Emperor Meiji
The Meiji emperor came to the throne at fourteen in 1867 and presided over Japan's transformation from a closed feudal state into an industrial power that defeated Russia. Born Mutsuhito in 1852, the son of Emperor Kōmei by a concubine, he was raised in the secluded Kyoto court, an institution that had held no political power for six and a half centuries and that most Japanese would never see. The shogunate collapsed within a year of his accession, and the domains of Satsuma and Chōshū that overthrew it did so under a slogan calling for the restoration of imperial rule and the expulsion of the barbarians. They then did the opposite of expelling them. The Charter Oath of 1868, issued in the emperor's name, promised deliberative assemblies, the abandonment of evil customs of the past, and the seeking of knowledge throughout the world. The Iwakura Mission spent two years abroad studying Western institutions and reporting on what was worth copying. What followed in twenty-five years: the domains abolished in 1871 and replaced by prefectures, the samurai class abolished with its stipends commuted to bonds, a conscript army and a modern navy, universal primary education, a national bank, a land tax, railways, telegraphs, universities, a legal code drafted on European models, and a constitution in 1889 that made the emperor sovereign and created an elected lower house with limited powers. That constitution also placed the armed forces outside civilian control, letting the service ministers answer to the throne rather than the cabinet - a provision with disastrous consequences in the 1930s. The court moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo, State Shinto was constructed around the throne, and the emperor was made visible in a way no Japanese emperor had been - photographed in European uniform, touring the provinces, presented as the person in whose name everything was done. How much he decided is unclear and probably not much; the consensus is that he was engaged and consulted while the oligarchs governed. Japan beat China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, the first modern victory of an Asian power over a European one, and annexed Korea in 1910. He died in 1912.
- Lived: 1852 CE – 1912 CE
- Nationality: Japanese
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
