Japan: nationalism, daily life, war and recovery

Aggressive nationalism. The Meiji constitution gave the vote to few and created a parliament, the Diet (a German word, reflecting German legal influence), with limited powers. Elected prime ministers formed cabinets from 1918 to 1931, then lost power to national unity cabinets. The emperor commanded the forces, and from 1890 this was taken to mean the army and navy had independent control; from 1899 only serving generals and admirals could become ministers. Fear of Western domination was used to silence opposition to military expansion and higher taxes.

West or tradition? Japanese thinkers disagreed about how to relate to the world:

• Fukuzawa Yukichi, a leading Meiji intellectual and founder of what is now Keio University, said Japan must 'expel Asia', shedding its 'Asian' ways to join the West. He admired the spirit of Western civilisation and wrote, 'Heaven did not create men above men, nor set men below men.'
• The philosopher Miyake Setsurei argued that each nation should develop its own talents for the good of the world: 'To devote oneself to one's country is to devote oneself to the world.'
• Ueki Emori, a leader of the Popular Rights Movement, admired the French Revolution's ideas of natural rights and popular sovereignty and wanted a democratic, not military, Japan: 'Freedom is more precious than order.' Some even called for votes for women. This pressure helped bring the constitution.

Daily life changed. The old household, with many generations under one patriarch, gave way among the better-off to the nuclear family 'home' of husband as earner and wife as homemaker. This created demand for new electric goods (rice-cookers, toasters), cheap housing on instalments, family outings, electric trams, public parks and department stores. Radio began in 1925, films from 1899, and the 'modern girl' (moga) stood for gender equality and a cosmopolitan culture. It was a lively time of questioning old norms.

War. In the 1930s and 1940s, state-centred nationalism drove Japan into wars to extend its empire in China and across Asia, merging into the Second World War after it attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor. Society was tightly controlled and dissenters imprisoned. A 1943 symposium on 'Overcoming Modernity' debated how Japan could fight the West while being modern; the philosopher Nishitani Keiji argued Japan's duty was to create a 'Greater East Asia'.

Defeat and rebuilding. Japan was defeated by the Allies. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; some argue this shortened the war, others that the immense suffering was unnecessary. Under the US-led Occupation (1945 to 1947):

• Japan was demilitarised and a new constitution introduced, with Article 9, the 'no war' clause, renouncing war as an instrument of state policy.
• Land reforms were carried out, trade unions re-established, and the zaibatsu partly broken up.
• In the first post-war elections in 1946, women voted for the first time.

Japan's rapid recovery was called a 'miracle', but it built on its past: a tradition of popular struggle and debate about political participation, and strong cooperation between government, bureaucracy and industry. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the high-speed Shinkansen (bullet trains, 1964) marked its coming of age. But industrial growth had ignored health and the environment: cadmium poisoning, then mercury poisoning at Minamata in the 1960s, and air pollution in the early 1970s led citizens' groups to demand action and compensation. Japan went on to adopt some of the strictest environmental laws in the world.