the birth of banzai

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The birth of banzaiNorio Makihara aa Tokyo Keizai UniversityPublished online: 30 Aug 2011.

To cite this article: Norio Makihara (2011) The birth of banzai , Japan Forum, 23:2, 237-261, DOI:10.1080/09555803.2011.599272

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The birth of banzai

N O R I O MA K I H A R A

Abstract: The promulgation of Japan’s first modern constitution in 1889 wasfollowed by a festival, which saw the inaugural cheering of banzai by crowdsto greet the Meiji Emperor as he passed by. Respect for the imperial family hadbeen gradually building during the previous decades, but for many of the Japanesepeople the Emperor remained a mysterious, distant being, when not simply aninconvenience. It was only in 1889, with the cheering of banzai, the singingof the national anthem and the dissemination of the imperial portrait, that theEmperor became a fully modern monarch. This article explores the significanceof this moment for the relationship between Emperor and people and for thelatter’s development of their self-awareness as a nation. The constitution wasproblematic, in that many people were excluded from the electorate, but cheeringbanzai provided a moment when the Japanese people could experience a sense ofunity with each other and their sovereign.

Keywords: Meiji Japan, emperor system, banzai, kokumin, nationalism

1. The Constitution Festival

11 February 1889: the 22nd year of Meiji.Kigensetsu: a national holiday marking the founding of the Japanese nation andimperial line by the legendary first emperor, Jimmu, in 660 BCE.

The streets of Tokyo were filled with shouts of joy and people celebrating thepromulgation of the Constitution of the Great Empire of Japan. At 10.35 am,the Imperial Guard was informed through a telegraph line, specially set up forthe occasion, about the end of the ceremony in the Grand Hall of the newly con-structed Imperial Palace in which the Emperor had bestowed the Constitution onhis people. Upon hearing the news, a 101-gun salute rang out from the old innercitadel. This salute was immediately answered by other salutes from battleshipsstationed at Shinagawa and Yokohama, by the resounding bells of Buddhist tem-ples, fireworks and countless balloons floating up into the sky. Streets, buildings

This essay was originally published as ‘Banzai no tanjo’, Shiso, 845, November 1994. This Englishtranslation is published with the permission of the author by arrangement with Iwanami Shoten,publishers, Tokyo.

Japan Forum 23(2) 2011: 237–261 ISSN: 0955–5803 print/1469–932X onlineCopyright C© 1994 Norio Makihara DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2011.599272

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238 The birth of banzai

and bridges were decorated with large and small national hinomaru flags, lightballs and lanterns, and large evergreen arches towered throughout the city. Then,over a hundred festival cars and floats paraded through the streets, decorated invarious styles with images of Emperor Jimmu and Prince Yamato Takeru andmulti-coloured streamers, splashing up mud from the snow that had been fallinguntil that morning and taking care to avoid the occasional overhanging electricwire. Even the elephant from the show booth in Asakusa Park was hired for theoccasion. Sake flowed freely, mandarin oranges and rice cakes were consumed,and young men and geisha in fancy dress paraded up and down the streets. Therewere displays of sacred music and dancing (kagura), sumo wrestling and so on.In the evening, fifty elaborate firework constructions on the plaza in front of theImperial Palace lit up with words such as Kenpo Banzai, ‘Long live the Constitu-tion’ and ‘Eternal as Heaven and Earth’, and hundreds more fireworks colouredthe evening sky. There was a torch procession, too. In more ‘civilised’ areas, MrTanaka Daikichi from the Shibahama Factory made ‘seawater rise tens of times itsheight’ by using ‘an underwater rocket, a new electric device’; Furukawa Ichibeifrom the Ashio copper mine ‘made several words appear’ in big electric lightspowered by a ten-horsepower steam engine; and on top of the tall building thathoused the Honjo Ward office, six organs played tunes such as the national an-them, Kimi ga yo. In all the excitement, three people were crushed to death byrushing festival cars or by the pressing crowds of people in the neighbourhoodof the Wadakura Gate. There were also several cases of people who drank them-selves to death (Nichinichi 11 February 1889, Jiji 12 February 1889, Yomiuri 13February 1889 et al.).1

The tumultuous scenes, ‘as if [the festivals of] Kanda and Sanno, Bon and NewYear had all come at once’ (Jiji 11 February 1889), were re-enacted the followingday. On the 11th the plan had been for the Emperor, who was to review the troopsat the Aoyama parade ground, to parade through the city in a carriage. However,maybe because of the assassination of Mori Arinori, the Minister of Education, orbecause of the bad state of the roads, the route was modified just before the paradewas due to leave and it ended up being reduced to the shortest distance betweenthe Imperial Palace and Aoyama. Thereupon the authorities received a petitionexplaining that the citizens had been unable ‘to pay their respects to the ImperialCarriage . . . amidst the crowds and confusion’ and ‘their unhappiness knew nobounds’. In response, a parade to the Peers Club (Kazoku Kaikan) in Ueno Parkand back was hurriedly arranged for the 12th. Even then, the excitement did notsubside and it is said that ‘the whole city was bustling with activity’ on the 13thas well (Choya 14 February 1889).

This great festival which, including the preparations, lasted for ten days, wasindeed worthy of being called ‘Constitution Festival’, which the young men fromthe Kanda district stencilled on their matching hanten coats. At the same time,the extent to which it was all much ado about nothing is clearly suggested by the

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Norio Makihara 239

famous comment of Erwin Balz, who remarked ‘What is comical is that no oneknows the content of the Constitution’, as well as the pun by Fukuzawa Yukichiin an article on the various rumours about the promulgation of the Constitution(kenpo no happu), which likened it to ‘a silken workman’s coat’ (kenpu no happi)’(Balz 1951, p. 107, Jiji Shinpo 11 February 1889). But this was not simply anabsurd episode in the history of the enactment of the Constitution. As has beenpointed out previously, with the move into the new Imperial Palace on 11 Januaryand the promulgation of the Constitution on 11 February, two major eventsensuring Tokyo’s status as the Imperial Capital had been celebrated within thespace of a single month (Yoshimi 1991, Narita 1994). An editorial in the Yomiuri(2 February 1889) encouraging the celebrations, emphasised that ‘given theirstatus as inhabitants of the Imperial Capital, the people of Tokyo prefectureshould celebrate the day of the promulgation of the Constitution, mindful of thefact that they should not fall behind the people from other prefectures’. Also,on 4 February, under the title ‘Yare yare’, the newspaper issued a written appealthat their readers follow ‘the grand undertakings of the people of the Kandadistrict’. In 1884, the people of Kanda had revived the Kanda Festival, whichhad been cancelled in 1874 in reaction to the downgrading of the Kanda shrineto an auxiliary shrine (massha), due to the fact that Taira no Masakado, its maindeity and Edo’s guardian god, was considered ‘a traitor’. Five years later, theKanda-ites – true ‘Edo-ites’ – had eventually accepted the idea of ‘Tokyo as anImperial Capital’. When the situation in Kanda was reported, the Kojimachiand Nihonbashi Wards also began to make a move and, when the newspapersreported this, the rivalry between the different wards became truly intense: someheld ‘hold frequent meetings, determined not to be beaten by other districts’(Yomiuri 7 February 1889); ‘the riverbank rivals finished their discussions onwhat should be the greatest spectacle of their generation’ (Nichinichi 9 February1889). This momentum carried through to the 11th.

However, if this had simply been an event where ‘the festivals for tutelarydeities and the big annual festivals were combined with the festivals of bothKanda and Sanno on just this one occasion’ (Nichinichi 6 February 1889), nomatter how magnificent the result, its impact on people’s minds would havebeen limited. In the early modern period, the so-called Tenkamatsuri or Shogun’sFestival had been held during the big festivals of the Hie Sanno or Kanda Myojinshrines and the portable shrines, festival cars and floats had been brought into theinner courtyard of the Edo castle and submitted for inspection to the Shogun.2

But the Constitution Festival was not a mere imitation of Tenkamatsuri. TheChoya reported: ‘This grand ceremony truly marks the beginning of the customof citizens expressing their congratulatory feeling by waving their hats, clappingtheir hands and shouting banzai when the Emperor passes by’ (13 February1889). It is my view that the historical significance of this Constitution Festivallies in the birth of this shouting of banzai.

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2. The need for a cheer

While the millions of citizens who gather to welcome the Imperial Carriagewill be filled with feelings of respect and overflowing joy, there will be someunsophisticated people who may be inclined to show an irreverent attitude,even unintentionally, because they are not educated in etiquette. . . . Theymight forget to take off their hats when the Imperial Carriage approaches, orforget to take off their scarves or to close their parasol, hence certain peopleare warned frequently by policemen, and such impropriety is a painful sightindeed.

(Nichinichi 9 February 1889)

Two days before the Constitution Festival, on 9 February, the Nichinichi news-paper published an editorial entitled ‘How to pay reverence’. The improprietymentioned in this editorial is thought to refer to a parade a month earlier, on theoccasion of the Emperor’s moving into the new Imperial Palace. While the Em-peror was on his way from the Akasaka palace, which had served as a temporarypalace after the Imperial Palace had burnt down in 1872, to the outer gardensof the new Imperial Palace, students from Gakushuin school and various juniorhigh and elementary schools in Tokyo prefecture had lined up along the roadbetween the Yotsuya Gate and the Sakurada Gate. From the Sakurada gate on-wards soldiers of the Imperial Guard were lined up. The students had sung Kimiga yo in unison while the Imperial Carriage was passing by. The Emperor ‘hadopened his window especially’ in response to their singing (Jiji 12 January 1889).Adults, on the other hand, ‘no matter where they stood, fell one upon anotherand completely obstructed the roads. . . . They pushed and shoved one another.At times, when people started to run in a stampede, it was extremely noisy’(Yomiuri 12 January 1889). Once the carriages had passed by, ‘they dispersedall at the same time while rushing around in total confusion’ (Choya 12 January1889).

When one thinks of the situation ten years earlier, even this was remarkableprogress. Around the time of the abolition of clans and the establishment of theprefectures in 1871, there had even been a rumour that ‘[t]he current Empressis just like Tamamo-no-mae from that old tale. Everyday she sucks several litresof blood from living beings. In order to provide for her needs, she continuallylooks up our birth dates and, when your time has come, you are picked out’(Anon. 1960).3 Tamamo-no-mae, a very beautiful woman, was a favourite withEmperor Toba (reigned 1107–1123) and the incarnation of a nine-tailed fox withgolden fur. The common people were acquainted with this mysterious creaturethrough the No song Sesshoseki and puppet shows. This osaki or ‘split-tailed’fox also turned up in the Kanto Region at the end of the Tokugawa period as‘the cholera beast’ and was feared since ‘it attaches itself to the ether that carriescholera and enters the body’, and was thought ‘to be indeed the same as thesplit-tail fox from America’ (Anon. 1991 [1862]). Among a populace that was

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Norio Makihara 241

at a loss due to the sudden civilisation and enlightenment movement, legendsabout foreigners ‘taking human blood and fat’ felt real and it is well known thatthis drove people to uprisings against the new government. However the rumourabout Tamamo-no-mae shows that not only the Grand Council of State (dajokan)but even the Empress were the object of doubts and fears that they were deceivingthe Emperor.

As for the Emperor, when he visited Kamakura and Enoshima in 1873 peoplewere ‘annoyed’, saying: ‘The Emperor may be passing by, but in contrast toa daimyo’s procession, for instance, there are very few people and we cannotmake any money. It is just a nuisance since we are told to clean the roads.’Moreover, when people then saw the Emperor watching the grand parade in therain, someone commented: ‘I thought the Emperor never goes out when it rains,so I’m really surprised. . . . The emperor who showed up this time, is he the realEmperor? This all seems to be a bit reckless . . . isn’t he actually a stand-in?’Thus the Emperor ended up being treated as a fake (Anon. 1873). The attemptto create an image for the new monarch as thrifty and diligent in his official dutiesdid not spread among the general public, as they still held on to the aloof okamiimage from the Edo period.

Still, as the Emperor repeated his visits to different regions in the country, thefeeling of respect towards the Emperor gradually filtered through to the people.Given this, why was the people’s attitude viewed as particularly problematic inthe period just before the promulgation of the Constitution? The article on ‘Howto pay reverence’ in the Nichinichi newspaper says:

When the Emperor passes by, it is no longer enough to bow in silence. Rather,as one voice, the people should produce a single cheer, in high spirits and withgreat enthusiasm, even if all their voices are of a different type. Recently, pupilsfrom elementary schools have lined up along both sides of the road and sungKimi ga yo and it really sounds nice. However, is it only schoolchildren who havea voice? While we should have people cheering, since there is no fixed cheeryet, it seems desirable at least to applaud all together to express our feelings.

The contrast between schoolchildren forming lines and bowing at the teacher’scommand, on the one hand, and adults – including mothers breastfeeding theirbabies – gathering by the roadside in a disorderly fashion, on the other, had by nowbecome a common sight during imperial tours. In 1878, in Kitauonuma Countyin Niigata prefecture, it was decided at a school district regulators’ meeting thatschoolchildren would line up at viewing spots allocated to each school and whenthe Emperor and his suite had reached a point twenty ken – about 30–40 metres– from where they stood, at the teacher’s command of ‘one’, the children were to‘put the palms of their hands on their kneecaps and bow low’. When the suite hadpassed and was at a distance of twenty ken away, at ‘two’, they were to regain theiroriginal position. During this time ‘facial expressions were left to each person’sdiscretion’ (Takizawa 1991, p. 45). However, the teachers’ commands at the most

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reached only the parents standing right behind the pupils. Of course, the adultsat least stopped moving about while the Emperor passed in front of them: therewas basically no difference between the pupils’ and adults’ attitudes in that theEmperor was an object ‘to be viewed’. Even so, it was Kimi ga yo being sung forthe first time in the streets on such a large scale that decisively established a gapbetween the two groups.

Kimi ga yo was not yet the national anthem, but was thought of as ‘a songin praise of peace’ and the sovereign, as the words themselves suggested. Theabove-mentioned article on ‘How to pay reverence’ also noted that in Europeancountries people cheered ‘“Long live the King!” or “Vive la Republique!”’, orthat they ‘sing in praise all together [their respective country’s] Kimi ga yo or theirnational anthem. They truly overflow with sincere thoughts for their sovereign andlove for their country.’ However, since they had only just recently started beingtaught Kimi ga yo in primary schools, even those who ought to know, let alonethe common people, were unable to sing it. The melody was also odd to themand people had never sung in unison before. For example, at the Constitutioncelebration ceremony of the Domestic Express Company, ‘the president read hiscongratulatory speech and the waiters sang Kimi ga yo. Once they finished thesong, they distributed red rice (sekihan) . . . and they removed the lids of ten sakecasks.’ The waiters had been given an important role (Yomiuri 9 February 1889).Even at the inaugural ceremony of the Great Japan Prison Association, ‘the morethan eight hundred gentlemen and noble ladies present’ had to listen to ‘the song[Kimi ga yo] performed by the wife of one of the guests’ (Nichinichi 1 May 1889).This is the reason why the Nichinichi newspaper emphasised the need to give tothe adults an opportunity for a cheer that would replace Kimi ga yo.

However, there was another issue that had been thrown into relief by the paradeon the occasion of the Emperor moving into the new Imperial Palace. The fol-lowing day the newspapers had reported the story as if the citizens of Tokyo hadcelebrated as one but the actual situation had been quite different. ‘On the day ofthe ceremony to mark the Emperor’s move into the new palace, the middle andlower classes did not even display the national flag and looked on indifferently. Itwas very well known among the people that this parade was organised in responseto strong criticism from abroad’ (Choya 5 February 1889). In fact, the annualkigensetsu was a similar story. Within middle and lower class society, when annualfestivals for local deities and Inari were held, ‘people would pay their share forthe floats, put up decorations such as small lights and artificial flowers, drink likefishes and eat like horses, and be exceptionally noisy and chaotic’. However, na-tional holidays or celebrations ‘were no different from a normal weekday’ (Choya5 February 1889).4 With the completion of the new palace, the possibility of mov-ing the capital to Kyoto finally disappeared but, although Tokyo was supposedto be the Imperial Capital, as its name suggested, the common people were notyet aware of this. ‘We cannot understand why, in contrast to the enthusiasm ofthe imperial household and of the government, the attitude of the people is so

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Norio Makihara 243

unusually quiet.’ As the Choya (3 February 1889) suggests, even in February,a few days before the promulgation, the reigning atmosphere was one in whichsomething like a ‘Constitution Festival’ was completely unthinkable.

Therefore, on 4 February, the ward headmen, having received orders fromthe Tokyo prefectural office, summoned the landlords and caretakers of eachneighbourhood and ordered them to fly the national flag and to hang out hinomarulanterns on each door. The instructions also said: ‘It is most desirable to sendout festival cars and floats. During the three days of 10, 11 and 12 February, it isalso acceptable to file into the main enclosure of the palace’ (Choya 6 February1889). The authorities were asking that the Tenkasai be re-enacted. However, theEdo-ites had not lost their pride and self-esteem to the extent that they wouldhave a festival only because they were ordered to. At the Nihonbashi fish market‘people sat down without doing anything, saying that such an event would nottake place, even if there had been official instructions from the ward office’ (Jiji9 February 1889). There was also another reason why they were reluctant tocomply. ‘The way military policemen treated the people’ on occasions such astroop reviews, ‘was over the top and there were many people who had receivedthe kind of treatment that one could not really talk about in the open. . . . Fearful(or having learned their lesson) of being treated coldly, the number of spectatorshas decreased year after year. . . . This constitutes one of the indirect causes ofthe lack of harmony between the officials and the people’ (Nichinichi 6 February1889). The regulations, which had been comparatively mild at past events suchas regional imperial tours, had become gradually stricter and this had increasedthe people’s lack of enthusiasm.

It was the newspaper Nihonjin that from early on had embraced a sense ofimpending crisis about the situation. On 3 November the previous year, theday of the Emperor’s birthday, it had published an article entitled ‘Why can wenot express splendid congratulations?’ The article noted: ‘Englishmen, even whenthey are overseas, thousands of miles from home, strictly observe their homeland’snational holidays and always hold banquets on those days.’ Why then do we noteven display the national flag? ‘Why then do we not find great pleasure in songs,dance, floats and fireworks?’ Moreover, on 18 December, ‘Napoleon III of Francehad shamelessly walked through the streets of Paris holding the Empress’s hand.Since the Emperor is so close to and familiar with his people, he is enormouslyadored by them. In our country as well, we would like the relationship betweenour Emperor and his people to be like this.’

In other words, the critical issue during the period preceding the promulgationof the Constitution was neither to regulate the crowds’ impropriety and makethem view the Emperor in silence nor was it to make them realise the emperor’stranscendental and sacred authority. Rather the question was how to rouse thepeople’s interest in the nation and how to reduce the distance between the peopleand their emperor. This is why the above-mentioned article on ‘How to payreverence’ noted that: ‘Even if all the people make the effort to gather together’, if

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the Emperor is ‘covered by sliding glass doors and silken curtains in the ImperialCarriage, it would cause immeasurable regret’, and therefore asked that ‘thepeople be allowed to have a good look at the loveliness of our Emperor’s face’.

3. ‘Banzai’ and the Imperial portrait

These were the circumstances in which banzai was born. On 11 February at1.15 pm, a horse-drawn carriage, pulled by six horses, in which the Emperorand the Empress were sitting together for the first time, left the main gate of thepalace. Thousands of students from Tokyo Imperial University led by ProfessorToyama Masakazu began to shout: ‘Tenno heika banzai! Banzai! Ban-banzai!’‘May the Emperor live ten thousand years!’ Students from other schools followedtheir example and instantly it spread among the whole crowd. The window ofthe carriage was wide open. ‘Hundreds of boys and girls from public and privateprimary schools were lined up and when the Imperial Carriage passed they sangtogether or cheered banzai, following their teachers’ instructions.’ ‘[School girls]sang Kimi ga yo, and hundreds of thousands of people, as if in a swarm, tookoff their hats and cheered banzai.’ ‘Festival cars, hikimono and the like fromKanda Ward lined up and people cheered banzai such that it was truly as if evenHeaven and Earth were shaking.’ The following scenes were described on the12th: ‘Festival cars coming from each neighbourhood, musical accompanimentall around and the singing of lumber carriers’ work songs (kiyariuta), spectatorswaving their hats and a loud sound of banzai echoing in the hills’ (Yomiuri 13February 1889). However, it was clearly the scenes that appeared for the first timeat the ‘Constitution Festival’ on the 11th that moved the Yomiuri to remark: ‘Inthe song Kimi ga yo that arose everywhere people prayed for the eternal prosperityof the Emperor and the Empress. . . . When seeing the people thus cheering withjoy. . . . This Kigensetsu of 11 February of the 22nd year of Meiji (1889) has trulybecome an auspicious day, one without precedent in history. . . . Tenno heikabanzai! To the people of Japan, banzai!’

People as one, raising their hands, lifting their hats high in the air and loudlycheering Tenno heika banzai. It is clear that doing this had a psychological effecton the crowd. If it was merely total solemnity that had been required, peoplecould have turned again into a miscellaneous crowd of onlookers right after theevent. But this was not what happened. Even people who were standing next toone another by pure chance or who had only been briefly acquainted suddenlyexperienced the same emotion; and, in this shared space, each person’s celebratoryfeelings were associated directly with the Emperor. They underwent, so to speak, atransformation from onlookers into the bearers of a portable shrine. The creationof this moment of a sense of mutual belonging resulted from cheering banzai.There was nothing that would have worked as well to change the relationshipbetween emperor and people.

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Norio Makihara 245

In subsequent years there were various debates about who ‘invented’ banzai.The Osaka Asahi shinbun (23 October 1905) reported on a rivalry between theAkamon clique of the Imperial University and the Tokyo Higher Normal Schoolclique on the issue of who came up with the idea. The newspaper declared theImperial University the winner, noting that Minister of Education Mori hadsuggested hoga (respectful congratulations) as a cheer, whereas Professor KumeKunitake had suggested banzai. The Hochi shinbun (11 February 1908) publisheda story about its invention by Dr Wadagaki Kenzo, who had come up with theidea of one leader cheering Tenno heika and then all the others cheering ban-zai three times. It also explained that banzai was chosen because hoga soundslike aho ga (the idiot). However, Mikami Sanji’s ‘A short biography of ProfessorToyama Masakazu’ (1908) states that it was Toyama who had suggested givingthree banzai cheers and that this had first been practised at a teachers’ meeting(Mikami 1987, p. 49). The custom of cheering banzai at auspicious events in-volving the emperor had existed in ancient times. Then, however, the word hadbeen pronounced banzei, following the Han pronunciation of the Chinese char-acters, hence differentiating it from the same characters pronounced differentlyas manzai, as in manzairaku, a gagaku song. In his Kimi ga yo to banzai (1938)however, Wada Shinjiro observes that after the medieval period, when a text said‘to cry banzai’, it did not mean cheering the word banzai. Rather, as the anno-tation to such texts suggests, it denoted the act of giving voice to a petition tosomeone in a higher position, by making sounds like ‘eh’ and ‘oh’ (Wada 1991,pp. 278, 305–310). He continues by explaining that, even at the enthronementceremony of the Meiji Emperor, no one cheered banzai. In the 1876 draft ofthe Navy Salute Regulations, there was a rule saying that when welcoming theEmperor the first officer of the navy was ‘to cheer Kakiwa (solid rock)’ and allthe marines were ‘to take of their hats and to answer with Tokiwa (unchangingrock)’. Indeed, one can find flags with ‘Kotei, banzai’ (To the Emperor, banzai)or many expressions in the newspapers of the time such as ‘Scores of fireworkswere launched, celebrating the eternal prosperity (banzai) of the Emperor andthe Empress’ (Nichinichi 12 January 1889). These banzai probably meant seijubanzai (long live the Emperor), that is, wishing and praying that ‘your reign maylast for thousands, eight thousand generations’.

Again, according to Wada, when Kume and his colleagues were puzzling overthe pronunciation of banzai, Toyama had argued that the first sound of the vo-calisation had to be strong and that, since the sound zei ‘was an unfamiliarsound to the people nowadays’, pronouncing the cheer as banzai was preferable,even if that meant blending together the different pronunciations of the Chi-nese characters. This was accepted at the professors’ meeting of 5 February, atwhich point Minister of Education Mori had negotiated with the Ministry of theImperial Household and got its approval (Wada 1991, pp. 253–254).5 There isalso a newspaper article noting that: ‘An agreement has been reached in councilgiving permission for people to express their celebratory feelings by cheering,

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just as in England they celebrate the long reign of the monarch by cheering“Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”. . . . Permission was probably granted according toan old precedent’ (Chugai shogyo shinpo 8 February 1889). Certainly Mori Arinoriwas extremely proactive, suggesting at the university council that all the studentswould ‘enter en masse’ the open square in front of the Imperial Palace ‘and cheerbanzai’ and that ‘Higher Normal School students from the neighbouring pre-fectures of the Kanto region should be mobilised under the pretext of a schoolexcursion’ (Jiji 31 January 1889, Nichinichi 6 February 1889). Kinoshita Hirojiasserts that it had also been Mori, as someone who believed in ‘the principle ofbringing ruler and people closer’, who had defeated the opposing argument that itwas irreverent to shout and that it was Mori ‘who had brought about a revolution-ary change in the etiquette towards the Emperor’ (Osaka Asahi 11 April 1909).The fact is that only the Gakushuin students who occupied the position betweenthe Niju Bridge and the main gate of the Imperial Palace where people first cameinto contact with the Imperial Carriage ‘paid obeisance in silence’ (Wada 1991,p. 265). Again, the Choya reported that, whereas in the past ‘people had expressedtheir feelings of respect through maintaining a solemn silence’, on this occasion,people would probably welcome this ‘magnificent ceremony, without precedentin history’, with enthusiastic cheers. In the West, at military parades, even soldierswould utter cheers. However, by doing so, they ‘on the contrary forget to salute,which is improper’, hence it seemed that ultimately soldiers would just ‘solemnlyhold their guns’ (6 February 1889). In this way, even the army got involved inthe discussions for and against cheering. The Nichinichi newspaper, which hadserved for many years as a government organ and was supposedly well informedon the real state of governmental affairs, reported in its general news column on 8February that at the Imperial University ‘they had expressed their congratulatorysentiment by cheering Tenno heika banzai! Banzai! Ban-banzai!’6 The fact that thenewspaper asked the following day anew for ‘cheers’ and the opening up of theImperial Carriage was perhaps meant to rein in ‘those who favoured solemnity’.Actually, on this day the Tokyo Prefectural Office sent out instructions saying:‘The people accompanying the festival cars should express their congratulatoryfeeling by cheering aloud banzai to the Emperor and Empress with one voice’(Jiji 10 February 1889).

In the end it is probably correct that in the government it was the Ministryof Education and the Imperial University who led the move towards the customof cheering banzai.7 Minister of Education Mori in particular showed his de-termination, ‘suggesting that singing should be added to school subjects at thevarious schools and should be used as much as possible to arouse in the stu-dents feelings of love for one’s lord and one’s country’ (Nihonjin 3 November1888). He had also come to regard military drills and marches (excursions) asimportant. Needless to say, singing together and marching are extremely effi-cient ways to nurture group spirit and discipline, thus this education policy wasestablished so that students could be mobilised for the Emperor’s parade. Further-more, teachers in charge of gymnastics or singing had received detailed guidance

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Norio Makihara 247

beforehand (Yomiuri 6 February 1889). It is ironic that Mori Arinori, who was, soto speak, the stage director of Constitution Festival, was assassinated on that veryday.8

However, the pronunciation banzai had already been written in kana alongsidethe Chinese characters in the newspapers for some time and hence was notToyama’s invention. Also, a contribution by Yamada Seisuke from Kyobashi oncheering, entitled ‘Advice on the Constitution Promulgation Ceremony’ (Choya3 February 1889) proposed that people should take their neighbourhood floatsout and that ‘they should cheer even more enthusiastically than they did at otherfestivals’. He continued: ‘They should shout banzai in a loud voice and if onefeels awkward about cheering banzai, it is also possible to laugh “ha ha ha ha” orto shout noisily, but above all it is important to be cheerful.’ In Kyobashi, planswere made to go to the Imperial Palace in a torch parade and to ‘cheer banzaithree times to the Emperor’ (Nichinichi 8 February 1889). Also, in Yamagata,there was already a trend to ‘cheer banzai for the empire of Japan’ (Yomiuri6 February 1889). Furthermore Wadagaki reflected that banzai had ended upbeing used for everyone, even though, strictly speaking, banzai should be used forthe emperor only and senzai (a thousand years) for the empress, while there wereother expressions for those in lower positions (Hochi 11 February 1908). At theNew Year’s party of the Chamber of Commerce in Osaka, a toast was proposed‘to the long life and prosperity (banzai) of Governor Tateno and President of theChamber Tanaka’ (Osaka Asahi 12 January 1889). Besides this use of banzai,the expression jiyu banzai (banzai for freedom) was often used in popular rightsmovements, while at a social gathering in Tochigi, after having made ‘a painstakingdissection’ of a big catfish, the symbol of the authorities, people had ‘loudlyshouted banzai’ (Choya 3 March 1883).

In other words, banzai was already separated from the original meaning of ‘longlive the Emperor’ and the custom of shouting banzai had come into spontaneoususage in the private sphere early on. The meritorious deed of Education MinisterMori and his companions was in fact limited to getting the authorities to approveof cheering banzai to the Emperor publicly. This is the reason why banzai spread inthe blink of an eye, why students and school children who had formed ranks yelled‘banzai to Yomiuri newspaper!’ when they approached the newspaper companyand why newspapers could answer by publishing slogans such as ‘Banzai to thestudents, banzai to scholarly progress’ (Nichinichi 13 February 1889) or ‘Banzai tothe Japanese people’ (Yomiuri 13 February 1889). To complete the picture, therewas even a scene where ‘a “gentleman” who had fallen down drunk’, received awarning from a policeman, and ‘danced like mad while shouting “banzai, banzai,to the policeman banzai”’. ‘There were even many cops who thought it so funnythat they could not bring themselves to stop him’ (Nichinichi 14 February 1889).9

Thus the power of banzai as a unifying force lay in the fact that its object was notlimited to the Emperor, but that it continued expanding to the abstract state andwent even further down to the level of the common people and the policemen,hence managing to level out all differences.

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Within all the commotion about banzai, there was something else that attracteda lot of attention, namely, the Imperial Portrait that was displayed in assemblyand ceremony halls in every ward, which was to be treated as a device similar to‘goshintai’, the object of worship in Shinto shrines: ‘After putting up the portraitof Emperor Jimmu and of the present Emperor and Empress, sacred sake andofferings are to be presented in front of them’ (Yomiuri 13 February 1889); ‘Theportraits should be framed with green leaved bamboo and placed in the middleof a hanging purple cloth. A pair of sasaki trees should be placed as an offering’(Nichinichi 8 February 1889). The Emperor had descended to the same space ashis people by showing his countenance to them and by accepting their banzai,but became at the same time a deity to which the people ought to pay theirrespects. In general, it is claimed that the contact between the Emperor and thepopulace gradually became more indirect between the Emperor’s regional visitsin the 1880s and the increasing presence of the Imperial Portrait from the 1890sonwards. Yet, given that people cheered banzai in front of the Imperial Portrait,even when the Emperor was not present in flesh and blood, it was still possible to‘share a common space’. The double nature of the king described by Kantorowicz(1992) as ‘the king of flesh and blood’ and ‘the sacred and immortal king’ is hencereconciled in banzai.

However, this apotheosis of the Emperor was of a completely different kindthan the concept at the time of his regional visits of a living god, who made peoplebelieve that diseases would be cured by touching the carpet the Emperor had saton. There are various and many divine beings (marebito) acting as healing godsin the world of folklore. I think that many of the stories that are related todayof healing at the time of the Emperor’s visit were in fact ‘remembered’ after theMeiji Emperor’s death. Yet, given the wretched conditions of early Meiji, the factthat the Emperor was recognised as such a divine being was a success in itself.However, this kind of belief was inconsistent with the undertones of enlightenmentpolicy. And so, to the degree that the Emperor remained someone who broughtworldly benefits to the people like a giving god, he was not seen to have thepower to command their bodies and spirits as he desired.10 ‘What does keishinaikoku (piety and love of one’s country mean)? Since keishin refers to respectingand honouring (kei) one’s god (shin) – that I have understood – aikoku wouldthen mean loving (ai) one’s country (koku) or in more popular terms, to doteupon one’s country. But I wonder how could one hold this huge country in one’sarms to cherish it, or stroke it?’ This nonsense is by Sakakibara Koresuke in hisYoriaibanashi (1927 [1874], p. 189), but for the common people there really wasa decisive gap separating keishin and aikoku. Yet the people who worshipped theImperial Portrait were no longer expecting personal benefits from the Emperor.Rather, with the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education the followingyear, the people were gradually made to realise that it was they, the people, whowere the object of the Emperor’s expectations.

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Norio Makihara 249

4. The attitude of dependency

For the common people, the Constitution Festival was simply an opportunity tohave a great time. Following the Meiji Restoration festivals had been suppressed as‘the height of stupidity and ignorance’, but this one, for who knows what reason,had fortunately been encouraged by those in power.11 ‘When there is a rumourthat “Saigo Takamori is coming back home from Russia” it is the populace thatimmediately mixes up stories, saying that “the actor Bando Hikosaburo is leavingprison as well”’ (Nihon 8 April 1891). However the three-piece set Kimi ga yo,Banzai and the Imperial Portrait, which could be directly heard, felt and seen, hadappeared all of a sudden in a single feverish celebration and festival space. Theepoch-making significance of the Constitution Festival, different in kind from theusual Emperor’s visits or Tenkasai, lies in the fact that so many people had sharedthat experience.

Of course this became possible because it happened in the Imperial Capital.Elsewhere in the country some of the celebrations had been nothing more than anexcuse for men of influence to hold a banquet. ‘Because of that kenpo somethingfestival, they got 1 kan and 200 mon of money out of us yesterday. . . . Lanternsmay be hanging from the eaves, but we are completely in the dark.’ Nor didthis kind of bitterness escape Fukuzawa’s notice (Jiji 11 February 1889). Infact, in Yokohama, ‘The ignorant people who do not complain in the least onoccasions such as religious festivals . . . disturbed the labourers’ decoration work’(Nichinichi 10 February 1889). Glimpses of subversive behaviour, which alwaysaccompanied festivals, could also be seen. In Asakusa there was a festival carwith ‘a giant octopus’ made of cotton ‘that carried in one arm a national flagand in another a board on which [celebrating the constitution] was written inhuge letters’. There was also one festival float ‘with a big golden ball [kintama,a Japanese euphemism similar to ‘family jewels’] fixed on a multi-coloured flag’(Yomiuri 9 February 1889). The black octopus (kurodako) was a reference tothe then Prime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka, who had opposed the popular rightsmovement. Like the festival car with a ‘giant daikon’ (Japanese horse radish),which would appear in Saga on the occasion of ‘daikonshiki’, the silver weddinganniversary of the Imperial Couple in 1894, the golden ball was also ratherquestionable in nature (Fujitani 1990, p. 158).12

Satirical magazines too showed themselves at their brilliant best. Marumaruchinbun (16 February 1889) singled out a scene where students, holding a flagwith their school name and forming a barrier along ‘the sacred road’ down whichthe Emperor was to pass, maintained the order of an at-first-sight extremelydisorderly festival space.

The recent established form is that school children . . . raise their high-pitchedvoices to sing kimi ga yo wa, chiyo something. . . . It really looks as if there

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existed an old tradition of a nation characterised by etiquette and good cus-toms. . . . However these pupils’ singing . . . starts upon the teacher’s com-mand. It is so-called mechanical singing, that is to say, this actually meansthat the pupils who are given this responsibility are not different from singingautomatons that have been installed along the road where the Emperor is wel-comed.

An editorial entitled ‘Mechanical singing’ continued the argument saying that,if this was what it was all about, one could as well put ‘phonographs’ along theroad ‘playing the recordings of the golden voices of the teachers singing sazareishi no and so forth themselves’. Picking out a schoolchild on the pretext that‘this precious pupil who is so diligent in his studies can represent everyone elseto congratulate and cheer banzai’ is similar to saying ‘the banquet can not takeplace without the presence of a geisha’. On the day itself, the vendors of theMarumaru chinbun Company ‘wore red-coloured formal dress, to express theirsincere open heartedness’ (sekishin, literally ‘red heart’). They put on ‘noses andwigs measuring one shaku’ (about 30 cm) and bakageta (foolish [baka] clogs[geta]) about two shaku tall. (The word bakageta itself also means ‘ridiculous’).They walked around selling the Maruchin, holding bamboo sticks with pheasants(ken, Consti-) and pigeons (po, -tution) attached, as well as flags with the words‘Japan’s remarkable progress’ (literally ‘long leg progress’) and ‘Long live theEmperor’. This was typical of the newspaper, known as ‘the founder of comics’and ‘the captain of jokes’. Again, the Tonchi kyokai zasshi (28 February 1889)published, as a pun on Article 1 of the Meiji Constitution, a ‘study method[kenpo, constitution] of Japanese wit’, which said that ‘the association of greatwit will supervise the skeletons (gaikotsu) of the people of Sanuki’ (the hometown of Miyatake Gaikotsu, its publisher). It went on to note that ‘its presidentis to be respected and not to be thought light of’. Together with the text, therewas an illustration showing instead of the Emperor a skeleton ‘bestowing’ thiskenpo. Miyatake was found guilty of impudence and sentenced to three years’imprisonment with hard labour.

Given all this, there was a real fear that ‘a slip of the tongue in a congratulatoryspeech might lead to trouble . . . causing disorder in the lines of the joyous paradethat would hence turn into a demonstration against the government’ (Nichinichi 6February 1889).13 However in the end the Constitution Festival reached its goalsby washing away all kinds of dissatisfaction and allowing for minor subversivebehaviour. The way the countryside dealt with it all, just ‘waiting for the day tocome while continuing its daily activities of pounding steamed rice to rice cakeand brewing raw sake’ may seem indifferent. Yet the Nichinichi (10 February1889) accurately pointed out that people were about ‘to discover’ that the event‘strongly stimulated even the brains of the rural folk’, who so far did not evendisplay the national flag on holidays.

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Norio Makihara 251

However that may be, it did not mean that by now the common people hadbecome united with the Emperor or the state. If newspapers such as the Choyaand the Yomiuri, which originally belonged to the people’s rights faction, encour-aged the Constitution Festival, it was not only with the intention of praising theEmperor. An article entitled ‘The Japanese people after the Promulgation of theConstitution’ (Choya 6–7 February 1889) says: ‘Once the Constitution is enactedand a constitutional parliamentary political system established, we citizens willnot any longer be the powerless, irresponsible people we were yesterday.’ Even ifit is a minority that ‘administers the affairs of state’, it is ‘the voters, that is to say,people from the entire nation, who vote for them and put then into parliament’.Consequently, ‘all citizens bear responsibility for politics’, and ‘if people adopt anattitude of dependency and take it easy over the years’, as had been the case untilthen, ‘ruin and the loss of their family’s reputation will suddenly overtake them’. Inshort, showing no interest either in the Emperor or in the government, their origi-nal aim was to rouse an awareness as citizens in the people of the middle and lowerclasses, who had been content so far with their attitude of dependency, ‘entrustingall the authority to sort out family affairs to their parents’ and ‘spoiling their livesin dissoluteness and laziness, sponging off their parents and spending their daysin extreme indulgence’. The Yomiuri (10 February 1889) proclaimed that ‘thosewho do not celebrate the promulgation of the Constitution are not human . . . itis lese majeste toward the Imperial Family . . . treason against the state’. But itappealed by saying (4 February 1889): ‘However, people from Tokyo prefecture,it will not be sufficient just to make your voices heard on behalf of all the peopleof Japan on the day of the promulgation of the Constitution! . . . As representa-tives of the Japanese people, it is up to you to look after the development of ourrights! . . . First of all you will need to get acquainted with the Constitution itself.’

Needless to say, the actual Imperial Diet was not something that all the Japanesepeople could participate in. Also, the local government system, regulating cities,towns and villages, which had been promulgated the previous year, had turnedinto ‘citizens’ only men paying more than two yen of land tax or direct nationaltax and did not grant the other ‘inhabitants’ the right to vote. Moreover, first-classqualified voters, who accounted for the upper half of the total tax amount of theirtown or village, had the special right to vote in half of the members of the Diet(in the cities, the top three classes qualified). Mayors of cities and heads of townwere appointed by the Diet. For example in Tanashi town near Tokyo, amongthe 483 households and 2,954 townspeople, there were twenty-seven first-classqualified voters and 113 second-class voters, a total of 140 people, each groupvoting in six members of the Diet (Anon. 1901). Every three years half of themembers of the Diet were to be re-elected and each time townspeople were madeto experience the citizens/residents and the first class/second class gap. TakekoshiYosaburo criticised this system as well: ‘As a result of national legislation, thosewho have been defined as non-citizens . . . while being counted as part of the39 million brothers, are people who do not receive brotherly friendship from their

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other brothers’ (Kokumin no tomo 2 May 1889). Considering that at the end ofthe Tokugawa period, there were numerous places where all heads of householdshad the right to vote for the village officials, this was a huge step backwards.

Of course, there was opposition. There were a number of villages that attemptedto create their own independent election regulations, saying ‘a minority of peoplemonopolising a majority of the rights that concern the whole village misses themark and will destroy the harmony of the whole village’ and that with such asystem ‘discrimination would automatically grow in people’s hearts’ (Niigata ken1982). At a council for town and village heads of Kamo County in HiroshimaPrefecture, it was argued that the system ‘destroyed the harmony of village politics’and they submitted a petition for a revision of the municipal law for towns andvillages (Hiroshima ken 1973). Again, in Tanashi town until 1904, each year 60per cent of the population would not pay municipal taxes until they received areminder to do so. In Shizuoka, the prefectural governor gave instructions in themidst of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1905 ‘to rouse’ once more ‘theawareness regarding tax payments’ of those ‘negligent’ people who ‘have madeit a habit to pay their taxes after having received a reminder’ or who ‘rather paytheir taxes without making a move themselves, paying a small fee and waiting forthe tax collector to come over to their house and pay him in cash’ (Shizuoka ken1992). Even if the governor tried hard by saying that ‘the duty to pay taxes iscoupled with the duty of military service and should be taken most seriously bythe people’, for the ‘inhabitants’ even the politics of their own town or village,which they were supposed to be familiar with, had become something remote.

It was even more impossible for the people at large to give up an attitude ofdependency on the level of national politics. A letter published in the Nichinichion 1 May 1889, when the excitement of the Constitution Festival had completelycooled down, made the following prediction: ‘Next year’s elections for the Houseof Representatives, ah, just to think of it, the noisiness in the House, ambushesoutside, fighting, being hit, getting angry, crying, floods of tears, total confu-sion. Next year’s elections, ah, I’m worried. What to buy? Votes. What to sell?Rights . . . Nothing except confusion.’ It was also the Nichinichi (1 June 1889)that quickly became aware of the significance of such a lack of interest among thepopulace, when the people’s rights faction and local powerbrokers started to getabsorbed in factional politics, as they aimed towards the first elections the follow-ing year. ‘Seen through the eyes of the ruled who are not involved in any politicalparty, whichever party wins a victory . . . it is just like and has no more weight forthem than sumo at the Ekoin, wondering whether it is Konishiki who will win orWakaminato.’ Whichever ‘political party – the sumo wrestlers of politics . . . winsor loses, it will not ruin the spectators themselves (apart then from those whobetted on the game)’. The title of this editorial was ‘The imbalance between richand poor is the origin of society’s downfall’. In any event, it was precisely becausea parliamentary system had been realised and because those with political pre-rogatives and those with economic power had systematically become one and the

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Norio Makihara 253

same that there had emerged as a real possibility the threat of a discourse with thepotential ‘to break down the actual social order and remodel both governmentand society’.

Nihonjin (18 February 1889) differentiated jinmin (people), the general termfor ‘people who merely have manners, customs and language in common’, fromkokumin (nation) – ‘jinmin who are politically tightly bound hence constituting aunity’. It continued by asking ‘can we really speak of a so-called Nihon kokumin[Japanese nation] in the feudal era?’ and proclaimed that ‘the Japanese peoplewas born on 11 February, Meiji 22’. However in its next issue (3 March 1889)it could not but wonder: ‘Ah, the House of Representatives of the empire, whatkind of people do they represent?’ Kuga Katsunan also pointed out in his Kinjiseironko (1891) that if one considers ‘the Constitution as a legal text that expressesthe spirit of people’s participation in governance’, given that people do not havethe right ‘to participate in the public affairs of the nation’, then as in the feudalera, ‘the lower echelons of society . . . are almost seen as foreigners’ (Uete 1987,pp. 58, 63). In other words, the promulgation of the Constitution meant thatthe great majority of this country’s inhabitants were no longer able to be partof the nation. One is reminded of how, at the time of the Constitution Festival,the president of the Mitsubishi Company, Iwasaki Yanosuke, had donated 10,000yen to Tokyo Prefecture as charity money for the poor. In June of the followingyear, too, right before the elections for the House of Representatives, the TokyoCity Council voted against rescue money for the poor and needy, which hadbeen proposed as a measure against skyrocketing rice prices, at which point theEmperor immediately undertook to ‘bestow’ 300 yen per month ‘for the timebeing’ (Tokyo-to 1986, p. 23, 1989, p. 47).14

Inoue Kowashi wrote the following in the draft of his ‘Chikujo iken’ in answerto the 1887 Natsushima draft of the constitution.15

Shinmin (citizen) is a word that applies to all people, regardless of their sex orage. Even those people who lose their civil rights as part of their popular rightsare still citizens of the empire. In this chapter [on the shinmin’s general rightsand duties], the word shinmin is not appropriate for expressing the rights of thekokumin, and should be changed into kokumin.

(Inada 1962, p. 230)

This was self-evident for Inoue who thought that ‘civil rights mean the rights ofthe kokumin’ according to the principles of law (1968 [1889], p. 155). Howeverit is precisely when inhabitants who are enclosed by national borders acquire anawareness of ‘my/our country’ that the modern state comes into being. As Nihonjin(18 February 1889) put it, ‘the sense of nationhood is identical to the kokumin’ssoul’. If that is the case, it could not be helped that Inoue deleted this specificpassage in the process of making a fair copy of his notes and that he agreed on theunified use of the word shinmin in all the articles of the Constitution, regardlessof the presence or absence of a person’s civil rights. Since universal suffrage

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had been ruled out and the word kokumin could not be used, as long as thedistinction between shin (citizens) – who assisted and representing the Emperorin his governance – and min (inhabitants) – the ‘spectators’ – remained and thusall Japanese were not tied into a tight relationship with the Emperor, there wasno way to remedy this sense of ‘alienation’ in people’s hearts or to integrate thehi-kokumin (non-national people) into the nation.16

This was also the reason why banzai came into being. It unified the Emperorwho stood above the Diet and the masses who were excluded from the Diet. More-over since everyone – Emperor, state and citizens – was subsumed within the oneword, banzai, a collective illusion was thereby created of a nation-state envelopedin a short-lived feeling of unity. If within the context of the Constitution Festivalthe relationship between the Emperor and the populace or the cheering turnedinto a problem, it was because the structure of the Constitution of the Empire ofJapan itself had become an obstacle to the integration of the people. At the sametime, by reducing the masses’ interest in the promulgation of the Constitution tonothing more than ‘a silken workman’s coat (kenpu no happi)’, it became possibleto turn it into a festival. It was also perhaps inevitable that newspapers such asthe Choya and the Yomiuri would eagerly encourage the Constitution Festival,given that the popular rights movement had claimed ‘rights as citizens’, whiledisconnecting government from state and Emperor and advocating patriotism asan interest in the state (Makihara 1982, Yasumaru 1989). It is precisely becauseof such a movement from below to become a kokumin that banzai came into activeuse.

5. The disciplinary power of banzai

In this way, the three-piece set Kimi ga yo, Banzai and the Imperial Portraitmade the populace experience the nature of the Emperor’s authority and a feelingof oneness with the state, enabling the creation of a national self-awareness (asa kokumin) in the form of a citizen (shinmin). Next, the Imperial Rescript onEducation proclaimed a change from a ‘sovereign who gives’ into a ‘sovereignwho takes’. Nonetheless, an artillery regiment commander in 1891 described howappalling situations persisted: ‘Parents at home are constantly worried about theirchildren who are serving in the army. It feels just as if their beloved children havebeen ripped away from them’ (Hiroshima ken 1973). It was not necessarily thenotion from the Imperial Rescript on Education of ‘offering oneself courageouslyto the State’ that transformed the populace into brave soldiers during the Sino-Japanese War. The ‘Jugun ryakki’ (‘Sketch of service in war’) by Kato Yoshigoro,a farmer from Inagi Village (present Inagi City in Tokyo), shows this clearly (Katon.d.).17

At the end of August 1894, a month after the outbreak of the Sino-JapaneseWar, Yoshigoro, who had been called up as a reservist aged 24, was transferred tothe first infantry regiment. After training for about a month he was put on a night

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Norio Makihara 255

train that would bring him from Aoyama to Hiroshima. The previous day, as theywere marching to the Takanawa Sengakuji temple, he had composed a song thatwent ‘if a warrior dies when his time to die has come, his name will last for yearsto come’. Despite this, the same Yoshigoro speaks of ‘understanding the heart ofa soldier who is sent off with banzai cheers’, hence not really able to stop himselffrom an effusion of his sentiments. ‘Leaving the shelter I had got used to living infor Hiroshima, sadness in the heart of the departing soldier.’ Once the train setoff, they received an exuberant welcome in each station.

At each train stop people shout banzai with loud voices . . . they give us soldierssugar and hot water . . . when we arrived at Shizuoka we were welcomed byloud banzai banzai cheering and each soldier was given one jo of paper andother things like matches by the citizens of Shizuoka. Because of the banzaicheering all night we even did not have the time to sleep.

And then it was morning.

Seven o’clock in the morning, arrived in Hamamatsu City. Got off the train andhad breakfast at a mess that had been set up in advance. Everything there hadbeen prepared and arranged to welcome us, all very carefully. Lanterns put upand flags saying Tenno heika banzai on display. . . . When we got off the train,Red Cross employees, train station employees and volunteers cheered banzai.All this added to our sense of duty. The army cheered banzai in response andat some point there was applause, banzai voices getting more enthusiastic. . . .

11.25, arrived in Nagoya. . . . Had lunch. This place was beautifully deco-rated as well and each soldier was offered a towel by the citizens. . . . The steamwhistle sounded. . . . Red Cross employees and others, even the students of theschool of commerce cheered banzai all together and we left to loud applause.Each time we heard banzai we were reminded of how important our missionis. . . .

Passed through the old battlefield of Sekigahara. . . . Farmers were cultivat-ing the fields. Some of them came close to the train in which we sat, kneltdown and joined their hands with reverence. Some people repeatedly bowedwhen they saw our train. We were particularly moved and feelings of hostilityagainst the enemy arose. From their attitude we guessed that some of their ownchildren or family members must have left for the front. Seeing this, is thereanyone who does not feel hostility . . . ?

Eleven o’clock (in the evening), arrived in Kobe. . . . Offered prayers at theMinatogawa Shrine. . . . The attention and consideration towards us was mostpolite, most friendly. We did not experience any inconvenience at all. We weretreated with great hospitality. Not to mention, we were again reminded of ourresponsibility.

Every time the train stopped, there were repeated ‘banzai for the empire’,‘banzai for the army’ and various kinds of hospitality. In such circumstances,

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at first the soldiers were caught up in sad feelings. But at some point the samesoldiers, who tended to feel annoyed by the fact ‘that they even did not have thetime to sleep’, started to shout banzai themselves. ‘In the train we sang bravewar songs. It is difficult to put down in words what the atmosphere was like.’This shows how high feelings ran. Now they had become able to sing war songstogether. But what is important to note is that the effect of banzai was not limitedto stirring their morale, but that it moved and inscribed in each and every of thema sense of ‘my duty’. Again, as they encountered the attitude of farmers bowingfor them, for the first time they felt ‘hostility against the enemy’. For Yoshigoroand his comrades a sense of fatherland would not have been possible without thefeeling of belonging that had thus emerged. It had been the kokumin itself, filledwith good intentions, which had given them a national identity and made theminto courageous soldiers.

One can find scenes of villagers seeing soldiers off at the village border or thetrain stop from the second half of the 1880s onwards. In its newspaper, Jiyu notomoshibi (The Torch of Freedom), the popular rights faction had also emphasisedrousing a military spirit by organising farewell parties with town or village money,but such initiatives were not widespread (23 April 1885). The custom of sendingoff soldiers, with people in ranks and flags and a musical band in front, took offafter the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. As Yoshigoro’s diary shows, effortswere made to entertain soldiers in transit as well. They prepared national flags,flags with ‘welcome to the army’ and ‘banzai to the Imperial Army’, lanterns andalso chains of light bulbs. ‘When the train arrives, all stand up together, takeoff their hats and bow. When the train leaves, all cheer together [banzai to theImperial Army] three times’ (Shizuoka ken 1990). This is a passage from ‘Kangeitetsuzuki’ (Welcome formalities), documenting a triumphant return, but, as canbe understood from the above, the formalities for sending off the army were mostlythe same. For the people in the countryside, at a time when all were enveloped inthe excitement of the outbreak of the war and reports of victory, this banzai nowprovided them with the opportunity to experience the frenzy that Tokyoites hadbeen caught up in at the time of the Constitution Festival. Moreover, towns andvillages were instructed to bring ‘flags with your town or village name’, stokingrivalry between localities as well. This escalated even further after the end of thewar at village funerals and ceremonies for the triumphant return.

On the basis of this experience, the head of Sunto County emphasised that itwas because of ‘the natural disciplinary power of society’ if ‘rather weak’ peo-ple from Shizuoka Prefecture – ‘few of whom originally belonged to warriorfamilies’ – had left for the front in high spirits. In other words, ‘because society atthe time . . . wished for the success of the army with a great passionate sincerityand sympathy, this emotion influenced the sense of each of the soldiers. Did it notreach the point where they were made to realise that it was shameful to return totheir village without honour, even though they might die?’ (Susono shishi hensansenmon iinkai 1993).

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Norio Makihara 257

6. The formation of a national consciousness

By shouting and cheering together, people from different regions, who did nothave any mutual connection before, started to really feel as if they were people fromthe same country. This function of banzai, creating a feeling of belongingness,originated in the fact that banzai, which was originally only meant to be usedtowards the Emperor, saw its use spreading to the empire, to the army and evento Private X. This levelling out in the use of banzai thus also shows that theMeiji state, despite its pre-modern outward appearance, was in fact a modernnation-state. A modern state can only be established when its kokumin, who arein reality diverse and full of differences, have been able to unite under the fictionof being the same and equal. One could say that it was by passing through theSino-Japanese War, during which this fictitious conscience permeated the wholecountry, that the Japanese nation (Nihon kokumin) was finally born.

However this does not mean that subsequently local people were completelyentrapped by the Emperor or the state. When everyday life continues peacefully,this imagined community that converges in the emperor or the state cannot butbecome weaker. This is clearly shown by an event in March 1897, when the34th infantry regiment was stationed at Shizuoka. It was a time when therewas competition throughout the country to attract the army as a garrison town,not least because of expectations of an economic ripple effect. Thus ‘the sincerewelcome’ by the people of Shizuoka manifested itself in ‘the red colour of nationalflags and bulb lights. Voices cheering banzai to the 34th regiment, banzai to thesoldiers resounded in and around the city. . . . Welcome songs were performedcheerfully by hundreds of students.’ A magnificent welcome party was preparedand citizens brought food and drinks they donated for the occasion. However theregiment commander ‘refused everything’. He said that the reason was that theEmpress Dowager was in mourning. ‘Because of this, for a moment there was ahuge confusion.’ ‘While all the high officials’ from the governor on down ‘werepresent’, there was not one who had thought of the fact that ‘the Imperial Courtwas in mourning’ (Shizuoka ken 1990).

This episode also hints at the role of the army in bringing the Emperor intothe local society in times of peace. Even if everyday life is characterised by allkinds of deviations from the straight and narrow and odd little episodes, eachtime something happens, the war experience, including that of the home front,is recalled and accumulated as an ever greater collective memory.18 On the otherhand, however, as would be displayed in the Hibiya Riot, the war ‘was not the bat-tle of one or two ministers or elder statesmen (genro), but truly that of the citizens’(Osaka Asahi 1 September 1905). The stronger this consciousness became, themore the dissatisfaction about the distinction between ‘inhabitants’ and ‘citizens’increased.19 On this issue, Uesugi Shinkichi, who advocated the supremacy of thestate, was particularly insightful when he noted: ‘Popular elections are the gen-eral mobilisation of the citizens on a political level and establish the foundation

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for all the people to bear the burdens of the state and to enhance the honour ofthe empire at home and abroad’ (1927, Matsumoto 1983, pp. 12ff.).20 Universalsuffrage is not simply an expansion of limited suffrage. In the end it is the onlyway to get rid of an attitude of dependency. Precisely because it was possible toturn at least the entire adult male population systematically into kokumin, it alsoenabled the subsequent road to fascism.

Translation: Mick Deneckere

Notes

1. Nichinichi (11 February 1889) refers to an article published in the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun onthat date. The Jiji Shinpo, the Yomiuri Shinbun and the Choya Shinbun are referenced in thesame way and not itemized in the list at the end of this article. Authorial notes within quotesare marked with square brackets.

2. For more on Tenkasai, see Kurushima (1986). Kurushima explains that on this occasion,‘peace in the world and the shogun’s everlasting good fortune in battle’ were prayed for andthe Tokugawa cabinet and the daimyo would also present congratulatory gifts to the shogun.It is also said that shouts and cheers such as oyadama (chief) or senryobako (chest for goldcoins) would erupt from the crowd, addressed to the town magistrates, at machiiri no (a Noperformance on the occasion of the festival to which townsmen were invited to watch togetherwith shogunal officials), which was held when an auspicious event took place in the shogunlineage. Hence Kurushima emphasises that the festival was an occasion not only to be viewed bythe shogun, but also to enjoy it with the people. A comparison of Tenkasai and the ConstitutionFestival is a topic of future research.

3. I was made aware of this source by Taniyama (1992).4. It was not only middle- and lower-class society however that thought lightly of Kigensetsu. An

internal memorandum was sent out to officials, instructing them about their duty to celebrate.It noted: ‘Although we receive food and drink from the higher officials at the ministry proper,for some reason usually on the very day of the ceremony there are few people participating.’The notice explained that this year however, soninkan, third-rank officials appointed with theemperor’s approval, would certainly be sent to participate (Nichinichi 8 February 1889).

5. From about two years before, ‘Hip! Hip! Hurrah!’ was being shouted at the Imperial University’sevents such as sports day, but this would have been because of the lack of a suitable Japanesecheer (Wada 1991, p. 247).

6. Fukuchi Genichiro had resigned as head of the newspaper in 1888 but his successor SekiNaohiko was a graduate of Imperial University and is thought to have had easy access tointernal government and university information. In July 1889 the Nichinichi declared that itwas a free and independent newspaper.

7. However, it seems that it was the Imperial Stables of the Imperial Household Agency that weremost panicked by the banzai plan. In order to make sure the horses would not be surprised bythe masses’ loud yelling and bolt, apparently the horses were intensively trained by suddenlyshouting and beating oil cans in front of them (Osaka Asahi 11 April 1909, Wada 1991,p. 254). Indeed, in the past there had already been trouble with the training of the horses.On the occasion of an imperial tour in 1881 an official notice had even been sent around,saying: ‘We have had a lot of trouble with our horses being disturbed during parades, since theyare mares. Since this happens frequently one should avoid as much as possible placing maresnear the Carriage. We would like you to pay great attention to this particular aspect’ (Anon.1881).

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Norio Makihara 259

8. One of the reasons why Mori Arinori was regarded as ‘disrespectful’ was that during the paradeon the occasion of the Emperor’s move to the new palace, ‘in front of all the people who werewatching, he had unashamedly given a yawn so loud it almost shattered the Carriage’ (Nihonjin18 January 1889). The Choya, the newspaper that reported on the mobilisation of teachers’college students, commented half sarcastically: ‘These days, when we see impudent peopledisplaying irreverence at the Ise Shrine, feeling sleepy while accompanying the Emperor . . . onecannot but really admire the exemplary behaviour of the students’ (7 February 1889).

9. However, even in newspapers and magazines published after 11 February, the kana pronunci-ation manzai was written alongside the Chinese characters, still intermingled with banzai. TheChinese characters are also made to be read banzei and not banzai in Yamada Bimyo’s ‘Kunino hana’ (The Flowers of the Nation), published in Miyako no hana (17 February 1889), whichdescribed the common people’s merriment in the gesaku style – such as local farmers delightedwith the large sum of money they got for helping as bakabayashi (that is, performing music onor around the festival cars).

10. This has already been pointed out by Yasumaru Yoshio: ‘To worship the Emperor as a livinggod who brings worldly benefits to the people’ was not only ‘irreconcilable with the variouspolicies aiming at civilising the country’. ‘It implied putting the Emperor in a position where hewas made to compete with the gods of popular belief, which in turn did not quite correspondto the idea of the transcendental nature of the Emperor’s authority’ (1992, p. 232). Whenthinking about the nature of State Shinto, it is important to consider that even the founder ofKonkokyo, who explained that the Emperor was ‘not the kind of god that would offer help whenworshipped’, was unable to eradicate kito (prayers to ask the gods for certain benefits), dueto the deep-rooted nature of people’s desire for worldly benefits, and that achieving the shiftfrom ‘miracles’ to ‘doctrine’ was connected to its recognition as sect Shinto (Fukushima 1975,Katsurajima 1991). The Emperor and the Empress sitting together in the same carriage for thefirst time at the Constitution promulgation parade and the Emperor’s distaste for lamps beingexplained as his ‘being careful about the harmful effects of carbon’ are both examples showingthat the motif of ‘enlightenment’ was still pursued during that period (Yomiuri 9 December1888).

11. The Jiji (14 February 1889) says: ‘At the festival for the promulgation of the Constitutionthe order of importance was reversed.’ ‘As for the common people, while their feelings werenot particularly cheerful as yet, they already received encouragement from government offi-cials. . . . The people gradually got into the festival mood and once in that mood, both thewishes from the lower classes and those of the higher classes were fulfilled, and there was noward or town inferior to another.’ It reports on the public, laughing at the government officialswho ‘when you were standing up, would make you sit and when you were lying down, wouldmake you stand’. Again, Ozaki Saburo, who was a councillor of the Senate (Genroin), wasfurious that he was made to pay five yen as ‘a donation to the expenses of the celebrations atAzabu Ward’, and that on the very day of the festival the floats blocked him en route to theImperial Palace. He said with disgust how it was ‘almost utterly inexplicable’ that the chiefs ofthe wards and governor ‘who were supposed to admonish and stop them’ actually ‘encouragedthem’ (Ito and Ozaki 1991, pp. 255, 258).

12. My article owes much to Fujitani’s work.13. In Osaka a gang of youths intruded into Fujita Denzaburo’s house and pulled down the national

flag and lanterns that had been put up at his Nihon Doboku (Japan Construction) Company(Osaka Asahi 12 February 1889). In Sendai soldiers were banned from participating in thebanquet because ‘surely political talk and arguing would rise’ (Nichinichi 14 February 1889).

14. The Empress also frequently offered help by giving financial support to Tokyo Jikei (Affectionand Blessing) Hospital or visiting patients, activities that inspired upper-class ladies to engagein charitable work. It could be argued that the Empress, who from this time onwards promoted

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social work, while taking on the aspect of ‘healing sovereign’, began to embody ‘the motheroverflowing with love’ in contrast to the Emperor who was ‘the patriarch’ in his military uniform.

15. I am indebted to Yamamuro Shin’ichi (1990) for my discussion of the contemporary conceptof the ‘nation’, including the views of Inoue Kowashi.

16. Yamamuro says: ‘It is a mystery why’ the shinmin notion ‘was adopted in the Meiji Constitution.If it aimed for a state based on the principle of one lord for all the people, it should have madethe subjects more decisively into tami (people) or kokumin (national people)’ (1990, p. 91).I think that this state structure, in which a distinction between citizens and inhabitants wasessential, required the shinmin notion. The creation of a dual citizen structure, which canbe seen in Western modern states which distinguish between ‘active citizens’ and ‘passivecitizens’, has led to the creation of not only political dualism, but also the intellectual highereducation/disciplinary lower education dualism and the capital/labour dualism. (See Ichida1992, Sakagami 1992.) As Ichida writes, ‘In a scheme where “a person = an active producer =a passive subject”, the modern nation-state and capital are not parallel to one another butunited’ (1992, p. 123). Again, shinmin is specifically a product of modernity.

17. For the war experiences of Inagi villagers, including Yoshigoro’s, see Makihara (1991).18. ‘Some people have left their hometown to serve in the army and have even died on the battlefield.

Others sank lots of money into the war only to find out that it was to no avail . . . even if it isjust one share or two, if you care about the State, it would be good for everyone to own some,each according to one’s possibilities.’ This is part of a speech given by Ozaki Saburo, a memberof the founding committee of the Keifu Railway, as he travelled around Japan to address locallandowners. It was a time when the zaibatsu were reluctant to get involved in the sale of sharesfrom Keifu Railway, which had obtained the right to lay a railway during the Sino-JapaneseWar. The share subscription ended up being 2.7 times higher than the offer (Tokyo keizai zasshi30 April 1904).

19. The vulnerability of such a notion of shinmin is also related to the fact that Kimi ga yo could nottruly become the national anthem. In the midst of the Russo-Japanese War the column ‘Tenseijingo’ in the Osaka Asahi (3 October 1904) complained: ‘The officials . . . should not singKimi ga yo too often, apart from situations where the Imperial Family is celebrated.’ Hence thenewspaper tried to make people stop singing Kimi ga yo at occasions such as victory parades.Yet it also said: ‘Since it is inconvenient for the citizens to have a song for the Emperor but nonational song, we think of the song for the Emperor as our national song.’ In reality howeverbanzai and Kimi ga yo continued to appear as a set (Osaka Asahi 6 September 1904 et al.).

20. As a result, under the system of general mobilisation the primary schools were no longer shinminschools but had to be kokumin schools.

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Norio Makihara taught modern Japanese history at Tokyo Keizai University and specialises inthe social history of the Meiji period. His recent publications include Bunmeikoku o mezashite:bakumatsu kara Meiji jidai zenki (2008) and Minken to kenpo (2006). Mick Deneckere received herLicentiate in Japanese Studies from the Universite catholique de Louvain and is currently workingon her PhD at the University of Cambridge. She can be contacted at: [email protected].

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the birth of banzai

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