When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order

by Martin Jacques

On the eve of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan was to possess many of the preconditions for economic take-off apart, that is, from a government committed to that goal.

One final point should detain us: the changing nature and role of the samurai. Although their original purpose had been to defend the interests of the daimyo, their role steadily broadened as they assumed growing responsibility for the administration and stewardship of their daimyo’s estates, as well as for protocol and negotiations with other daimyo and the shogun.

On the eve of the Meiji Restoration they had, in effect, been transformed from a military caste into a key administrat...

Although steeped in the Confucian tradition of efficient administration, their knowledge and predisposition were essentially military, scientific and technological rather than literary and scholastic, as was the case with their Chinese counterparts: this orientation and inclination was...

In 1853 the relative peace and stability of the Tokugawa era was rudely interrupted by the appearance in Tokyo Bay of Commodore Perry, an American naval officer, at the head of a fleet of black ships, demanding on behalf of the United States – along with various European powers, notably Britain – that Japan should open itself to trade.

In 1858, faced with the continuing threat of invasion, Japan signed the unequal treaties which opened up the country to trade on extremely unfavourable terms, including the imposition of extra-territoriality on its main ports, which excluded Western nationals from the requirements of Japanese law.

The unequal treaties represented a major restriction of Japan’s sovereignty. In 1859 Japan was obliged to lift the ban on Christianity imposed over 300 years earlier.

In the face of growing tumult and unrest, the Tokugawa regime was beleaguered and paralysed. During a process lasting two years, culminating in 1868, the shogunate was overthrown by the combined forces of the Satsuma and Choshu clans, and a new government, dominated by former samurai, installed.

The samurai were the prime movers in the fall of the shogunate and the chief instigators of the new Meiji regime (named after the emperor who reigned between 1868 and 1912).

was the forfeiture of their old feudal-style privileges, namely their monopoly of the right to bear arms and their previous payments in kind – with the payments being commuted to cash and rapidly diminishing in value.

This dramatic political change – bringing to an end two and a half centuries of shogunate rule – was driven by no political blueprint, goal or vision. In the early stages, the popular mood had been dominated by anti-Western sentiment.

However, it became increasingly clear to a growing section of the ruling elite that isolation was no longer a serious option: if Japan was to be saved from the barbarians, it would have to respond to ...

A modern imperial state was instituted, with a chief minister ‘advising’ the emperor, but with effective power concentrated in the former’s hands. By 1869 universal freedom of choice was introduced in marriage and occupation. By 1871 the feudal order had effectively been disbanded. In 1873 universal conscription was decreed, rendering the old samurai privilege to bear arms redundant. Almost immediately the government started to establish factories run mainly by former samurai, thereby ushering in a new and very different economic era.

The speed, single-mindedness and comprehensiveness with which the new government went about this task, particularly in the absence of any prior commitment or programme, is a remarkable historical phenomenon.

During a breathtaking period of two decades, it drew hugely on Western experience in the construction of a range of new institutions. It sent envoys and missions to Europe and also to the United States in order to study what might be learnt, borrowed and assimilated.

This was done in a highly systematic way, with the object of establishing which country had most to o...

The education system introduced in 1873 was modelled on the French system of school districts. The navy was based on Britain’s, the army on...

The railways followed the British example but the universities t...

From the late 1870s the government began to sell off its newly created factories. By so doing, it created a capitalist class. Many were former samurai who used the bonds that they had been given by the government – which had replaced the monetary stipends that they had previously received, which in turn had replaced their former feudal payments in kind – to buy the new companies.

There was clearly a shift in class power. And yet, unlike in Europe, the new rising class, the merchants, neither instigated the change nor drove it: in fact, for the most part, they had not come into conflict with the old regime.

the samurai restored the emperor to a more central role in Japanese life, an act symbolized by his transfer from Kyoto to Edo, now renamed Tokyo. It was a coup by the elite rather than a popular uprising from below.

Thus, although it had some of the attributes of a revolution, it is best described as a restoration, an act that sought to preserve the power of the existing elite in the name of saving Japan from the barbarian threat.

Japan is a deeply conservative country in which the lines of continuity are far stronger than the lines of discontinuity.

Furthermore, the ruling elite was to succeed in maintaining the way of life, traditions, customs, family structure, relationships and hierarchies of Japan to a remarkable extent. The Meiji Restoration is testimony to the resilience, inner strength and adaptability of the Japanese ruling elite and its ability to change course when the situation urgently demanded it.

There is one other fundamental difference between the major revolutions in Europe and the Meiji Restoration. The French Revolution was, amongst other things, a response to an internal development – the rise of the bourgeoisie – whereas the Meiji Restoration was a response to an external threat, that of an expansionist West.

This difference also helps to explain why the Restoration was instigated by a section of the elite rather than a rising antagonistic group: what obliged Japan to change course was not the rise of the merchant class but the external threat from the West.

As a result, it is a fascinating case-study: a country whose existing elite made a voluntary and calculated decision to Westernize in order to preserve what it perceived to be the nation’s essence.

Japan’s post-1868 history, indeed, has seen alternating phases of Westernization and Japanization. The first twenty years after the Meiji Restoration saw a furious process of Westernization on many fronts, but by 1900 this had given way to a period of introspection and an attempt to specify the nature of the Japanese essence.

In this debate three characteristics were used to define Japaneseness: the emperor system, the samurai spirit, and the idea of a family society (with the emperor as father).

there was again a frantic period of economic catch-up and Westernization followed, in the 1970s and early 1980s, by a further phase of seeking to define the nature of the Japanese realm,25 though the conception of ‘Japaneseness’ deployed at this ...

The nihonjinron (meaning ‘discussions on the nature of the Japanese’) in the 1970s focused on Japan as a homogeneous and group-orientated society, and the J...

Japanese relationships operate according to a strict hierarchy based on class, gender and age.

The importance of hierarchy is initially learnt in the family, with the father cast as the undisputed head of the household and each member of the family occupying a pre-ordained position.

the gimu, which is limitless and lifelong, and which one owes to one’s parents, for example; and the giri, which is finite.

These obligations lie at the heart of Japanese society: virtuousness is defined in terms of meeting one’s obligations rather than money, which has become the typical measure of virtue in Western society.

If one fails to meet one’s giri, one feels a sense of shame. Broadly speaking, cultures can be divided into those that are based on guilt, like the Christian-der...

The sense of guilt in the former stems from the idea of original sin and the belief that left to their own devices – and inevitable base in...

Shame, on the other hand, is the product of monitoring one’s actions by viewing one’s self from the standpoint of others. Japanese society is rooted in shame: it is how one is regarded by others, rather t...

While in the West, for example, suicide is frowned upon as a selfish act, in Japan it is seen as the ultimate way of settling one’s giri and, therefore, as a noble act.

The latticework of personal relationships, based on hierarchy and obligations, informs the way all Japanese institutions work, from the extended family and the firm to school and government.

The seniority system, widely practised in Japanese companies, where one steadily climbs the company ladder as one gets older and enjoys a rising income and growing authority, rather than being dispensed with in the manner of the Western firm, reflects the age-hierarchy of Japanese society.

Virtually all cases of civil conflict are settled by conciliation, either out of court or before any legal judgment is made.

Although formally Japan has a multi-party system, the Liberal Democrats, until their defeat by the Democratic Party in 2009, were in office almost continuously from the mid 1950s; and during this period its factions were in practice of much greater importance than the various other parties.

Indeed, unlike Western democracies, it is extremely doubtful whether in practice Japan gives primacy to the idea of popular sovereignty, a subject that we will return to in

on the contrary, as in China, another Confucian society, state sovereignty rather than popular sovereignty is predominant.

Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s mission was to close the gap with the West, to behave like the West, to achieve the respect of the West and ultimately to become, at least in terms of the level of development, like the West.

The key objective was economic growth, but Japan’s colonial expansion, which started within six years of the Meiji Restoration, also owed much to a desire to emulate Europe: to be a modern power, Japan believed that it needed to have its own complement of colonies.

These territorial ambitions eventually brought Japan to its knees in the Second World War, culminating in its defeat and surrender.

It was a humiliating moment: the very purpose of the Meiji Restoration – to prevent the domination of the country by the West – had been undermined. The post-1868 trajectory had resulted in the country’s ...

This represented an extraordinary transformation, but it was not to be sustained. At the end of the 1980s, Japan’s bubble economy burst and for the following fifteen years it barely grew at all.