Chichibu Incident
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The Chichibu Incident (秩父事件 Chichibu Jiken?) was a peasant revolt that occurred in November 1884 in Chichibu, Saitama, a short distance from Japan's capital, and lasted approximately two weeks.
It was one of many uprisings of the same kind in Japan around that time, occurring in reaction to the dramatic and drastic changes to society which came about in the wake of the 1868 Meiji Restoration. What set Chichibu apart, however, was the scope of the uprising, which included upwards of 3000 participants, and the severity of the government response. Though the traditional view of the event reduces the peasants' motivations to being purely economic, many scholars see it as part of a suppressed peoples' rights movement in this period.
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[edit] Background
Finance Minister Masayoshi Matsukata took up that post in 1881, and began to implement a series of necessary financial and monetary reforms. In particular, he acted to stem currency inflation, a policy which would greatly help the growing economy overall, while unfortunately harming the farmers (農民 nōmin?). Thus, one of the primary factors underlying the impetus for an uprising was the farmers' desire to rescue themselves from poverty. In Chichibu, the insurgents sought to attack a government building and destroy records of their debts.
Poverty and starvation were quite severe and widespread in the Meiji period, and songs and rumors among the rebels indicated that the {{Liberal Party|自由党|Jiyūtō}} would alleviate these problems. 1884 saw roughly sixty related riots, many of them in areas similar to Chichibu; the total debt of the time Japan's farmers is estimated to two hundred million yen, which corresponds to roughly two trillion yen in 1985 currency.
The motivating factors were focused, and the uprising organized, through the "Freedom and People's Rights Movement" (自由民権運動 jiyū minken undō?), a catch-all term for a number of disconnected meeting groups and societies throughout the country, consisting of citizens who sought more representation in government and basic rights. The national constitutions and other writings on freedom in the West were largely unknown among the Japanese masses at this time, but there were those in the movement who had studied the West, and were able to conceive of democratic political ideology and the like. Some societies within the movement in fact wrote their own draft constitutions, and many saw their work as yonaoshi (世直し), or "healing the world."
[edit] Uprising
While many groups and parties across the country debated political issues peacefully, the self-titled "Revolutionary Army" erupted in revolt in November 1884, in the Chichibu district of Saitama prefecture. Accounts of the size of the revolt vary widely, from 5,000 to over 10,000. They were armed with farming implements, bamboo spears, swords, wooden cannon, and hunting muskets. The rebels poured out of their small mountain villages, armed not only with weapons, but with banners and slogans; attacking the district office, they carried signs declaring "New Rule of Benevolence," and labelling the seized office as the "Headquarters of the Revolutionary Army."
Having established a headquarters, the ringleaders adopted a new calendar, and began to issue decrees, labelling them all as being issued in "Year One of Freedom and Self-Government." They then dispatched smaller revolutionary groups to seek out and oust individual government officials in the neighboring villages before recalling their forces and marching toward Tokyo, where they first met with significant resistance.
The precise number killed in the battle, as the new professional Imperial Japanese Army fought thousands of peasants is unknown. Roughly ten days after the seizure of the district office, the uprising was finally fully quashed at the foot of Mount Yatsugatake. Many were arrested, and nearly 4,000 were found guilty. Three hundred were convicted as felons, and seven were sentenced to death. Five were killed on the spot. Though this was the largest popular uprising of the Meiji period, or perhaps because of it, the government sought to dismiss it and hush it up by describing the rebels as little more than rioters and hooligans.
[edit] Legacy
Though a monument to the fallen was erected several decades later, a great number of the ringleaders and others who escaped formal punishment have never had their names formally cleared.
Overall, the Chichibu Incident was caused by a combination of liberal, revolutionary ideologies and economic motivations. Irokawa Daikichi of Tokyo Keizai University, describes the incident in detail in his book, The Culture of the Meiji Period, and argues that it was not simply part of a yonaoshi movement, nor an ordinary uprising by poor peasants looking to absolve themselves of their debts. The leaders of the uprising, if not the majority of their followers, were active thinkers of the Freedom and People's Rights movements, and sought no less than to challenge the Meiji government itself. According to Irokawa, they were guided by "the revolutionary ideology of the Liberal Party; they had a revolutionary faith that they could 'reform the government, make freedom come to life, and join battle for the people.'"
[edit] Reference
- Irokawa, Daikichi (1985). The Culture of the Meiji Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Japanese: 明治の文化, Meiji no bunka, Marius Jansen trans. ed.)
