Meiji Four-Character Slogans →[More:]

The leaders of Meiji Japan, lacking a national press or a large newspaper readership to communicate directly with the people, found a simple but effective way to reach the people with their ideas: four-character slogans. A quick read, they were painted on large placards and posted throughout the country. Public opinion was both stimulated and steered by these signs. Meiji Japan often saw idealistic fervor in the populace and skilled manipulation of that fervor by the rulers.

Four-character slogans were a powerful tool in the hands of Meiji ideologues. They could both excite popular opinion and aid in gauging it. Slogans were rallying points for support of government policy. They could help keep officials powerful, and they could help take that power away. Insights into the development of Meiji Japan can be gained by an examination of five of the four-character slogans: fukoku kyohei, shokusan kogyo, bunmei kaika, chukun aikoku, and kanson minpi. All of these established an agenda, as did simplistic ideological documents like the Meiji Charter Oath of 1868, but because of their specificity and timeliness, the four-character slogans catch the pulse of a growing Japan.

Fukoku kyohei, in rough translation, means “rich country, strong army.” It was used for almost a century, from the 1850s until after the Pacific War. Throughout this time period, it had significance on a grand scale. It represented both the urge toward world competition that characterized all of Meiji Japan and the conflicting agendas of the civil and military sectors of government. In order for Japan to be noticed she had to be strong. The only way to demonstrate strength in the nineteenth-century global arena was by a show of military force. The way to get a strong army was to buy one, and the way to buy one was to have a rich country. In the superficial way that most of the populace understood it, fukoku kyohei was a simple listing of the necessities for Japan’s place in the world. But in light of the conflict between the military and the civil government, it can be seen as representing something completely different. Of course, for the military, the emphasis was on “strong army.” The military would use any means to get the civil government to focus on that. In the beginning of the Meiji period, however, there were civil authorities who felt that “rich country” came first. Eventually, those who did not support the military were ousted, and the debate became one between proponents of “strong army” and those of “strong navy.” But as a driving force behind military and economic growth, fukoku kyohei was the most pervasive slogan of the Meiji period.

Almost corollary to fukoku kyohei came shokusan kogyo. In the 1870s, industrialization grew, impelled largely by militarization. Shokusan kogyo was a rallying cry to the people to “establish productivity, encourage industry.” Evolved from fukoku kyohei, it fueled the flames of military growth (which had already been interpreted as the catalyst for “rich country”) by encouraging the industrial sector to create the productive capacity needed by the military. Shokusan kogyo outdated itself by the end of the century; by then, industry and productivity were well established.

Though the military was built in imitation of Western military forces, the rest of Japan lived in a traditional Japanese way. So in the late 1860s Fukuzawa Yukichi established Keiyo University and began a new push, for bunmei kaika. “Civilization, enlightenment” was an attempt to make all aspects of Japanese society civilized and enlightened, like those of the West. Western clothes appeared in court and in parliament, and there was a general rage for things Western. This was the offspring of Fukuzawa’s “theory of escape from Asia,” which stated Japan’s need to shun her Asian heritage and embrace the West, or face a fate like that of colonial China of fifty years earlier. Bunmei kaika did not last long. In the 1880s opponents raised fears of Japan losing her Japanese-ness and the slogan was dropped.

From the 1890s until the end of the Pacific war, the most facile and understandable of the slogans was promulgated: chukun aikoku, meaning “loyalty, patriotism.” Its timing is important: at the end of the burst of military growth around the turn of the century and at the beginning of the rise of the military power in government. Chukun aikoku came to mean support for military might (and eventually for the emperor) and brought about widespread support for a military government.

The most enigmatic of the four-character slogans was kanson minpi, or “reverence for officials, contempt for the people.” This slogan was around from the 1870s until the late 1940s, and advocated a selfless adherence to the government line by people who were not necessarily being helped by current policy. In a sense, it damned protest against particular policies by linking protest with treason. Slogans like chukun aikoku had solidified the position of the four-character slogan as an expression of what was purely patriotic, and to argue against the proclamations was therefore treasonous. Thus, the strangeness of a popular slogan expressing the people’s contempt for themselves makes sense in the context of the institution of the four-character slogan itself and its evolution into a pure expression of patriotic support for government authority.