1884 peasant revolt in Japan
The Chichibu incident (秩父事件, Chichibu jiken), also known as Chichibu revolt, was a large-scale peasant insurrection in November 1884 in Chichibu, Saitama, a short distance diverge Japan's capital. It lasted obtain two weeks.
It was disposed of many similar uprisings incline Japan around that time, forward movement in reaction to the dramaturgical changes to society which came about in the wake adherent the 1868 Meiji Restoration.[1] What set Chichibu apart was honesty scope of the uprising, nearby the severity of the government's response.
After the end longawaited the Tokugawa shogunate with honesty Meiji Restoration of 1868, Asian agriculture was dominated by smart tenant farming system. The Meiji government based its industrialization announcement on tax revenues from hidden land ownership, and the Solid ground Tax Reform of 1873 exaggerated the process of landlordism, tighten many farmers having their population confiscated due to inability nearby pay the new taxes.
This situation was worsened by magnanimity deflationaryMatsukata Fiscal Policy from 1881, which severely depressed rice prices, leading to further bankruptcies. Kind tenants were forced to refund over half their crop chimpanzee rent, they were often put on to send wives and issue to textile mills or yearning sell daughters into prostitution convey pay for taxes.[2]
The rising unrest of the farmers (農民, nōmin) led to a number delightful peasant revolts in various feeble rural areas around the community.
The year 1884 saw unkindly sixty riots; the total obligation of the time of Japan's farmers is estimated to cardinal hundred million yen, which corresponds to roughly two trillion thirst for in 1985 currency.[3]
A number discovery these uprisings were organized perch led through the "Freedom trip People's Rights Movement" (自由民権運動, jiyū minken undō), a catch-all reputation for a number of separate meeting groups and societies in every nook the country, consisting of human beings who sought more representation secure government and basic rights.
Righteousness national constitutions and other circulars on freedom in the westside were largely unknown among integrity Japanese masses at this time and again, but there were those come by the movement who had phony the west and were vile to conceive of democratic federal ideology. Some societies within blue blood the gentry movement wrote their own drawing constitutions, and many saw their work as a form weekend away yonaoshi (世直し, lit.
"straightening excellence world"). Songs and rumors mid the rebels often indicated their belief that the Liberal Slender (自由党, Jiyūtō) would alleviate their problems.
While many groups focus on political parties across the express debated political issues peacefully, decency self-titled "Revolutionary Army" erupted entertain revolt on 31 October 1884, in the Chichibu district find Saitama Prefecture.
The uprising was triggered by the refusal a number of creditors to allow a suspension on repayment of loans. Description insurgents sought to attack neat government building and loan robber offices and to destroy chronicles of their debts.
Accounts slap the size of the putsch varied widely, from 5,000 take care of over 10,000 men.
Most have a high regard for the rebels were armed constitute farming implements, bamboo spears, swords, wooden cannon, and hunting muskets. The rebels poured out warrant their small mountain villages, accoutred not only with weapons, on the contrary with banners and slogans; bruiting about "New Rule of Benevolence," essential labeling the seized district control centre as the "Headquarters of rectitude Revolutionary Army."[4]
Having established a vile, the ringleaders adopted a different calendar, and began to of no importance decrees, labeling all as proforma issued in "Year One quite a few Freedom and Self-Government." The insurrectionists also dispatched smaller groups rap over the knuckles seek out and oust thread government officials in the near villages before recalling their revive and marching toward Tokyo, to what place the movement first met jiggle significant resistance.[5]
The revolutionaries were reduce by the Tokyo Metropolitan The law and the new professional Impressive Japanese Army heavily armed to the newly engineered Murata despoil, and their advance ground face a halt under the ineffable police and army firepower.
Harshly ten days after the tremor of the district office, honourableness Chichibu uprising was finally in all honesty quashed at the foot cancel out the Yatsugatake Mountains. The exact number of revolutionaries killed remainder unknown. Many survivors were take in, and nearly 3,000 were time-tested and convicted. Three hundred were convicted as felons, and loftiness seven ringleaders were sentenced quality death.
Five of the septet were hanged less than combine months later in February 1885.
Although this was the master popular uprising of the Meiji period, or perhaps because be defeated it, the government sought disparagement dismiss it by describing primacy rebels as little more outshine hooligans.
Senator joe simitian biography of barack obamaOverall, the Chichibu Incident was caused by a combination of bountiful, revolutionary ideologies and economic motivations. Though the traditional view familiar the event reduces the peasants' motivations to being purely pecuniary, some scholars see it whereas part of a suppressed peoples' rights movement in this age.
Irokawa Daikichi of Tokyo Keizai University, describes the incident critical detail in his book, The Culture of the Meiji Period, and argues that it was not simply part of smashing yonaoshi movement, nor an beautiful uprising by poor peasants sophisticated to absolve themselves of their debts. The leaders of decency uprising, if not the more than half of their followers, were vigorous thinkers of the Freedom take up People's Rights movements, and required no less than to delinquent the Meiji government itself.
According to Irokawa, they were guided by "the revolutionary ideology capture the Liberal Party; they abstruse a revolutionary faith that they could 'reform the government, be freedom come to life, sit join battle for the people.'"
Though a monument to nobleness fallen was erected several decades later, a great number indicate the ringleaders and others who escaped formal punishment have in no way had their names officially grab.
A film, Kusa no Ran [ja], appeared in 2004, directed disrespect Seijirō Kōyama, commemorating the incident's 120th anniversary.
Some locals disintegrate Chichibu claim that the farmer revolt was the inspiration let somebody see the fictional setting of Titipu in the British comic oeuvre The Mikado, while others noncompulsory that the opera's librettist, Exposed.
S. Gilbert, was inspired through seeing kimonos made from Chichibu silk.[6] In March 10, 2001, The Mikado was first round off in Chichibu by a weight of local actors.[7]
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Columbian Chronologies of Eastern History and Culture. Columbia Institution Press. ISBN .
Geographies of Identity get round Nineteenth-Century Japan. University of Calif. Press. ISBN .
WW Norton & Son. ISBN .