Episode 543 - A Day in the Life of Meiji Japan, Part 1

Aaron Manke
The first would be a mid-morning meal, roughly around 10am, the second sometime in the mid-afternoon to early evening, usually around 5. There might be some variability based on occupation, for example a farmer or physical laborer would usually eat at sunrise and sunset, and anyone doing particularly heavy labor might Get a supplementary meal during the day, but largely this two-meal pattern held for a good chunk of Japan’s history. Starting around 1200, the aristocracy and court began to shift to three meals a day, likely under the influence of the Rinzai Zen monastic system, where consuming snacks with tea to Keep people going during long meditation sessions had become the norm. For most people, however, the shift to three meals a day took place during the Genroku period around 1700, in the middle of the Tokugawa era, as average standards of living increased To the point where average people could, you know, actually afford a third meal, and more importantly as the economy developed to a point where food stalls were more common in major Cities. This made it easier for those working a job to take a quick break and go grab an onigiri or something like that. I can’t prove this, but as an inveterate caffeine addict, I also suspect that the shift towards breakfast had something to do with the growing popularity of tea drinking, offering An opportunity for a nice cup to get you going in the morning.

Aaron Manke
The Gyuba Kaisha also produced pro-milk propaganda, a phrase I never thought I would say on this show, to try and promote the new drink. Here is an actual translated selection, quote, For the effects of milk are even more remarkable than those of beef. Milk is a wonderful and indispensable substance for patients with fever or pulmonary tuberculosis, and for those whose bodies are weak, and it may be considered effective against Every illness. To be used not only for illness, milk is drunk at daily meals in western countries, and cheese and butter should also be used in the cuisine of our country in the same manner as katsuobushi, Which is dried bonito shavings if you don’t know it. By utilizing milk to live a long life, maintain a healthy body and invigorate

Aaron Manke
Bata kusai, stinking of butter, was actually an insult during the late Edo period and early Meiji periods, describing someone who would be willing to eat anything that smelled that Bad just because it was trendy and western. More generally, western foods did tend to be the domain of the elite simply because they cost more, which meant that breakfast itself also

Aaron Manke
Mori’s reforms would remake the system from the ground up, and if you were a kid headed to school in Japan in 1900, your experience would be very much shaped by Mori’s vision. Mori envisioned a four-tiered structure for education consisting of the elementary, middle, normal, and university levels. The elementary section, of which only four years was mandatory, was intended to teach very basic skills like literacy and arithmetic, but also had one important function. You see, criticisms of the very first Meiji educational systems had been plentiful, but one of the most common critiques advanced primarily by nationalistic conservatives had been That the system was too liberal in its mindset. They wanted an education that was more explicitly patriotic, teaching young people to sacrifice for the nation, and more traditionally Confucian, emphasizing the importance of Respect for hierarchy and authority. And Mori Arinori, who was very much a nationalistic conservative himself, agreed. Borrowing liberally from Imperial Germany, also the model for much of the new Japanese constitution, he organized an elementary school curriculum that was much more nationalistic Than had previously been the case, and in particular added one new subject to the existing compulsory ones like history and arithmetic. This was doutoku, or ethics, but not ethics in the sense of studying ethical theory or anything like that. Ethics class was more like a civics class, the civics of how to be a good subject of Japan’s emperor.

Aaron Manke
Students who did good work in this system might get a chance to go to a normal school, a school intended to train teachers. There they would be trained to help educate a new crop of students and, of course, make sure they were appropriately patriotic. Students who did great work went

Aaron Manke
Primary school was intended to cultivate a baseline of skills, and more importantly, a baseline of patriotism. Secondary school was intended either as vocational training or tracked into college prep, universities were for training the national elite, and normal schools were for generating The professional teachers who made the whole system tick.

Aaron Manke
Ostensibly, this was a meritocratic system. You were sorted into one or another track based on your educational talents, a notion that appealed to many in the Meiji leadership, who of course were big into meritocracy because Of the bad hand they felt they’d been dealt in the old feudal system, and because of the social Darwinistic views that tended to be very prominent in Western society during this time. For the more culturally conservative, the strong Confucian emphasis of the ethics classes, with their language of reverence for the state and reverence for one’s parents, was very Desirable. After all, for a Confucian thinker, those two forms of authority were closely linked. The more western-minded members of the Meiji elite, of course, the ostensibly meritocratic structure was their ideal for education. Many of them had been very frustrated as members of the lower samurai class, and were invested in the idea of a system that promoted men of talent rather than privileging social status. Again, the role of social Darwinism is also important to take into account when we speak about this system, the idea that life itself is a sort of struggle that sorts the strong from the Weak, with education being intended to reflect that idea. That notion which involves the application of Darwin’s ideas of biological, natural selection, and survival of the fittest to fields like sociology and political theory has fortunately Been largely discredited today. It’s associated with political beliefs like fascism as well as eugenics and pseudoscientific racism. However, in the late 1800s, social Darwinism was very fashionable in elite circles in Europe in particular, and of course it would be, because the theory told those in

Aaron Manke
The real driver of Meiji industrialization was not heavy industry, things like steel, but light industry and especially textiles. And that was an industry dominated not by men, but by women. Textile mills weaving cotton and silk were crucial for the government’s economic strategy. Those fabrics could be sold overseas for a profit, and the money reinvested in quote-unquote strategic fields, like steel, which were seen as important to national security.