Outline

How did the architects of the Meiji Restoration get buy-in from elites?

One would think that without such buy-in, Meiji restoration would not have happened. But what did any of the relevant elites think were the possible alternatives? By 18XX, they had the results of the handy natural experiments of China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand as examples of what resulted from different strategic responses to western imperialism.

architects and elites.

a way of life. leading to new ways of life.

It is obvious that elites would “buy in” to changes they believed would lead to “better” ways of life than their old ones. That is precisely what was “on sale” from the architects. (Contrast this with 1917 Russian revolutionists: they were “selling”: we are in charge now and you need to die. Early French Revolutionists were selling the same thing)

I feel like one of the only elites with anything to lose in this offer was the shogun.

Some people wanted to try to do something different form meiji. Either they got the chance to do it within Meiji, or Meiji killed them. sooo why would anyone think meiji “got buy-in” any more than anything ever does? Why didn’t the whole nation adopt the stance of neo-confucianism and moralize the whole conflict and try to resist the west and then become a colony? I argue there were more elites who thought about how to survive and had a pragmatic interpretation of global events than the moralistic interpretation of global events. WHy were there more people on that side? I don’t know. What would it have taken for the other side to win? Enough people would have to be neo-confucian and willing to die in the face of seemingly certain overwhelming force. Why did so many elites want to play the new game instead of force an old one first? SOme thought they could play a version of the game that is Japanese, not Asian and also not Western in some ways. They saw a middle path to eat their cake and have it too.

• should we modernize?
  • shogun and the imperialists said hell yes!
  • some older samurai said no and over my dead body (how many?)
• should we attack Korea?
  • some rebels wanted to AND to modernize
  • some rebels wanted to and NOT to modernize
• should we resist foreign influence?
  • shogun and imperialists saw all the previous natural experiments as proof this was impossible except by winning at their own game
  • some older rebels thought the other asians were subjugated because of lack of moral consistency to resist “over my dead body” (but sometimes “over my dead body” has worked!!! thermopylae? but did it work? ghandi? MLK?)
• everyone THOGUHT JAPAN is special
  • reformers thought we are special because we will beat the west at its own game
  • diehards are special because our moral superiority will make us immune to threats of war, violence, influence

Each elite role had its old way of life, and then its own visions for future life. And reality had its own ideas of future way of life too.

technology

Guns

cannons, muskets, howitzers

railroads

information networks

railroads affected this

fukuzawa’s new writing form (what about mass distribution?) probably had a lot to do with this

coal energy extraction

all the ganraku: medicine, etc.

View from Edo

Here is how the shogun (as one of THE top elites saw things over time)

• first, the shogun saw a bigger world as time went on because more information in the form of books, ships, traded goods, learning expeditions got to him as the reach of information networks increased
  • in 1600, he probably got most of his info from other daimyo, maybe a trickle from dutch or portuguese (but it was easy enough to silence the portuguese for example when he didn’t like what they had to say)
  • by 1853 he literally had perry exploding new information into his buildings from his black boats. Your system is over. I will be back to force you to die or sign MY terms of the new way.
  • what could he have done in the meantime? what paths DID he pursue?
    • find ways to suppress the possible future Perry
      • this depends on keeping tabs on europe, US, UK, china, india
        • did he have as good tabs on US as he did china, india?
    • ​

New timeline

A timeline of the views of the future of several different elite groups.

• emperor, daimyo, samurai (of different stripes and situations), peasants, merchants, scholars, authors, diplomats
• what was that stat about how Japan had an unusually high number of elites? (like 70%?)
  • they were an extremely urban society even before industrial revolution hit them, especially compared to Asia
• so maybe also add to the timeline how more people probably BECAME elites over time. (what does it mean to be elite though? is it just a name for a group that has a say in what future they will pursue? If communication, wealth (knowledge + material), and violence are the main ways to effect such a say, then maybe one of the global phenomena of the last centuries has been an expansion of elite population - is that what democracy and the internet achieves? power to the people)

a crazy idea

or I model each personality (with their opinions of the future alternatives and their view of history) as individual LLM agents. I could even get their take on various historic events (a “twitter” of these people’s thoughts), showing individual threads of future vision and reality, then maybe zooming out in certain ways (but always with the granualr stories availabel)

• how many stories were circulating in 18XX with a vision of the future where Japan was a country?
  • LLM would literally count the granular sources….

This is itself obviously a new way of studying history available to us today!

a cool 3d map showing the bits of information available to make a story

• SHogun’s map has a lot of info from daimyo, expanding through time to reach china, india, then eventually dutch and US activity around Asian waters
  • these elites form stories about what is happening to china and india
    • I think between 1760 and 1850 the story starts with “we are so much smarter than china and india for being isolated. they are striggling internally in the beginning of this period, but toward the end”
• A peasanta map may not go beyond a domain in Japan
• A daimyo’s map may start much smaller than the shogun’s but then become more and more similar
• The emperor’s map may also suddenly expand… not sure about this one
• A lower samurai’s map of the future looks like Edo over there, my home domain over here, the opportunities for me to be a merchant, scholar, military leader, bureaucrat change over time, first defined by my llineage, then expand somewhat with Edo’s yojiwara, and mercantilism, perhaps my military opportunities decrease with the Pax tokugawa

Each of these can be visualized as a 3d map with a japan locality at its center, then showing an awareness of opportunity first in Edo, then with Nagasaki, and for elites, this map includes military stalemates of threats foreign and (mostly, at first) domestic. There is a cool opportunity to build a data science enabled visual storytelling tool of the differing perspectives of all the “maps of the future”

We’re talking about simulating the information landscape of key historical figures (remember that the potential for someone becoming a historical figure may have increased), The rigid part is making sure information is withled properly (simulating when someone learned something)

Would LLMs think the static was cosmic background radiation? or not? or maybe they would have proven a better theory?

The real history: gaslighting

Maybe there is a huge gaslighting story to tell here. Maybe what the rebellions were actually about was whitewashed by the winners (eg Saga Rebellion was NOT about advocating for continued decentralized japanese state, but actually a proposal for a diet government that included proposing aggressive korean foreign policy)

lo and behold:

the new Meiji government’s “very first initiative was to provide an official interpretation of the recent events and to describe the coup not as a revolution but as a restoration,” and in 1869 the emperor called for establishment of an official history Rebellion | EBSCO Research Starters.

I now question the validity of this entire inquiry:

Japanese samurai did not just accede to the total destruction of their way of life and status in society, but actively fought for it.

They didn’t!? I think every single samurai “acceded to the total destruction of their way of life and status in society”! In fact, samurai WERE the “architects of the Meiji Restoration”. Everyone fights for some way of life and some status in society, so that isn’t an interesting line of inquiry. I think the better questions might be:

• did all of the competing attempts at “modernization” in Japan have decidedly dominant aspects over failed “modernizaton” strategies in China, India, and Indonesia?

I am now hypothesizing that samurai did NOT “actively fight for their [old] way of life and [previous] status in society” any more than everyone in Japan was actively searching for a viable [new] way of life and [any] status in society, samurai included.

every rebel fought for something other than the old way of life

I need to quantify how many people (elites) DID fight for an old way of life. Because so far, I have found a LOT of “elites” fighting for a new way of life, sometimes against each other, but none of them proposing anything resembling a return to an old way.

• Saga Rebellion

  • The evidence suggests the “clinging to old ways” narrative may indeed be retrospectively imposed. Etō’s rebellion looks much more like early democratic resistance to oligarchy than feudal traditionalism. The similarity between his 1874 platform and the 1890 constitution is striking - the main differences were timing and who would control the process.
    • The primary sources show that Etō’s actual political platform was remarkably similar to what the Meiji government ultimately implemented:
      • Called for a popularly elected assembly with representation from “commoners, including samurai, wealthy farmers, and wealthy merchants” - essentially the same constituencies that got representation in the 1890 Diet WikipediaWikiwand
      • Supported aggressive Korean expansion policy (Seikanron) - which Japan pursued aggressively after 1875 WikipediaWikipedia
      • Wanted democratic accountability rather than oligarchic rule by Satsuma-Chōshū cliques
  • The traditional framing characterizes samurai rebellions as “backlash” against “industrialisation of society in emulation of foreign imperial powers” Historians of Asia on Political Violence - Japan, a country without revolution? Uses of kakumei and historical debates in the Meiji era (1868-1912) - Collège de France, but this obscures that Etō had been a modernizer within the government - he was Justice Minister who helped create Japan’s modern legal system.
  • primary evidence: https://www.ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha1/description09.html
    • sections 7&8 in the newspaper contain the petition
  • evidence of gaslighting:

• Shinpuren Rebellion (1876)

  • Samurai from Kumamoto formed Keishintō, a xenophobic secret society that “wanted to turn the clock back and eradicate every trace of Westernization, including wearing Western clothes, use of the Gregorian calendar, and even the use of Western weapons.” They were furious at freedoms granted to foreigners and the ban on sword-wearing .
  • evidence: Ishihara Shikō’o’s Shinpūren Ketsuruishi
  • Shinpūren rebels similarly died or were jailed, without surviving to reshape policy.

• Akizuki Rebellion

  • maybe the rebellion itself was a matter of suicidal honor (after they failed to get what they wanted), but before they went there, they did make demands they believed would make a better future:

    • let us wear swords (why though? just symbolic?)
    • follow Shimazu Hisamitsu’s advice to halt the Westernization of the country, (why?)
    • wanted to attack Korea (for revenge? or else what?)
    • we should have resisted Perry

  • In the Akizuki case, all top leaders either committed seppuku or were executed; none transitioned into the new order .

• “China submits, but Japan resists with righteousness.” This was a common refrain among ultra-nationalist and traditionalist samurai thinkers in the early Meiji era.

• Satsuma Rebellion

Honor vs evolution

the ones who didn’t buy in, died. Ironically, the only way for them to keep any of the old way was to keep the way of dying for your belief. We hear of socrates dying for his belief, but even then, only because plato defied his belief in not writing things down. wtf

different interpretations of natural experiments in respponding to western imperialism

There were plenty of examples in the 19th century of martial resistance to Western imperialism across China, India, and elsewhere. However, the Japanese samurai rebels either misunderstood, selectively ignored, or morally reinterpreted those examples.

bringing about the thing you fear

Tokugawa sowed the seeds of its own destruction by placing disloyals even further down the hierarchy, then further inadvertently privelegin them with advantage by ebing in closer contact with foreign powers (seen as a disadvantage at first)

just like jews forced into banking and merchant class (tokugawa did this to merchants also!)

just like making Germany pay dearly after WWI

The right move is to pick up your defeated enemy and slap them on the back and invite them to play your long term game with you, not subjugate them. But yes, if we can’t play nice, someone has to beat the shit out of someone until we do. Germany’s vision maybe itself didn’t include an invitation to participate to the other european powers.

Meiji is a model showing that when we invite others (especially currently those labeled as “enemies”) to particiapte in our project, sharing in the spoils, we win. This should be obvious from JBP’s talk that

But what do we do about nuclear weapons? We want to invite others to participate in the game of cheap and clean reliable energy. But we don’t want ANYONE (including ourselves) to play the game of brandishing nuclear weapons that CANT EVER BE PRAGMATICALLY USED.

NOTES MATERIAL

⚔️ Taiping Rebellion (1850–64)

• Massive armed resistance against the Qing (not foreign powers directly).
• But foreign forces (British/French) ultimately helped suppress it.
• To Meiji reformers, this was a warning: resist modernity, and foreigners will use it to crush you.
• To samurai rebels? They often ignored it entirely — it was viewed as chaotic and un-Japanese.

🥊 Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901)

• Direct militarized anti-Western uprising.
• Inspired by martial spirit and mysticism (e.g., invulnerability).
• Defeated by an international coalition, resulting in brutal foreign retribution.
• But this came after Akizuki (1876), so it wasn’t in their frame of reference.

🇮🇳 2.

India: The 1857 Rebellion (Sepoy Mutiny)

• A full-scale military uprising against British rule.
• Began among Indian soldiers (sepoys) in the British East India Company’s army.
• Ended in defeat, with direct Crown rule replacing Company rule.

Japanese samurai may have known about it, but there’s little evidence they studied it carefully.

Why? Because the Indian case suggested:

“If you fight without equal technology, you lose.”

— a conclusion many samurai refused to accept.

🐘 3.

Southeast Asia & Muslim World

• Aceh War (Indonesia): Fierce guerrilla resistance against Dutch, lasted 30+ years.
• Algerian resistance: Abd al-Qadir’s holy war against France.
• Sudanese Mahdist Revolt (1881–1899): Another anti-Western Islamist uprising, initially successful, later crushed.

These were heroic, but also defeated. And often:

• Framed in Islamic or tribal terms.
• Not relevant to the Confucian-Shinto samurai worldview.

a real philosophical conflict

Neo-confucian vs “western”

what about christianity in all this?

“Heaven does not create one man above or below another man.”

— Fukuzawa, 1872, borrowing the language of natural rights, not divine grace.

but, this is compatible with both natural rights and the bible’s description of god making everyone equal. and for that matter the declaration of independence.