered entertainment in the stores, thereby cultivating a consumer consciousness that recast material whims as "firm decisions"—a pressing need to buy.[28] This was a far cry from the personal, formal, and less ostentatious practice of bringing goods from a storehouse and presenting them to a customer, a form of selling that depended upon the individual merchant's perspicacity and sociability. Eventually the shopping district adjoined the financial, business, and government districts of the city, which had entrenched themselves next to the Imperial Palace.[29] In many ways, much of Shitamachi retained the character of old Edo. Rows of merchant houses, elegant restaurants, and houses of pleasure that had catered to the Tokugawa elite now were patronized by high-level government officials and businessmen.[30] These houses gained reputations and profits by clinging to old ways of commerce and leisure and a strong sense of identification with Edo.
The eastern part of Shitamachi became the industrial area, emitting odors, noise, and dirt that had been unfamiliar two decades before. People congregated to work and live or, if work was unavailable, to loaf. By mid-Meiji, the largest slums in Tokyo festered there.[31] Epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, smallpox, and dysentery occurred with greater frequency beginning in the 1890s, consequences of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and urban industrialization. Tokyo's death rate from pulmonary tuberculosis, also called "worker's cough" or "worker's lung," became the highest in the country.[32] Disease, deterioration, and impoverishment were the by-products of industrial Shitamachi, which had been a bustling center in pre-Meiji Edo.
In 1890 Tokyo had only six factories with more than 300 workers, the largest being a printing factory with over 2,000 employees, four times larger than any other in the city. The majority of manufacturing plants in Tokyo, as in the rest of the country, were largely unmechanized, employed less than five workers, and produced domestic consumer items and textile goods for export. They retained prefactory or-
ganization methods, utilized local transportation and consumer services, and were not competitive with modern industry.[33] Labor relations remained like those in traditional merchant houses, with oyakata (master; literally, parent substitute)—labor bosses, foremen, or small shopowners—wielding control over apprentices and operatives in such areas as the distribution of work, work function, job protection, and housing, often for a percentage of their wages.[34] In 1897 the number of textile and machine shops increased markedly. Although economic growth was slowed temporarily by slumps at the turn of the century and immediately prior to World War I, Tokyo's importance in the production of machinery, machine tools, textiles, and a large variety of consumer items and its position in the printing trade were assured by the end of the Meiji era in 1912. World War I stimulated the growth of heavy industrial facilities, in which the factory system and modern wage labor began to take greater hold. These plants came to be concentrated in the Keihin region between Tokyo and the port of Yokohama, two cities connected by rail as early as 1872.[35] However, small-scale factories remained in Shitamachi.[36] Being a resource- and capital-poor country and war), of foreign investment, Japan had to combine a few key, large-scale industries capitalized by the government and a larger number of more modest, small-scale enterprises financed by private investors.[37]
Government capital was invested in finance, defense, transportation, and education, the foundations of an expanding imperial state. The nation's first major modern military assault on its Asian neighbor provided a shot in the arm. Aided by an improved banking system, continuing textile exports, sustained heavy taxation, and prudent borrowing of foreign capital, expenditures in military and colonial enterprises rose significantly.[38] By this time the government was shifting industrial and financial control to large business cliques that consistently directed their energies toward the building of national power. Nevertheless, economic development was skewed; even though Japan produced the largest battleships in the world in 1910, it was not until the 1930s that the nation achieved self-sufficiency in textile machinery or in the machine tool industry.[39]
The boundaries of the fifteen ku (wards) of Tokyo are said to have been based on topographical considerations (see Maps 2 and 3). Following the north-to-south ku boundaries that cut through the center of the city, we see a demarcation between Shitamachi and Yamanote (hill district), the eastern and western parts of Tokyo.[40] Shitamachi, as
Map 2.
"Complete Map of Tokyo, Japan." By Arai Kisaburo[*] (1894). 48 × 70 cm. From National Diet Library,
Tokyo.
Map 3.
The Fifteen Wards of Tokyo.
its name implied, was low and flat, the exact opposite of Yamanote, which before the 1890s boasted 800 hills, ridges, and valleys. The formidable task of maneuvering rickshaws and carts uphill from Shitamachi was an acute physical reminder of Yamanote's unapproachable quality. During the Tokugawa days, the district included large estates belonging to feudal lords and their followers, untrammeled woods, and large parcels of land, some of which were farmed. The land was transformed in the Meiji and Taisho years, when new wealth joined the old, farms slowly vanished, shopping areas developed, and middle-income housing appeared, hastily erected by the nascent real estate industry. Yamanote no longer was the exclusive habitat of pre-Meiji samurai and daimyo families.
It began to cater to the growing churyukaikyu[*] , which was neither the nobility nor the laboring class but a social class whose members acquired status and wealth based on quantitative measurements rather than by birth or inheritance. Like the term Tokyojin, churyukaikyu[*] began to designate a specific group in kindai Japan in the 1890s and had gained functional usage by the early Taisho period.[41] It is important to understand the multiplicity of meanings as perceived by different individuals, for churyukaikyu[*] was not an uncontested, unidimensional, essentialist category. One's identity and consciousness as part of this group depended on one's job, schooling, marriage, friends, place of domicile, use of language, accent, and leisure activities, as well as the myriad activities of daily living, such as access to the marketplace, in which individual volition and desires were factors. A person's position in this class invariably was based on levels or gradations of power in social relationships in specific places or at specific moments. The gaining of a churyukaikyu[*] identity did not mean the automatic acquisition of social or economic power; in the complex social order it could mean subordination in certain contexts—for example, in relationship to employers, professionals, specialists, or the intelligentsia, who had greater wealth, specialized knowledge, clout, or all three combined—and a less subjugated and sometimes dominant status in other worlds, such as among one's peers at work, in the community in which one lived, or in the household.
To many, however, living in Yamanote as a Tokyojin symbolized being part of the churyukaikyu[*] . One-family homes were built in Yamanote and its adjacent suburban sections to attract the bureaucrats, military personnel, employees of business firms, journalists, and teachers—people who earned salaries, not wages, who were mobile, educated,
achieving, and cognizant of contemporary and past social relationships and status. Mid-Meiji terminology such as churyuno[*] juka[*] (middle-class dwellings) and churyumuki[*] juka[*] (dwellings suitable for the middle class) or, in late Meiji, churyu[*] jutaku[*] (middle-class residences) began to appear and became part of the standard vocabulary. These homes took on a private character different from that possessed by the majority of homes, which served as places of both work and rest.[42] To live in one's own house, regardless of how tiny, with a gate, a wall or fence, and small front yard was not a widespread goal at first, but as the middle-class population increased, it became something to pursue.[43] The urgency extended into living styles, for homes began to take on aspects of Western architecture. Magazines utilized the term wayo[*] (Japanese-Western) to connote a new way of life, not a mere imitation of the West but a "recod[ing of] Western institutions and practices for indigenous Japanese consumption."[44] One architectural journal of 1898 instructed its male readers to: "furnish a large ten-mat room with a table and chair, keep a coal stove going in the winter, and upon returning home from the office, remove your suit jacket and don a maroon smoking jacket. Read a book as you grip a large British-style pipe between your teeth."[45]
On the surface this advice seemed to advocate an imitation of the West, but it cannot be interpreted so simply. Its symbolic meaning conveyed aspects of Japanese authority and authoritarianism, which state and private ideologues used in the complex process of redefining Japanese culture and constructing a national ideology. Authority was assumed in this short passage by its inclusion in a magazine specializing in architecture. Acknowledging that brick and stone structures were beyond middle-class incomes, the publication reminded its readers of the skill of historically trained Japanese craftsmen. They could construct wooden structures that integrated a wayo[*] sensibility and style. A Japanese class-oriented material culture was thus legitimated and given authority. Authoritarianism was conveyed in the detailed (and seductive) description of how to effect a wayo[*]and kindai way of life. Western accoutrements replaced Japanese things in a Japanese setting for after-work leisure: a stove, not a hibachi (charcoal brazier); a pipe rather than a kiseru (Japanese-style pipe); a maroon smoking jacket in preference to a kimono. The article did not mention the price of the products or their availability. The implication was that anything less was not kindai enough; readers were left to figure out how to acquire such items. Similar to the 1901 ordinance that prescribed wearing footwear in public,
these ideas cultivated the use of the products of technology to mold new attitudes, practices, and behavior, to recast Japanese culture. In this context, Yamanote connoted a way of life directly opposite that of Shitamachi, with its pockets of slums.
In the northern Yamanote wards—Hongo[*] Koishikawa, and Kanda—less affluent but intellectual and artistic families established their residences alongside the institutions of higher learning. Small areas of poverty existed, but they were not typical. By 1925 Yamanote was home to the rich, the fashionable, the intelligent, the cultured, and the modern. Establishing a residence there meant that one was middle class. Its two southwestern ku, Azabu and Akasaka, became the residential areas for foreign diplomats and business representatives.[46]
However, it is a mistake to assume that the boundaries of Shitamachi and Yamanote were unchanging or that their functions were exclusive of each other. The topography of Tokyo changed as hills were shaved, land was reclaimed, and buildings, rails, and roads were built. Both sections included areas that were not typical. Rigid categorizations such as "middle class" for Yamanote or "laboring class" for Shitamachi are oversimplistic. It goes without saying that each section contained parts more characteristic of the other. In fact, two of the largest slums in Tokyo were in Yotsuya- and Azabu-ku, lightly populated wards right in the middle of western Yamanote.[47] Additionally, some merchants in Shitamachi amassed greater wealth than any Yamanote salary earner could save in a lifetime. However, in assessing the Tokyo origins of the Japanese in New York, it is useful to distinguish between these parts of Tokyo in a general way, bearing in mind that the designations reflected the people's perceptions about the different sections of the city: desirable or less desirable, rich or poor, Tokyo or Edo, cultured or common. All of these characteristics were stereotypical and extreme, but each contained some reality. Yamanote and Shitamachi, considered (respectively) aristocratic and plebeian by Tokugawa society, had become, in the view of many, bourgeois and proletarian (respectively) by the Taisho period.[48]
The multidimensional characters of both Shitamachi and Yamanote are important in examining the addresses of the sixty-eight Tokyo honseki residents who registered at the Japanese Consulate General in New York between 1909 and 1921 (see Appendix 2, Table 1 ).[49] They were about evenly divided between Shitamachi and Yamanote: thirty from Shitamachi, twenty-nine from Yamanote, and another nine from residential sections in the suburban west and southwest. Thirteen had
addresses in the two most exclusive Yamanote wards, Azabu and Akasaka. Three were from large slum areas in Honjo-, Fukagawa-, and Nihonbashi-ku in Shitamachi, and another was from a Yamanote slum pocket in Hongo-ku[*] . Most of the Shitamachi residents came from densely populated sections but were outside of the most heavily populated areas.
The addresses did not favor a particular ward in Tokyo or a particular district in a ward; they represented a cross-section of Tokyo. This scattered pattern of Tokyo addresses, combined with the diverse geographic origins of the New York Japanese from the forty-five other urban and rural prefectures, indicates that a fight network of migration was not operating. Except for the four in the slums, more than half of the addresses were in the residential areas of the less crowded Yama-note, the suburbs, and the merchant sections of Shitamachi. The density of Shitamachi was such that small factories and home industries existed side by side with merchant/business residences. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that the four emigrants with addresses in the slum section were poor.
These findings, combined with the statistical evidence that the preponderance (more than half) of the Tokyo hi-imin were students and merchants, suggest that the Japanese in New York were strongly aware of what it meant to be a Tokyojin, possessor of the new urban mentality, the kindai Japanese. The politics of emigration were such that each citizen approved for travel to the United States as a nonmigrant had an unstated mission as an unofficial representative of Japan. Who possessed the capabilities essential for this responsibility other than members of the churyukaikyu[*] , whose importance and size grew with the development of the modern capitalistic system? People of this class served an integral and necessary occupational, social, and ideological function in Japanese society and were crucial to the nation's success in the expanding twentieth-century world. The Tokyojin served as the churyukaikyu's[*]
What, then, motivated ambitious kindai Tokyojin to leave Japan and cross an ocean and another continent to end up in bustling New York, USA? One can easily assume that given their backgrounds, training, and aspirations, they could serve their nation and government well and, as the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education prescribed, "advance the public good and promote common interests." They were the occupiers of new workplaces, the recipients of standardized education, the agents and shapers of Meiji middle-class culture. Were their talents and skills
not precious enough to represent the values and "fundamental goodness" of the country and to be of service to Meiji Japan?
In 1890 the Meiji period was in its twenty-third year. Members of the generation born during the throes of the changeover from Tokugawa to Meiji were adults. National decisions and developments had taken place during their youth and altered their lives to the extent that their parents' experiences were no longer relevant. Their backgrounds, whether rural or urban, were becoming increasingly homogeneous. Major cultural alterations had taken place during their lifetimes: compulsory education and standards of ethics; national conscription; the emphasis on loyalty to the state, not only on the part of recruits but also by the populace in keeping the military armed, fed, and clothed; the effort to convince the people that the nation was only as great as their patriotic fervor was genuine; and the notion that the country was one big imperial family, which, among other things, was an attempt to compensate for the erosion of the family- and kin-based economic system. Shifts in their lives, attitudes, and behavior occurred as the result of overt acts by the nation-state, including the merging of more than 170,000 villages into approximately 12,000 political units.[50] Yanagita regretted this measure, which not only dealt a final blow to an already weakened local community leadership but also abolished communal lands, one of the more positive aspects of preindustrial Japan. He also observed that the disempowering of the communal economic structure, the use of standardized language in schools, and the bureaucracy virtually guaranteed the gradual extinction of dialects and local usage of words.[51] These changes, combined with world events and national growth, created an environment in which relationships to the sources of power, wealth, and prestige and the bases of political power were altered.
In addition, the Meiji adult lived in a society no longer separated into rigidly defined feudal status categories. At the end of the Tokugawa period, class barriers had already begun to disintegrate. In the fourth year of Meiji (1871), the registry laws abolished the clan system and divided the population into nobility and commoners, the former including imperial household members and the highest echelon of the Tokugawa. A special designation for samurai families was allowed briefly, but this fell into disuse because it bestowed no legal authority or privilege, though it carried the weight of the memory of superiority.[52] In 1890 only 1 percent of the population was entitled by property and tax qualifications to vote.[53] On the surface it would seem that polit-
ical decisions favored the formation of an increasingly vast group of commoners who represented the majority of the populace, but egalitarianism was not the basis of the newly structured Japanese society. Another, more loosely structured social system developed, but it retained hierarchical features. The constraints of society emanated from the real political world and the fluctuating economy, which was increasingly centralized and under the control of large financial cliques.
It was in this historical framework that the churyukaikyu[*] emerged. Their cultural attitudes evolved from those of the initial bureaucrats in Tokyo and the provinces, people of education, experience, and expertise. Many early bureaucrats were from the former samurai class—not from the minority who were instrumental in the overthrow of the Tokugawa and who later became the leaders in industry and politics but from the majority representing all grades of samurai, including those who sold family names to wealthy merchants and modest retainers who were clerks and teachers in feudal domains or on the staffs of their lords' estates in Edo.[54] In the changeover to Meiji, the government redirected their talents into bureaucratic occupations and thereby dissipated any energy that could be used to upset the fragile social order.[55]
As the government work force expanded into newly established bureaus, departments, agencies, and offices, the samurai-educated functionaries who had permeated national and local governments were replaced by recruits from a commoner populace. Indeed, between 1886 and 1920 the number of bureaucrats in Japan increased by almost 670 percent.[56] The civil service was composed of two divisions, each stratified into hierarchical groupings. The lower division grew to comprise more than 95 percent of all civil servants in 1913, an indication that the bureaucracy was in the main a vast group of office workers. Nevertheless, becoming part of the government work force remained a most difficult and prestigious accomplishment. Beginning in 1887 an applicant had to pass stringent written and oral examinations controlled by a committee made up almost entirely of professors in the Faculty of Law, Tokyo Imperial University.[57] As would be expected, the most promising positions were meted out to its law graduates. Kyoto Imperial University also funneled students into the government, but on a lesser scale.[58]
Graduates of private or specialized colleges filled the gap left by the imperial university elites, but they were destined not for positions that led to the "top"—that is, the national government level—but rather for the less prestigious local and provincial office jobs. Furthermore, not
even a college diploma and a passing grade on the civil service examinations guaranteed an applicant a position. Appointments were made from a list of qualified applicants who had been helped along by influential connections, letters of recommendation, and gifts of persuasion to appropriate people.[59] A middle school diploma qualified one to enter as a lower-level clerk, but this position offered almost nothing in the way of promotions.[60] The obvious outcome of the examinations was that the Tokyo government exercised strict control over hiring for the central and provincial bureaucracies, and the preeminence of government jobs was inviolable. More important, the examinations were instituted in 1887, one year after the establishment of a comprehensive national education system, and thus the system and the use of "standardized" knowledge gained credence and authority.[61]
The avenues of employment that opened up when one had acquired appropriate educational skills were considerable in the early Meiji years. Ironically, however, beginning with the period when national compulsory education was instituted, those avenues gradually declined in number to the extent that unless one had graduated from a particular institution, entry into positions of promise in the bureaucracy, companies, and banks was impossible. The examination was not the only hurdle. Imperial university graduates could expect better jobs and higher starting salaries than graduates of private and specialized colleges, professional schools, and technical and vocational schools.[62] By 1917 more than 50 percent of the Tokyo and Kyoto Imperial University graduates were entering corporations. At the Sumitomo Bank, new employees were placed in one of four categories depending upon their alma mater and field of study. Salaries differed according to category.[63] Graduates of Keio University and the government-sponsored Tokyo Higher Commercial College (the present-day Hitotsubashi University), institutions given university status in 1903, also were guaranteed jobs and quick promotions: they attained managerial positions within ten years and became executives in twenty, "rivaling the situation of government employees."[64] The road to the highest levels of educational advancement was determined as early as middle school (seventh to eleventh year of education), when achievers in the system were tracked to take the examinations for a three-year higher school in preparation for the three-or four-year imperial university course.[65] Although the higher schools were originally set up by the Ministry of Education to "carry out the education necessary for those who wish to go into business as well as those who wish to enter a higher level school," in reality they became
stepping stones for entry into an imperial university. This process became formalized in 1894 with the setting up of the higher schools as separate and distinct institutional components of the educational structure.[66] As was to be expected, acceptance into the higher schools became increasingly difficult: admission rates narrowed from 67 percent of the applicants in 1895 to 34 percent in 1901 and 20 percent in 1908.[67] Exacerbating the situation was the fact that a growing number of the applicants had failed the three-day entrance examination in earlier years. Therefore, as the number of middle school graduates increased, the possibility. for entering higher school decreased.[68] Admission to an imperial university (Tokyo and Kyoto until 1907) was out of the question without a diploma from a higher school of repute. The First Higher School of Tokyo was on the top of the list, followed by the Third Higher School of Osaka. Those who failed the higher school examinations entered one of the many lesser professional or specialized schools that catered to middle-class students. These institutions offered a wide array of courses in the arts and sciences, and some even accepted applicants who lacked a middle school diploma. Some students attended these schools while waiting for another chance to take the examinations for higher school. Others sought credentials that might help them to obtain employment in a firm with some promise. The fortunate few could go abroad to the United States or Europe to overcome their disappointments and difficulties. Graduates of the lesser schools joined the thousands who entered the work force annually, going from job to job, waiting to see which would promise a secure future, and perhaps ending up in one of the many risk-ridden small business firms, far short of the ideal position: government employment.
Seventy-five percent of the businesses operating in 1905 were capitalized at less than 50,000 yen, hardly able to pay a college graduate's salary.[69] The worst scenario for a new graduate, of course, was that jobs might be completely unavailable. In 1891 a youth magazine lamented that more than half of the private college graduates in politics and economics were unemployed.[70] Prospects improved slightly during the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese War booms, but the continued scarcity of capital and its concentration in larger financial institutions made economic depression familiar to the Japanese people. Wide variations in rice output, fluctuating prices, surpluses in cotton textiles, unsteady interest rates, bank failures, irregular trade with China after the Sino-Japanese War, and an intermittently stagnant stock market were clear signs that shifts in the economy occurred frequently and created
unstable employment conditions. There were financial panics in 1890, 1897-1898, and 1900-1903, a postwar recession in 1907-1908, a panic in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I, rice riots in 1918, and another panic in 1920-1923.[71]
The kind and level of education people received transcended the simple school-to-job trail.[72] Those who completed middle school became part of the growing middle class aspiring to work in nonlaboring jobs. Such jobs increased in number, but not necessarily in prestige, as the number of capitalist functions and needs grew. Most middle school graduates did not become professionals or employees in the large companies, occupations that were almost as elite as those of the civil servants slated for high government positions. Nevertheless, having gone beyond the compulsory educational level, they cherished a set of attitudes that stemmed from the highly materialistic goals they (or their parents) set for themselves in kindai Japan. Young people's attitudes toward hierarchy and authority began to be defined by extremely individualistic responses to the changes occurring in their world of work. The value that had been placed upon perseverance, loyalty, and consistency meant that higher offices could be achieved only after years of hard and uncomplaining work, regardless of the prestige or respectability of one's alma mater. However, when perseverance and loyalty were combined with skillful manipulation, self-serving routes to the top could be shortened.
The dual nature of career advancement is an important aspect of the novel Ukigumo (Floating clouds) by Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909). It was first published in two sections in 1887 and 1888, and its third section appeared in 1889 as a serial in a Tokyo magazine.[73] The story centers around two young men (one of them based on the author), the divergent ways in which they pursue their careers as government workers, and their responses to social approval or disapproval of their actions. Bunzo[*] , the hero, moves to Tokyo after the death of his father to live with his uncle, a samurai turned teahouse owner. He attends classes in a neighborhood school for awhile; then, upon hearing about scholarships offered by a normal school (equivalent to university preparatory school), he takes the examinations and is accepted. Despite graduating with high grades, Bunzo[*] spends an "arduous" six months without work. Finally, through the assistance of a friend, he enters the government bureaucracy. He is among the last group of employees hired prior to the institution of the civil service examination system. Although the novel was published before the period of our concern, Bunzo's[*]
observations portray the not-unusual quality of bureaucratic office situations:
On the first day he was given a document to check and when he was settled at his desk he surveyed the room. Around him were men engaged in all kinds of work: copyists with their heads tilted importantly to one side; checkers who studied the work before them like monkeys searching for fleas; accountants turning over the pages of their books with a busy air, their brushes between their teeth.
Just opposite Bunzo[*] was a man of about fifty with a deeply furrowed brow who flipped the beads of an abacus without pausing, rapidly blinking his eyes. Suddenly he held his hands still, and, fingering the beads, said "... Six by five is seventy-two—no—six by five . . . ," as if the welfare of the entire world depended on this calculation. . . .[74]
Bunzo's[*] position eventually becomes permanent. He settles into two years of monotony, wasting "the learning he acquired with such sacrifice," and develops "a false sense of security," thinking he is "safer than he proved to be."[75] He is jarred out of his complacency when he is dismissed abruptly in an office reorganization, not because of unsatisfactory work but because his manner is not appropriately submissive.
By contrast, his coworker, Noboru, advances, for he has successfully manipulated his situation. His superior is a man who feels "the greatest contempt for the old feudalistic hierarchy" and "loudly voice[s] criticism of the arrogant ways of his fellow bureaucrats"; if anything in the office displeases him, he displays his anger without hesitation.[76] Most of the workers do not know how to please him.
Only Noboru knew. He copied the gentleman's speech and gestures and even assumed the way he cleared his throat and his manner of sneezing. The imitation was almost perfect. . .. When the older man spoke to him, Noboru rushed over to his desk and listened respectfully, his head cocked knowingly to one side. After he had finished speaking, the young man would smile broadly and reply most humbly. . .. He was neither distant nor too friendly. Everything was done in accordance with the chief's wishes; he was never contradicted. Moreover—and this is the most important point—Noboru took note of the mistakes made by other division heads as a device for praising the man.
Once the chief's wife expressed a desire to have a Pekinese for a pet. No sooner said than done. Before a day passed, Noboru had got hold of one and presented it for her inspection. The chief looked at the dog and remarked that it seemed to him to have a rather strange face. Noboru agreed that it indeed had a strange face. The chief's wife suggested that it was considered desirable for a Pekinese to have a ratlike face. Noboru said that
to be sure it was thought to be better if a Pekinese had such a ratlike face, just as the lady had said, and he had complacently patted the dog's head.[77]
The vivid portrayal of the boredom of work strikes a familiar chord, as does the description of an ambitious employee catering to his superior. However, most significant are the two characters' divergent responses toward hierarchical relationships in the bureaucracy. Bunzo[*] is not rebellious, but neither is he obsequious. Noboru, by contrast, is blatantly obsequious, hoping to advance up the career ladder. The others, the majority, behave passively, doomed to remain in positions not far above where they started. However, obsequiousness might help one gain risshin shusse ("advancement and achievement," an oft-heard term among educated youth after the Sino-Japanese War), depending on the circumstances and the skill of the worker in assessing his superior.[78] Obsequiousness was a natural outcome of risshin shusse and its counterpart, nintai (perseverance), two moral precepts to which youth striving for success had to conform. However, for people who failed to trudge along and finally reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, these two precepts worked in contradiction to each other.[79] If one were persevering and patient, a whole lifetime might go by without the attainment of rewards, which the ambitious did not wish to be postponed until old age. However, perseverance could be interpreted in ways other than it had been in the harsh preindustrial past, when it was a necessity of life. For the truly ambitious, it could be combined with notions that contributed toward risshin shusse, a talent with which Noboru was particularly endowed. Flattery and manipulation were the tools he used, nothing new in the range of human behavior.
The goals of capitalist society gave a new dimension to certain moral precepts, for people's work experiences were no longer related to their daily lives as in a precapitalist society. The common person in the Tokugawa world was not weighed down with the luxury of private ambition. The interrelatedness of work and life, the importance of cooperation, and the moral precepts that regulated behavior were spelled out clearly, although it would be inaccurate to assume that they remained static during the more than 200 years of Tokugawa rule.[80] By contrast, the organizations and enterprises in which the commoners of the Meiji period increasingly worked had little or nothing to do with their immediate lives; tasks were abstract, and the goods produced were disjointed parts, from which the whole was assembled in various stages and places. The end product was consumed far away from the place of production.
The daily work in which Bunzo[*] , Noboru, and the accountants and clerks engaged had no relevance to their lives, dreams, or aspirations. It consisted of tasks prescribed outside of their realm of control, and it affected people with whom they had no contact. It reeked of boredom.[81] What gave their lives some meaning, more to Noboru than to others, was the quest for risshin shusse—an aim that, if achieved, could bring privileges and material benefits—ownership of a churyu[*] jutaku[*] and other trappings of middle-class consumer culture.
The aims and structure of the Meiji bureaucracy changed with the gradual replacement of the original samurai personnel, but compared to the business world it was relatively stable. This fact, combined with its elite role in Meiji society, makes it a crucial indicator of middle-class sensibilities in this period. Government personnel were prototypical middle-class Meiji individuals anxious for a secure and comfortable life. Their importance was enhanced by the prestige of public responsibility. The status and privilege of officialdom engendered not only hierarchical relationships within the bureaucracy, as we have seen, but also an authoritarian attitude toward the public, a posture that evoked memories of early samurai officials. Samurai authoritarianism in the past gave credence to the authoritarian behavior of Meiji bureaucrats. Their interpretations, assumptions, and pronouncements were sacrosanct and to be accepted as such by the commoner regardless of the weakness of the argument or the irrationality of the purpose. In fact, bureaucrats were not encouraged to think of their work as being for the public good. Their authority was directly connected with imperial authority and explicitly conveyed in the oft-repeated phrase "kanson minpi," which translates as "respect for officials, contempt for people." Even the lowest bureaucrat was superior to any ordinary citizen.[82]
An apt illustration of the superiority and scorn felt by government employees appears in Natsume Soseki's[*]Botchan, based on the author's own experiences as a teacher in a rural school.[83] Although outside the realm of bureaucratic officials and clerks, teachers indisputably were authority figures, hired to impart learning in the national public school system as directed by the Tokyo government. The Ministry of Education controlled textbooks, curricula, sizes of classes, types of schools, and teacher education and qualifications. Instructors used standardized texts, had standardized teaching guides, and taught standardized speech based on elite Yamanote Tokyo speech. Graduates of urban colleges often served as teachers in unfamiliar rural districts.
A nonachieving student in a three-year college in Tokyo, Botchan
graduates, "strangely enough," and lands a job teaching in a middle school on the island of Shikoku in the Inland Sea, far from Tokyo. The job is unglamorous and thankless for a Tokyojin. Botchan describes his first day of teaching as follows:
I took some chalk and left the staff room for the second class, feeling as though I were marching into enemy territory. When I reached the room, I found that the boys in this class were all bigger than those in the previous one. Since I have the typically light, compact build of a Tokyoite, I didn't feel that I exuded any sense of authority, even standing on the dais. . .. But I thought that if I once showed any weakness to these oafs, I would never be able to regain control, so I began the lesson in a good loud voice and rolled my r's a bit as we do in Tokyo, to give some body to what I was saying. . . .
. . . the pupils just sat there and gaped at me in a befuddled way.
. . . I started using the rough, punchy language of downtown Tokyo, which is my specialty. At this, the boy right in the middle of the front row, who looked the strongest in the class, suddenly jumped to his feet and said, "Sir!" . . .
"You're speaking too fast. I can't understand what you say. . . ."
". . . If I'm speaking too quickly, I'll slow down, but I'm from Tokyo and I can't speak your dialect, so if you don't understand my accent, you'll just have to wait till you get used to it."[84]
Botchan's arrogance and intolerance are relentless. Nowhere is it more evident than in his deliberate use of the rapid Shitamachi dialect of the merchants, completely alien to his students, who are accustomed to the leisurely dialect used in Shikoku.[85] Even though the novel is about Botchan's increasing defiance of bureaucracy and authority, he remains totally unforgiving of his students and their provincial ways, as in a march to a rally celebrating victory in the Sino-Japanese War:
When they weren't singing war songs or yelling, they were chattering among themselves. You'd think that it would have been possible to walk without chattering, but all Japanese are born into the world mouth first, and no amount of scolding would stop the boys. Plain chattering wouldn't have been too bad, but this vulgar crew were saying insulting things about teachers. . . .
In the same way that a merchant will bow and scrape and continue to cheat you, the general run of pupils will apologize without the least idea of giving up mischief. On reflection, it seems the world is composed entirely of people like those boys. . .. [T]hey think you're a fool and too naive if you take their apology seriously. . .. The only way to make someone really apologize is to beat him until he truly regrets what he's done.[86]
Botchan's status as a teacher and his Tokyo origins entitle him to be abusive and punitive without restraint. His word is to be obeyed without opposition, his actions unquestioned. The story is a satire about the values placed on false and meaningless attributes, for in reality Botchan and the other members of the faculty are poorly suited to assume authority or merit respect. However, because he is a teacher from Tokyo, Botchan is accorded both.
This blind respect of authority, ridiculed by Soseki’s[*] , was an aspect of kindai society that cannot be understood simply as an extension of pre-Meiji attitudes toward authority. Its significance was not the same. Although oppressive economic and political controls were harsh facts of Tokugawa Japan, in community- and family-related economic units authority was a meaningful concept. In Meiji society it lost that socioeconomic dimension and took on another one based on the political concept of the nation-state as exemplified by imperial authority. The concept was personal and impersonal at the same time. The emperor was the authority figure of the nation, the father, as it were, to whom the people were to be respectful, loyal, and obedient. Measures of national importance—such as the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890, a document that prescribed ethical principles rather than educational policy—were promulgated in the name of the emperor. The chain of authority descended from the emperor to more proximate figures—fathers, husbands, teachers, employers, older brothers—all male, of course. Therefore, the ideological notion of authority included a distinct personal aspect from which it was difficult to escape.[87] The specific timing of Japan's emergence as a modern state, the social and economic contradictions faced by the populace, the need for order and unity, and the development of strong military and imperial structures all were key factors requiring that authority be absolute and inviolable.
However, modern society was encumbered with various new institutions—political, military, legal, and educational—that tended to make relationships "less personal and more instrumental." Individuals developed "a capacity for engaging in impersonal relationships, for dealing with others solely by virtue of specific roles which they fulfilled rather than as whole persons."[88] One was identified by one's role, although the assumption cannot be made that it was binding or unchanging. A person's role could be authoritarian under one set of circumstances and subservient under another; people were "actively involved in the process of making meaning out of their historical moment."[89] Nevertheless, subordinates were expected to accept the authority of those in
authority roles. Consequently, Botchan's students consider him the unimpeachable authority, and he looks at the students as faceless "oafs," receptacles into which he crams information. In this respect, the attitudes and behavior of subordinates—the students in relation to Botchan, and Botchan in relation to the officials of the school—are significant. Although authority remained inviolate, challenges were part of the Meiji political and social drama.[90]
Significantly, the power of authority was evident in every aspect of a person's life, from the all-inclusive family, education, and work worlds to the political arena, in which laws and regulations limited political protest and opposition. Civil and military police were visible parts of the landscape, there to enforce numerous regulations and statutes controlling almost every aspect of citizens' lives—lodgings, advertisements, restaurants, public morals, pawn shops, prostitution, gambling, mixed baths, nakedness, used-clothing dealers, brokers, waitresses, speculators. This was particularly so in Tokyo, where the military and metropolitan police forces worked in close cooperation.[91] One of the major responsibilities of the police, beginning in 1889, was to perform household sanitation inspections for public health reasons and to ensure social control by, among other things, verifying nameplates on front entrances and checking to see that all boarders and roomers were registered according to the law. By 1908 the police were authorized to conduct spot inspections and investigations with impunity.[92] A contemporary saying went: "The difference between a Tokyo cop and the chestnut burr? Nothing. Boiled or roasted, they don't get soft.[93] Clearly, Japanese were not unaware of the restrictions on their lives.
The barriers to setting oneself up in business were as conspicuous as those involved in attaining a position leading to high-level bureaucratic employment. The fits and starts experienced by the generation that confronted the problems of small business were natural themes for a number of Meiji writers. One such work was the autobiographical Ie (Household) by Shimazaki Toson[*] (1872-1943).[94] Published as a newspaper novel in 1910-1911, it takes place during 1898-1910 and touches on many aspects of life of Meiji Japan, including economic and workplace realities, migration to Tokyo, the use and place of provincial dialects, the status of women, and education. In each of these areas, the shifting meanings of authority and contestation take on a significance that helps us understand change in a changing society. All of these are woven into the story, giving us some flavor of one middle-class household's situation. In the following excerpt, Toson[*] writes about his
brother's premature and unexpected ascendancy to head of the household:
Minoru's father, Tadahiro, had been . . . the patriarch of a village and an influential landlord. He was a man who spent his entire life in anguish. After brooding for some time over the condition of Japan, he abandoned his home to devote himself to patriotic activities. Thereafter, Minoru was obliged to take over as head of the family at the age of seventeen. The young and dutiful son became a victim of circumstances.[95]
After his father's death, Minoru remains in his father's house and is elected to local governmental office. All the people of the area respect him highly. However, hoping to improve his fortunes by entering into business, he decides to move to Tokyo. There he meets with a series of failures. Each scheme ends in disaster, and he goes deeply into debt. He finally is sent to prison for conducting illegal transactions and never recovers from the negative effects of his imprisonment, which is repeated later on in the novel.
Upon his release, Minoru tries to set up another business, producing a carriage that operates on the same principle as a rickshaw. A family friend from the same province, "called 'Boss' by his employees, . . . a wholesaler in a commercial district in Tokyo," invests an exceptionally large amount of money as capital and supervises the business from behind the scenes.[96] However, Minoru is able neither to recover his losses nor to get the business off the ground. He attempts a fourth venture; another failure. No one in the family is exempt from the consequences of his financial disasters.
Oshun [Minoru's daughter] then talked about what had happened at home. The day she returned from school, a public auction was being held at home. Those items of furniture necessary for everyday living were bought by an acquaintance, who arranged to return them to the family. Bailiff, pawnbroker, secondhand shop—words connoting the miseries of life—fell from Oshun's lips.[97]
Minoru continues to experience bankruptcies, always repeating the same mistakes and falling deeper into debt each time. He sells valuable art objects and even the clothing that has been homespun "with such care and patience" by his mother. His creditors seize everything, and the family once more is forced to move to cheaper quarters. To compound the misfortunes, Minoru is sent to prison again. These repeated setbacks force his two younger brothers (particularly the Toson[*] character) to take over the moral and financial responsibility of the household.
Upon Minoru's release from prison the second time, the two brothers decide that he should leave Japan. The story of Minoru mirrors that of Toson's[*] eldest brother, who left Japan for Taiwan.[98]
Although the household occupies a respected role in the community, its status does not adequately protect the family from the obstacles and difficulties of life, many of them inherent in adjusting to the new society. No one in the family is spared. Various tragedies—the death of children, sicknesses, mental retardation, invalidism, and insanity due to venereal disease—are compounded by frequent moves, frequent loss of money, the squandering of capital, and above all the endless search for a secure way to make a living. Not even Toson's[*] fictional nephew, son of his eldest sister, is immune, despite his youth:
Shota[*] seemed depressed. He came to Tokyo before Sankichi [Toson[*] >] and rented a small house in Honjo to live with Toyose, but they soon moved out. He sent his wife home and tried to make business contacts on his own. His temperament did not let him take an easy walk. With minimal resources, he traveled as far as Hokkaido[*] > and Sakhalin, only to return empty-handed. Coming home from Kolsakov, he was stricken by a serious illness and had to stay at an Aomori inn until he recovered. All his schemes were attempted without much capital. Once he planned a sale of Iwaki coal; another time he started lessons in conversational Chinese, intending to go to South China. He still had not found any promising work and was at the end of his patience.
His eagerness for business success was spurred by the fact that all his uncles were now gathered in Tokyo. . .. Shota[*] was impatient to establish a house in Tokyo, too, and this desire was uppermost in his mind.[99]
Shota[*] eventually moves to Tokyo, but his life continues to be studded with business failures. Thinking that Nagoya might offer better opportunities than Tokyo, he moves again, becomes a "second-rate stockbroker," contracts tuberculosis, and dies at the age of thirty-five.[100]
The tense world of small businesses overwhelms the Shimazakis and causes their final deterioration as a family unit governed by the prescribed hierarchy of authority. Minoru sees his life disintegrate and is incapable of earning a living. Likewise, the other male members, except for Sankichi (Toson[*] ), cannot achieve even a semblance of stability. San-kichi is saddled with the support of the "weaker members" of the family and unwillingly doles out his meager earnings as a provincial teacher and later on as a struggling writer. He also draws on his wife's dowry and takes on loans.
Small business constituted a persistent and important component in Japan's industrial and capitalist development, but many who envisioned
themselves as "independent entrepreneurs" encountered unsparing instability and uncertainty. The heterogeneous mixture of small businesses that made up this world included retail, wholesale, construction, local transportation, amusement, food, professional services, and small-scale manufacturing of consumer items such as ceramics, household goods, and clothing.[101] This sector was slow in adapting to modern industrial methods of production and concentrated on native industries, taking advantage of an abundant and cheap labor supply.[102] It was dependent upon and subordinate to the large-scale industries for capital, materials, jobs, orders, and markets. Small businesses ran the gamut from operating independently of large enterprises to subcontracting to participating in a putting-out system, but the operations were private. They gathered capital privately, and therefore profit or loss was a matter of private responsibility. All the decisions regarding what to produce, where to produce it, where to get capital, how many workers to hire, how much to produce, and where to sell it were left to individual entrepreneurs, but such decisions were subject to "large capital or large industries, or indirectly [influenced] by them through the mechanism of the whole national economy."[103]
Many enterprises were family-run, but the number of members they could support depended upon the scale of the business and the number of sons in the family. Expansion was modest, and technological innovations were few, for risks increased as enterprises expanded—risks not only in terms of failure but also in terms of borrowing capital, an area in which the government offered little help.[104] Capital was considerably costlier for small businesses than for large concerns and generally unavailable from banks. Thus, businessmen frequently turned to friends and local pawnbrokers, moneylenders, and wholesale merchants who charged exorbitant interest rates.[105] Competition was cutthroat among small businesses, particularly in finding new markets and sources of raw materials. Bankruptcies were frequent, businesses often changed to new products, labor turnover was high, and the little available capital was inefficiently used, preventing the hiring of better-educated people at higher pay. The fluctuations they experienced partly reflected the ups and downs of the economy, but even during normal economic times their situation failed to stabilize markedly.[106] Of course, a few small businesses grew to become lucrative enterprises, managed by sharp-minded individuals who chose fortuitous moments to follow "the path to wealth."[107] However, they were the minority; the vast majority of businesses remained small and unpretentious.[108]
Of all the different types of enterprises in Meiji Japan, the small
business remained tied most closely to pre-Meiji practices, not only in terms of production methods but also in the relationship between employers and employees. As long as a business remained viable, this traditional approach was feasible. Authority and loyalty were strong factors in this relationship. The employer would take responsibility for and personal interest in the employee and his family; in turn, the employee would work far beyond what was required in the more modern industries and, if business were slack, would not press for prompt payment of wages.[109] However, if a business became untenable or, as in Minoru's case, did not get off the ground, these practices were meaningless.
During Minoru's attempt to perfect a multipassenger rickshaw, with time and money fast running out, the wife of his most trusted longtime employee comes to him:
She walked in, and Minoru saw by the look on her face that something was on her mind. After some hesitation she began. "Of course, it's not for me to question you; it's your business and you are all experienced men. But I wonder when we're going to see some results? I have nothing but my husband's words and I can't feel secure any more."
Minoru coughed several times before he said, "You mean about the vehicle? We have a good engineer working on it. There's nothing to worry about."
"I know. My husband keeps saying he's sorry to worry you about money. . .. The truth is, he's so pressed for money, he tells stories to his mother when she comes up from the country, he cries, and he puts on all kinds of acts to get money out of her."
"I've told your husband, if you need money, it's in the bank."
"Thank you very much. I feel better hearing you say so, but somehow . . . unless we can see some light . . . not knowing how long it's going to be before the business starts producing. . . ." Her eyes were still unsure. "If my husband finds out that I came to talk to you, he'll explode. But you know, we women are not like men. We worry a lot about small things."
Not wanting to offend Minoru she did not pursue the subject further.[110]
What is most striking about this passage is that it gives us a picture of an authority figure being confronted not by an unhappy male subordinate but by his wife. The Meiji ideological hierarchy positioned women on the bottom, as formalized in the 1898 Civil Code. This held true in all groups—from the most poverty-stricken to the wealthiest households, small to large economic enterprises, factories, workers' organizations, school faculties, and all formal and informal gender-mixed social gatherings. Japanese male perceptions of women in Japan and the West
will be discussed later (see Chapter 7), but the passage above gives us some idea of the complexities inherent in Japanese gender roles. The wife does not directly challenge Minoru's role as the authority figure—in fact, she steers the conversation so as not to antagonize him while taking precautions to not jeopardize her relationship to her husband. Nevertheless, her confrontation of Minoru is conscious and deliberate. This unexpected and oppositional stance taken by a woman presents us with another dimension of how authority was contested in the turbulent Meiji world. However, she does not demand that Minoru pay her or her husband. Dore's observation that traditional relationships were "wholly inimical to hard economic bargaining" seems to hold here.[111]
Minoru's oblique behavior probably was not uncommon and reflected adjustments to shifts in the Meiji socioeconomic environment. He displays some sense of concern in order to minimize or postpone conflict but does not offer or act to alleviate dissatisfaction. On the contrary, through inaction, he makes the employee responsible for seeking out solutions to her money problems. Though he preserves the outward trappings of authority, in practice he is ambivalent and ineffectual. In the end, Minoru cannot sustain his role as the authority figure in the business, and the employees disperse, a common occurrence in the highly fluid occupational structure of Meiji Japan.
The overriding result of Japan's industrial and capitalist development during the crucial years of 1890 to 1924 was that the nation was catapulted into a competitive and assertive world position within a short time. The process rode roughshod over a large number of people, prodding neither real opportunities nor guidance. The era was full of contradictions for most, not least for aspiring, literate, urban, middle-class individuals. In many instances, as in the case of the Shimazaki household, the pre-Meiji notions of authority and the new ways of life contradicted each other. Smooth social change was impossible. The obstacles to obtaining certain occupations heightened their value and, in turn, made it clear where a person stood in relationship to society. In addition, the passage of time tended to make authority seem more vague and uncertain, and people were faced with trying to determine its exact nature while adhering tenaciously to the values of obedience, loyalty, and faith.
In this world, then, it was crucial for youth to find a route to success. The paths to this destination became a significant topic of popular literature. Members of the intelligentsia and the economic and political worlds—journalists, bureaucrats, political and liberal reformists,
businessmen, entrepreneurs, and travelers—helped pave the way for laboring class and churyukaikyu[*] alike. In a world fraught with conflict and disappointment, it was imperative to achieve harmony and consensus by firing the burning desire for success—money, wealth, and standing-and by enlightening youth about the obstacles that stood in their way. In essence, the writings for youth purported to show how to grab opportunities and utilize ambition, foresight, and acumen to their fullest advantage. The golden world of kindai Nippon was within the reach of those willing and able to persevere, uplift themselves, and take on responsibility as national leaders in Asia's leading nation.