History of Japanese nationality
Encyclopedia
The history of Japanese nationality as a chronology of evolving concepts and practices begins in the mid-nineteenth century, as Japan opened diplomatic relations with the west and a modern nation state was established through the Meiji Restoration
.
in whose domain they lived.
Even though there was no pre-modern Japanese nationality in a practical sense, the idea of Japan as a nation was a topic for scholarly inquiry during much of the Edo period
. For example, by Hayashi Shihei
(1738–93). This book, which was published in Japan in 1785, deals with Chosen (Korea) and the kingdom of Ryukyu (Okinawa) and Ezo (Hokkaido). The widely distributed Nihon Ōdai Ichiran
by Hayashi Gahō
(1618–1688) identifies and describes a number of Goryeo
and Joseon
missions to Japan
as well as Japanese missions to Imperial China.
Scholarly formulations of Japanese nationhood—notably those of the kokugaku school
and late Mito school
--exerted considerable influence on both Japanese nationalism and the practice of Japanese nationality in the Meiji period.
but also as an effective means of national strengthening. Like the reforms of other modernizing states, the legal and institutional changes of the early Meiji period involved rationalizing the population, making the relationship between the individual and the state more direct, and codifying the rights and obligations associated with that relationship. By the late 1880s, Japanese leaders were increasingly preoccupied with the idea of cultivating a distinctive sense of the nation, or kokutai
(国体) among Japanese subjects. This goal led to the emergence of new nationality practices—such as compulsory education, elections, and voluntary organizations—which, unlike earlier reforms based on borrowing from western models, were strongly shaped by the emerging ideology of Japanese nationalism
.
The following is a list of nationality practices initiated during the Meiji period (1868–1912). Though these practices and the ideology that informed them changed over the course of the Meiji period and subsequent decades, they remained the core of Japanese nationality practice through World War II
.
with a much simpler set of status distinctions. In 1872, the koseki
(:ja:戸籍), or family registry, system was established, requiring each family to register with the local government and notify authorities of births, marriages, adoptions, divorces, and deaths in the household. The implementation of the koseki system meant that all families adopted a family name, a privilege which had previously been reserved for the warrior class. Members of the burakumin
(:ja:部落民), or outcaste group, were legally emancipated in 1871. This made their legal status equal to other commoners (heimin 平民), though the koseki of former burakumin families retained a record of that status, facilitating de facto discrimination. On the other end of the social hierarchy, the status of samurai
was gradually phased out. Samurai stipends were commuted into government bonds in 1872 and former members of samurai households became commoners. A small peerage, modeled on the British Peerage, was created from a combination of court nobles (kuge 公家) and former daimyō. Its members received a small stipend and, after 1899, were eligible to sit in the Upper House of the Diet.
Changes in personal status law were accompanied by the promulgation of comprehensive new law codes. A Criminal Code
, :ja:刑法 (1882) Civil Code :ja:民法 (1898), and Commercial Code :ja:商法 (1890), were drafted with the cooperation of foreign experts
. These legal codes are a clear example of the effect of the effort to revise unequal treaties on nationality practice in Meiji Japan. Because removing extraterritoriality
provisions required convincing western powers that Japanese courts met modern standards, Meiji leaders moved quickly to implement a western-style legal system. This meant that being governed by western style laws—applied uniformly throughout the nation—became part of being a subject of the new Japanese nation-state. The Meiji-era legal codes remained the basis of Japanese law until the end of World War II.
The Land Tax Reform
(地租改正) of 1873 established a system of private land ownership and instituted monetary taxation. As a result, payment of taxes became linked to one's individual status as a subject of the Japanese nation-state and was no longer a function of feudal status or place of residence. Under the Meiji Constitution, direct payment of taxes to the national government became the basis for political participation at the national level.
The Conscription Act (1873) was part of a sweeping military reform, replacing the independent samurai armies of the feudal domains with a national conscript army. Reporting for the conscription exam at age twenty became a common experience for all Japanese men and military training exposed young men to nationalist ideology. Initially, about 5 percent of eligible men were drafted, serving four years active duty and three years in the reserves. During the First Sino-Japanese War
and Russo-Japanese War
, conscription rates rose to about 10 percent. Military conscription rates were extremely high during the Second World War.
(1890) outlined a limited set of political rights. Men who paid 15 yen in annual taxes to the national government had the right to vote in elections for the Lower House of the Diet, making just over 1 percent of the population eligible to vote in the first national election in 1890. In 1900, the property qualification was lowered. In 1925 the General Election Law
(普通選挙法) extended the franchise to all men aged 25 or older. In the 1920s, there was a movement for women's suffrage
. Proposals to extend suffrage and other political rights to women were debated in the Lower House of the Diet, but failed to become law.
Political rights were most important during the period of Taishō Democracy
. Yet, even during this decade of flourishing political parties, the importance of political rights for ordinary people was muted by the dominant role of non-elected groups in Japanese politics. The significance of voting rights was also limited by a series of increasingly repressive Peace Preservation
laws designed to mitigate the potentially destabalizing effects of popular party politics and prevent the spread of leftist ideologies.
A system of higher education was also established. State-sponsored ryuugakusei were an important part of the Meiji modernization program.
, Shikoku
and Kyūshū
.
and the Satsuma Domain had claimed the Ryūkyū Kingdom
as a tributary state
. In the 1870s, the Japanese government maneuvered to establish direct sovereignty over the Ryūkyū Islands. As part of a settlement with Qing government after the 1874 Japanese incursion into Taiwan, the Qing government renounced its claims, clearing the way for direct Japanese rule. The Ryūkyū King Shō Tai
was declared a vassal of the Meiji court and his kingdom designated Ryukyu-han (琉球藩), or the feudal domain of Ryukyu. During the first years of Japanese control, King Shō Tai retained nominal authority, but Ryukyu was largely ruled by the Naimushō
office in Naha. In 1879, the Japanese government tightened control over Ryukyu, forcing the King to withdraw and declaring Ryukyu a prefecture
(Okinawa-ken 沖縄県).
Concerned about resistance from local elites, Japanese administrators moved gradually in implementing modernizing reforms. The standardization of household registration and the abolition of noble status occurred early on, followed by the extension of Japanese criminal law to Okinawa by 1880. Land reform was completed in 1903, ending communal tenure and establishing a system of direct land taxes paid in cash. The Conscription Law was applied to Okinawa in 1898. Political rights available to subjects in naichi prefectures were eventually extended to Okinawans. By 1920, Okinawans were represented in the Diet on the same basis as naichi Japanese. Beginning in the 1880s, the prefectural government also attempted to increase attendance in primary schools and participation in nationally organized voluntary associations, but the spread of these heavily ideological nationality practices was relatively slow. The spread of these practices was part of a trend towards cultural assimilation to Japanese norms. Partly as a result of government policies, many Okinawans abandoned traditional cultural practices and the Ryūkyū language
.
Though this process in many ways resembled the modernizing and centralizing reforms affecting nationality practice in naichi prefectures, in Okinawa it had a distinct colonial dynamic. The bureaucracy and the police in Okinawa were initially staffed almost exclusively by migrants from naichi Japan. Naichi Japanese in Okinawa enjoyed privileged access to jobs and business opportunities, while Okinawans-by-birth suffered discrimination based on a perception of ethnic and cultural inferiority.
After initial travel restrictions were lifted, a significant number of Okinawans migrated to the main islands of Japan, where they tended to assimilate into local society, often encountering less discrimination than at home. Japanese nationality status gave Okinawan emigrants access to the protection of the Japanese government when abroad and to preferential treatment as settler colonists within the Japanese empire. In practice, Okinawan emigrants experienced discrimination in areas where naichi Japanese immigrants had already settled. For this reason they tended to form distinct communities overseas. By 1938, more than 70,000 Okinawans had emigrated outside the Japanese empire, principally to Hawai'i, South America and the Philippines. By 1945, more than 50,000 Okinawans had migrated to other parts of the Japanese empire, notably to Nan'yōchō.
state through the Matsumae domain
. In 1855, concerned about military threat from Russia, the bakufu
assumed direct control, but its authority remained weak and had relatively little effect on the native Ainu
population. After the Meiji Restoration, the new government established the Hokkaidō Colonization Commission (北海道開拓使) to administer its northern territories. The Colonization Commission and its successors promoted economic development and encouraged immigration from naichi Japan. Early settlement schemes were unsuccessful, but beginning in the 1890s, generous land grant policies attracted tens of thousands of settlers each year.
The government also launched an aggressive assimilation effort directed at the Ainu population, an effort Richard Siddle characterizes as "a series of policies that attempted to turn the Ainu into productive Japanese citizens, but actually served to emphasise their inequality and subordination to the state." In 1875, Ainu were granted legal status as commoners, subject to the same laws as naichi Japanese. As with the burakumin, the government maintained separate records of their former status. As areas of naichi Japanese settlement expanded, Ainu were increasingly subject to forced relocation. Traditional hunting techniques, as well as cultural practices such as tattooing and ear piercing, were legally banned. In 1899, the Hokkaidō Former Natives Protection Act :ja:北海道旧土人保護法 was passed. It established a separate and compulsory school system, a program of land grants designed to encourage Ainu to adopt agriculture, and provided some welfare benefits. Education in Ainu schools promoted cultural assimilation, including adopting the nationality practices of imperial Japan, such as joining nationally organized voluntary associations and serving in the military. The Ainu school system was abolished in 1927.
Some nationality issues arose out of complications related to changes in sovereignty in the nineteenth century. For example, the status of Japanese and Ainu who had remained in Karafuto during the period of Russian rule between 1875 and 1905 was ambiguous. In some cases, these people were treated as Russian nationals. The other distinctive feature of nationality practice in Karafuto was immigration policy. Though the immigration of unskilled laborers was illegal in the rest of Japan, several thousand Chinese coolie
s were recruited to work as temporary migrant laborers in Karafuto between 1909 and 1927. After 1927, they were replaced by migrants from Korea. By 1945, more than 50,000 Koreans
--under varying degrees of coercion—had migrated to Karafuto.
The Sōshi-kaimei
(創氏改名) laws established a Japanese-style family registry in Korea, forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese naming conventions. This system was separate from the Japanese koseki system and it was illegal to move registration records between the two systems, thus preserving a legal difference between Koreans and naichi Japanese regardless of place of residence. Naichi Japanese in Korea had privileged access to economic and educational resources. They retained rights and obligations, such as the vote and military service, that they had in naichi Japan. Because Korea was administered through the Government General of Korea
, the laws issued by the Government General, rather than those of naichi Japan, determined the rights and obligations of Koreans to the state. The education system promoted cultural assimilation of Koreans—both in its content and its use of Japanese as the primary language of instruction—but gave children of naichi Japanese families in Korea preferential treatment. In the 1930s, the assimilationist aspect of education in Korea intensified under the so called "becoming the Emperor's people" policy (kōminka :ja:皇民化). Beginning in the 1930s, Koreans were conscripted as laborers for service in both naichi Japan and colonial territories. In 1943, military consciption laws in effect in naichi Japan were extended to Korea, making all Korean men over the age of twenty subject to conscription into the Japanese military.
Status as Imperial Japanese subjects gave Koreans a degree of mobility within Japanese controlled territory. Though in 1945, Koreans were present as voluntary migrants, labour conscripts, soldiers, or comfort women
in nearly every part of the Japanese Empire, the most significant Korean migrations were to naichi Japan and to Manchuria
.
Tens of thousands of impoverished Korean tenant farmers moved to Japan to find work. There, they faced difficult working conditions, discrimination, government surveillance, and vigilante violence. The Japanese government was anxious about the potentially destabilizing effect of Korean laborers in Japan; yet, because Koreans were legally Japanese nationals, it could not explicitly restrict immigration from Korea. Instead, during economic downturns in Japan, colonial police in Pusan were instructed to restrict Korean emigration on an informal basis by limiting access to travel documents (旅行証明書). In Japan, Koreans came under the jurisdiction of the Japanese government proper, rather than the Government General of Korea. This meant that they were governed by Japanese law and had greater civil and political rights—notably the right to hold meetings and vote in national elections—than Koreans in Korea. Political rights were especially important to the community of Korean students in Japan. See Koreans in Japan. After the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake
, the Japanese government pursued a more active policy of assimilation towards Koreans in Japan. Primary school attendance was made compulsory in 1930, as was membership in the Naisen-kyowa-kai(Japan-Korea Harmony Society 内鮮共和会). This organization, tightly controlled by the Naimusho and the Government General of Korea,issued identity cards to its members, controlled the travel of Koreans between Korea and Japan, and organized labor mobilization, as well as sponsoring the cultural, social and ideological activities typical of other "voluntary" associations.
Beginning in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of Koreans migrated to Manchuria. Though this territory was not under Japanese control, the Japanese government claimed Koreans in Chinese territory as Japanese nationals. This contention was part a broader effort to dominate China (see Twenty-One Demands
). It meant that Japanese consulates claimed extraterritoriality privileges for Koreans in China and that Koreans were prohibited from naturalizing as Chinese citizens. After the Mukden Incident
and the establishment of Manchukuo
, Japanese authorities encouraged further Korean migration to Manchuria. The nationality status of Koreans in Manchuria was ambiguous.
in August 1945, there were more than six million Japanese nationals outside of what is now Japan. The process of repatriating these individuals—about half of whom were civilians—revealed the inconsistencies of nationality practice in the Japanese Empire. Despite the rhetoric of equality, naichi Japanese were treated differently from other Imperial subjects.
(残留孤児 zanryū koji). Those who could locate their name on a prewar Japanese koseki were allowed to live in Japan indefinitely, but did not automatically regain Japanese nationality. Approximately 20,000 orphans and their relatives have moved to Japan under this program. Some “orphans” contend that, even if they undergo the cumbersome process of regaining Japanese nationality, they are not offered full citizenship because they have little access to social benefits, such as pensions, available to other Japanese.
Meiji Restoration
The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...
.
Pre-modern Japan
Until the Meiji Restoration, ordinary people in Japan, though nominally subjects of the emperor were, for all practical purposes, subject to the authority of the daimyōDaimyo
is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
in whose domain they lived.
Even though there was no pre-modern Japanese nationality in a practical sense, the idea of Japan as a nation was a topic for scholarly inquiry during much of the Edo period
Edo period
The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....
. For example, by Hayashi Shihei
Hayashi Shihei
was a Japanese military scholar and a retainer of the Sendai Domain.His name is sometimes misread as Rin Shihei....
(1738–93). This book, which was published in Japan in 1785, deals with Chosen (Korea) and the kingdom of Ryukyu (Okinawa) and Ezo (Hokkaido). The widely distributed Nihon Ōdai Ichiran
Nihon Odai Ichiran
is a 17th century chronicle of the serial reigns of Japanese emperors with brief notes about some of the noteworthy events or other happenings.According to the 1871 edition of the American Cyclopaedia, the translation of Nihon Ōdai Ichiran in 1834 was one of very few books about Japan; and it was...
by Hayashi Gahō
Hayashi Gaho
, also known as Hayashi Shunsai, was a Japanese Neo-Confucian scholar, teacher and administrator in the system of higher education maintained by the Tokugawa bakufu during the Edo period...
(1618–1688) identifies and describes a number of Goryeo
Goryeo
The Goryeo Dynasty or Koryŏ was a Korean dynasty established in 918 by Emperor Taejo. Korea gets its name from this kingdom which came to be pronounced Korea. It united the Later Three Kingdoms in 936 and ruled most of the Korean peninsula until it was removed by the Joseon dynasty in 1392...
and Joseon
Joseon Dynasty
Joseon , was a Korean state founded by Taejo Yi Seong-gye that lasted for approximately five centuries. It was founded in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Goryeo at what is today the city of Kaesong. Early on, Korea was retitled and the capital was relocated to modern-day Seoul...
missions to Japan
Joseon missions to Japan
Joseon missions to Japan represent a crucial aspect of the international relations of mutual Joseon-Japanese contacts and communication. In sum, these serial diplomatic ventures illustrate the persistence of Joseon's kyorin diplomacy from 1392 to 1910.The chronology of one side in a bilateral...
as well as Japanese missions to Imperial China.
Scholarly formulations of Japanese nationhood—notably those of the kokugaku school
Kokugaku
Kokugaku was a National revival, or, school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period...
and late Mito school
Mitogaku
Mitogaku refers to a school of Japanese historical and Shinto studies that arose in the Mito domain, in modern-day Ibaraki prefecture.The school had its genesis in 1657 when Tokugawa Mitsukuni , second head of the Mito domain, commissioned the compilation of the Dai Nihon-shi...
--exerted considerable influence on both Japanese nationalism and the practice of Japanese nationality in the Meiji period.
Practices initiated in Meiji period
Nationality practices during the first decades of the Meiji government were shaped by pressure to conform to western norms. Meiji oligarchs saw adopting the technology and institutions of western powers not only as essential to regaining sovereignty rights lost in the unequal treatiesUnequal Treaties
“Unequal treaty” is a term used in specific reference to a number of treaties imposed by Western powers, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, on Qing Dynasty China and late Tokugawa Japan...
but also as an effective means of national strengthening. Like the reforms of other modernizing states, the legal and institutional changes of the early Meiji period involved rationalizing the population, making the relationship between the individual and the state more direct, and codifying the rights and obligations associated with that relationship. By the late 1880s, Japanese leaders were increasingly preoccupied with the idea of cultivating a distinctive sense of the nation, or kokutai
Kokutai
Kokutai is a politically loaded word in the Japanese language, translatable as "sovereign", "national identity; national essence; national character" or "national polity; body politic; national entity; basis for the Emperor's sovereignty; Japanese constitution". "Sovereign" is perhaps the most...
(国体) among Japanese subjects. This goal led to the emergence of new nationality practices—such as compulsory education, elections, and voluntary organizations—which, unlike earlier reforms based on borrowing from western models, were strongly shaped by the emerging ideology of Japanese nationalism
Japanese nationalism
encompasses a broad range of ideas and sentiments harbored by the Japanese people over the last two centuries regarding their native country, its cultural nature, political form and historical destiny...
.
The following is a list of nationality practices initiated during the Meiji period (1868–1912). Though these practices and the ideology that informed them changed over the course of the Meiji period and subsequent decades, they remained the core of Japanese nationality practice through World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Legal practices
As part of its modernizing program, the Meiji state replaced the feudal class systemFour divisions of society
The four divisions of society refers to the model of society in ancient China and was a meritocratic social class system in China, and other subsequently influenced Confucian societies. The four castes—gentry, farmers, artisans and merchants—are combined to form the term Shìnónggōngshāng...
with a much simpler set of status distinctions. In 1872, the koseki
Koseki
A is a Japanese family registry. Japanese law requires all Japanese households to report births, acknowledgements of paternity, adoptions, disruptions of adoptions, deaths, marriages and divorces of Japanese citizens to their local authority, which compiles such records encompassing all Japanese...
(:ja:戸籍), or family registry, system was established, requiring each family to register with the local government and notify authorities of births, marriages, adoptions, divorces, and deaths in the household. The implementation of the koseki system meant that all families adopted a family name, a privilege which had previously been reserved for the warrior class. Members of the burakumin
Burakumin
are a Japanese social minority group. The burakumin are one of the main minority groups in Japan, along with the Ainu of Hokkaidō, the Ryukyuans of Okinawa and Japanese residents of Korean and Chinese descent....
(:ja:部落民), or outcaste group, were legally emancipated in 1871. This made their legal status equal to other commoners (heimin 平民), though the koseki of former burakumin families retained a record of that status, facilitating de facto discrimination. On the other end of the social hierarchy, the status of samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
was gradually phased out. Samurai stipends were commuted into government bonds in 1872 and former members of samurai households became commoners. A small peerage, modeled on the British Peerage, was created from a combination of court nobles (kuge 公家) and former daimyō. Its members received a small stipend and, after 1899, were eligible to sit in the Upper House of the Diet.
Changes in personal status law were accompanied by the promulgation of comprehensive new law codes. A Criminal Code
Criminal Code of Japan
The Penal Code of Japan was passed in 1907 as Law No. 45. It is one of the Six Codes that form the foundation of Japanese law.- External links :* - Japanese Ministry of Justice...
, :ja:刑法 (1882) Civil Code :ja:民法 (1898), and Commercial Code :ja:商法 (1890), were drafted with the cooperation of foreign experts
O-yatoi gaikokujin
The Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan, known in Japanese as oyatoi gaikokujin , were those foreign advisors hired by the Japanese government for their specialized knowledge to assist in the modernization of Japan at the end of the Bakufu and during the Meiji era. The term is sometimes...
. These legal codes are a clear example of the effect of the effort to revise unequal treaties on nationality practice in Meiji Japan. Because removing extraterritoriality
Extraterritoriality
Extraterritoriality is the state of being exempt from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Extraterritoriality can also be applied to physical places, such as military bases of foreign countries, or offices of the United Nations...
provisions required convincing western powers that Japanese courts met modern standards, Meiji leaders moved quickly to implement a western-style legal system. This meant that being governed by western style laws—applied uniformly throughout the nation—became part of being a subject of the new Japanese nation-state. The Meiji-era legal codes remained the basis of Japanese law until the end of World War II.
Obligations to the State
The principal obligations associated with being a subject of the Japanese state were payment of taxes and, for men, military service.The Land Tax Reform
Land Tax Reform (Japan 1873)
The Japanese Land Tax Reform of 1873, or was started by the Meiji Government in 1873, or the 6th year of the Meiji era. It was a major restructuring of the previous land taxation system, and established the right of private land ownership in Japan for the first time.-Previous land taxation...
(地租改正) of 1873 established a system of private land ownership and instituted monetary taxation. As a result, payment of taxes became linked to one's individual status as a subject of the Japanese nation-state and was no longer a function of feudal status or place of residence. Under the Meiji Constitution, direct payment of taxes to the national government became the basis for political participation at the national level.
The Conscription Act (1873) was part of a sweeping military reform, replacing the independent samurai armies of the feudal domains with a national conscript army. Reporting for the conscription exam at age twenty became a common experience for all Japanese men and military training exposed young men to nationalist ideology. Initially, about 5 percent of eligible men were drafted, serving four years active duty and three years in the reserves. During the First Sino-Japanese War
First Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea...
and Russo-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
, conscription rates rose to about 10 percent. Military conscription rates were extremely high during the Second World War.
Political Rights
The Meiji ConstitutionMeiji Constitution
The ', known informally as the ', was the organic law of the Japanese empire, in force from November 29, 1890 until May 2, 1947.-Outline:...
(1890) outlined a limited set of political rights. Men who paid 15 yen in annual taxes to the national government had the right to vote in elections for the Lower House of the Diet, making just over 1 percent of the population eligible to vote in the first national election in 1890. In 1900, the property qualification was lowered. In 1925 the General Election Law
General Election Law
The ' was a law passed in Taishō period Japan, extending suffrage to all males aged 25 and over. It was proposed by the Kenseito political party and it was passed by the Diet of Japan on 5 May 1925.-Background:...
(普通選挙法) extended the franchise to all men aged 25 or older. In the 1920s, there was a movement for women's suffrage
Suffrage in Japan
Although women’s advocacy has been present in Japan since the 19th century, women’s suffrage in Japan blossomed during the turbulent, 1920s, inter-war period...
. Proposals to extend suffrage and other political rights to women were debated in the Lower House of the Diet, but failed to become law.
Political rights were most important during the period of Taishō Democracy
Taisho period
The , or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet...
. Yet, even during this decade of flourishing political parties, the importance of political rights for ordinary people was muted by the dominant role of non-elected groups in Japanese politics. The significance of voting rights was also limited by a series of increasingly repressive Peace Preservation
Peace Preservation Law
The Public Security Preservation Laws were a series of laws enacted during the Empire of Japan. Collectively, the laws were designed to suppress political dissent.-the Safety Preservation Law of 1894:...
laws designed to mitigate the potentially destabalizing effects of popular party politics and prevent the spread of leftist ideologies.
Education
The most significant aspect of education as nationality practice in this period is the advent of compulsory primary education. Universal primary education was first articulated as a state goal in the Education Act of 1872. Since much of the responsibility for funding the new schools fell on local governments, its implementation was uneven. Nevertheless, the school system expanded rapidly. The vast majority of Japanese children could expect to attend four years of primary school by the turn of the century. Initially, national education policy was focused on practical goals and had minimal ideological content. In the 1880s, however, anxiety about over-enthusiastic westernization mounted and the need to educate subjects who would be enfranchised by the awaited constitution became apparent. These concerns spurred debate about how the education system should promote moral conduct and strengthen national sentiment. The key document in this respect is the Imperial Rescript on Education (1882).A system of higher education was also established. State-sponsored ryuugakusei were an important part of the Meiji modernization program.
Voluntary Associations
The government fostered the development of an expanding number of voluntary associations which acted as channels through which ordinary people were exposed to nationalist ideology. Organize, indoctrinate, and mobilize various sectors of the population, including students, wives and mothers, and Shinto priests.Nationality Practice and Territorial Expansion, 1874-1945
Previous sections of this article deal with nationality practice in Japan without reference to the fact that the boundaries of Japan were changing during the period discussed. This section addresses nationality practices in Japanese-controlled territory in light of this fact. During the period of imperialist expansion, the term naichi (内地), or home territory, was used to distinguish Japan proper from its colonies. Though, historically, its exact meaning varied, this section uses it in its narrowest sense, to refer to HonshūHonshu
is the largest island of Japan. The nation's main island, it is south of Hokkaido across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyushu across the Kanmon Strait...
, Shikoku
Shikoku
is the smallest and least populous of the four main islands of Japan, located south of Honshū and east of the island of Kyūshū. Its ancient names include Iyo-no-futana-shima , Iyo-shima , and Futana-shima...
and Kyūshū
Kyushu
is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....
.
Okinawa
Until the late 19th century, both Qing ChinaQing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
and the Satsuma Domain had claimed the Ryūkyū Kingdom
Ryukyu Kingdom
The Ryūkyū Kingdom was an independent kingdom which ruled most of the Ryukyu Islands from the 15th century to the 19th century. The Kings of Ryūkyū unified Okinawa Island and extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands in modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture, and the Sakishima Islands near Taiwan...
as a tributary state
Tributary state
The term tributary state refers to one of the two main ways in which a pre-modern state might be subordinate to a more powerful neighbour. The heart of the relationship was that the tributary would send a regular token of submission to the superior power...
. In the 1870s, the Japanese government maneuvered to establish direct sovereignty over the Ryūkyū Islands. As part of a settlement with Qing government after the 1874 Japanese incursion into Taiwan, the Qing government renounced its claims, clearing the way for direct Japanese rule. The Ryūkyū King Shō Tai
Sho Tai
was the last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom . His reign saw greatly increased interactions with travelers from abroad, particularly from Europe and the United States, as well as the eventual end of the kingdom and its annexation by Japan as Okinawa Prefecture.In 1879, the deposed king was forced to...
was declared a vassal of the Meiji court and his kingdom designated Ryukyu-han (琉球藩), or the feudal domain of Ryukyu. During the first years of Japanese control, King Shō Tai retained nominal authority, but Ryukyu was largely ruled by the Naimushō
Home Ministry (Japan)
The ' was a Cabinet-level ministry established under the Meiji Constitution that managed the internal affairs of Empire of Japan from 1873-1947...
office in Naha. In 1879, the Japanese government tightened control over Ryukyu, forcing the King to withdraw and declaring Ryukyu a prefecture
Prefectures of Japan
The prefectures of Japan are the country's 47 subnational jurisdictions: one "metropolis" , Tokyo; one "circuit" , Hokkaidō; two urban prefectures , Osaka and Kyoto; and 43 other prefectures . In Japanese, they are commonly referred to as...
(Okinawa-ken 沖縄県).
Concerned about resistance from local elites, Japanese administrators moved gradually in implementing modernizing reforms. The standardization of household registration and the abolition of noble status occurred early on, followed by the extension of Japanese criminal law to Okinawa by 1880. Land reform was completed in 1903, ending communal tenure and establishing a system of direct land taxes paid in cash. The Conscription Law was applied to Okinawa in 1898. Political rights available to subjects in naichi prefectures were eventually extended to Okinawans. By 1920, Okinawans were represented in the Diet on the same basis as naichi Japanese. Beginning in the 1880s, the prefectural government also attempted to increase attendance in primary schools and participation in nationally organized voluntary associations, but the spread of these heavily ideological nationality practices was relatively slow. The spread of these practices was part of a trend towards cultural assimilation to Japanese norms. Partly as a result of government policies, many Okinawans abandoned traditional cultural practices and the Ryūkyū language
Ryukyuan languages
The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subgroup of the Japonic, itself controversially a subgroup of Altaic....
.
Though this process in many ways resembled the modernizing and centralizing reforms affecting nationality practice in naichi prefectures, in Okinawa it had a distinct colonial dynamic. The bureaucracy and the police in Okinawa were initially staffed almost exclusively by migrants from naichi Japan. Naichi Japanese in Okinawa enjoyed privileged access to jobs and business opportunities, while Okinawans-by-birth suffered discrimination based on a perception of ethnic and cultural inferiority.
After initial travel restrictions were lifted, a significant number of Okinawans migrated to the main islands of Japan, where they tended to assimilate into local society, often encountering less discrimination than at home. Japanese nationality status gave Okinawan emigrants access to the protection of the Japanese government when abroad and to preferential treatment as settler colonists within the Japanese empire. In practice, Okinawan emigrants experienced discrimination in areas where naichi Japanese immigrants had already settled. For this reason they tended to form distinct communities overseas. By 1938, more than 70,000 Okinawans had emigrated outside the Japanese empire, principally to Hawai'i, South America and the Philippines. By 1945, more than 50,000 Okinawans had migrated to other parts of the Japanese empire, notably to Nan'yōchō.
Hokkaidō
Before 1855, Hokkaidō was loosely integrated into the TokugawaTokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...
state through the Matsumae domain
Matsumae clan
The was a Japanese clan which was granted the area around Matsumae, Hokkaidō as a march fief in 1590 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and charged with defending it, and by extension all of Japan, from the Ainu 'barbarians' to the north. The clan was originally known as the Kakizaki clan who settled...
. In 1855, concerned about military threat from Russia, the bakufu
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
assumed direct control, but its authority remained weak and had relatively little effect on the native Ainu
Ainu people
The , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
population. After the Meiji Restoration, the new government established the Hokkaidō Colonization Commission (北海道開拓使) to administer its northern territories. The Colonization Commission and its successors promoted economic development and encouraged immigration from naichi Japan. Early settlement schemes were unsuccessful, but beginning in the 1890s, generous land grant policies attracted tens of thousands of settlers each year.
The government also launched an aggressive assimilation effort directed at the Ainu population, an effort Richard Siddle characterizes as "a series of policies that attempted to turn the Ainu into productive Japanese citizens, but actually served to emphasise their inequality and subordination to the state." In 1875, Ainu were granted legal status as commoners, subject to the same laws as naichi Japanese. As with the burakumin, the government maintained separate records of their former status. As areas of naichi Japanese settlement expanded, Ainu were increasingly subject to forced relocation. Traditional hunting techniques, as well as cultural practices such as tattooing and ear piercing, were legally banned. In 1899, the Hokkaidō Former Natives Protection Act :ja:北海道旧土人保護法 was passed. It established a separate and compulsory school system, a program of land grants designed to encourage Ainu to adopt agriculture, and provided some welfare benefits. Education in Ainu schools promoted cultural assimilation, including adopting the nationality practices of imperial Japan, such as joining nationally organized voluntary associations and serving in the military. The Ainu school system was abolished in 1927.
Karafuto
Nationality practices in Karafuto, under joint Russian and Japanese control 1867-1875, and Japanese rule 1905-1945, were similar to those in Hokkaidō in that the Japanese administration pursued a policy of promoting economic development and settlement by naichi Japanese. The population of Ainu and other indigenous people was very small in Karafuto. As in Hokkaidō, Ainu and indigenous people were forcibly resettled and subjected to a program of assimilation.Some nationality issues arose out of complications related to changes in sovereignty in the nineteenth century. For example, the status of Japanese and Ainu who had remained in Karafuto during the period of Russian rule between 1875 and 1905 was ambiguous. In some cases, these people were treated as Russian nationals. The other distinctive feature of nationality practice in Karafuto was immigration policy. Though the immigration of unskilled laborers was illegal in the rest of Japan, several thousand Chinese coolie
Coolie
Historically, a coolie was a manual labourer or slave from Asia, particularly China, India, and the Phillipines during the 19th century and early 20th century...
s were recruited to work as temporary migrant laborers in Karafuto between 1909 and 1927. After 1927, they were replaced by migrants from Korea. By 1945, more than 50,000 Koreans
Sakhalin Koreans
Sakhalin Koreans are Russian citizens and residents of Korean descent living on Sakhalin Island, who trace their roots to the immigrants from the Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces of Korea during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the latter half of the Japanese colonial era...
--under varying degrees of coercion—had migrated to Karafuto.
Taiwan
Japan annexed Taiwan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War. Residents of Taiwan became subjects of Japan, but did not have the same status, rights and obligations as Japanese from the home islands.Korea
After decades of intervention in Korean affairs, Japan formally annexed Korea in 1910. Annexation meant that Koreans became subjects of the Japanese Emperor and were considered Japanese nationals by the Japanese government. Despite this seemingly equal status, colonial policy facilitated differential treatment of Koreans. At the same time, it constituted an increasingly coercive program of assimilation into the Japanese state and Japanese cultural norms.The Sōshi-kaimei
Soshi-kaimei
Sōshi-kaimei was a policy created by Jiro Minami, Governor-General of Korea under the Empire of Japan, implemented upon Japanese subjects from Korea . As defined by Ordinance No...
(創氏改名) laws established a Japanese-style family registry in Korea, forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese naming conventions. This system was separate from the Japanese koseki system and it was illegal to move registration records between the two systems, thus preserving a legal difference between Koreans and naichi Japanese regardless of place of residence. Naichi Japanese in Korea had privileged access to economic and educational resources. They retained rights and obligations, such as the vote and military service, that they had in naichi Japan. Because Korea was administered through the Government General of Korea
Governor-General of Korea
The post of Japanese Governor-General of Korea served as the chief administrator of the Japanese government in Korea while it was held as the Japanese colony of Chōsen from 1910 to 1945...
, the laws issued by the Government General, rather than those of naichi Japan, determined the rights and obligations of Koreans to the state. The education system promoted cultural assimilation of Koreans—both in its content and its use of Japanese as the primary language of instruction—but gave children of naichi Japanese families in Korea preferential treatment. In the 1930s, the assimilationist aspect of education in Korea intensified under the so called "becoming the Emperor's people" policy (kōminka :ja:皇民化). Beginning in the 1930s, Koreans were conscripted as laborers for service in both naichi Japan and colonial territories. In 1943, military consciption laws in effect in naichi Japan were extended to Korea, making all Korean men over the age of twenty subject to conscription into the Japanese military.
Status as Imperial Japanese subjects gave Koreans a degree of mobility within Japanese controlled territory. Though in 1945, Koreans were present as voluntary migrants, labour conscripts, soldiers, or comfort women
Comfort women
The term "comfort women" was a euphemism used to describe women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars to as high as 410,000 from some Chinese...
in nearly every part of the Japanese Empire, the most significant Korean migrations were to naichi Japan and to Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
.
Tens of thousands of impoverished Korean tenant farmers moved to Japan to find work. There, they faced difficult working conditions, discrimination, government surveillance, and vigilante violence. The Japanese government was anxious about the potentially destabilizing effect of Korean laborers in Japan; yet, because Koreans were legally Japanese nationals, it could not explicitly restrict immigration from Korea. Instead, during economic downturns in Japan, colonial police in Pusan were instructed to restrict Korean emigration on an informal basis by limiting access to travel documents (旅行証明書). In Japan, Koreans came under the jurisdiction of the Japanese government proper, rather than the Government General of Korea. This meant that they were governed by Japanese law and had greater civil and political rights—notably the right to hold meetings and vote in national elections—than Koreans in Korea. Political rights were especially important to the community of Korean students in Japan. See Koreans in Japan. After the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake
1923 Great Kanto earthquake
The struck the Kantō plain on the Japanese main island of Honshū at 11:58:44 am JST on September 1, 1923. Varied accounts hold that the duration of the earthquake was between 4 and 10 minutes...
, the Japanese government pursued a more active policy of assimilation towards Koreans in Japan. Primary school attendance was made compulsory in 1930, as was membership in the Naisen-kyowa-kai(Japan-Korea Harmony Society 内鮮共和会). This organization, tightly controlled by the Naimusho and the Government General of Korea,issued identity cards to its members, controlled the travel of Koreans between Korea and Japan, and organized labor mobilization, as well as sponsoring the cultural, social and ideological activities typical of other "voluntary" associations.
Beginning in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of Koreans migrated to Manchuria. Though this territory was not under Japanese control, the Japanese government claimed Koreans in Chinese territory as Japanese nationals. This contention was part a broader effort to dominate China (see Twenty-One Demands
Twenty-One Demands
The ' were a set of demands made by the Empire of Japan under Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu sent to the nominal government of the Republic of China on January 18, 1915, resulting in two treaties with Japan on May 25, 1915.- Background :...
). It meant that Japanese consulates claimed extraterritoriality privileges for Koreans in China and that Koreans were prohibited from naturalizing as Chinese citizens. After the Mukden Incident
Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a staged event that was engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for invading the northern part of China known as Manchuria in 1931....
and the establishment of Manchukuo
Manchukuo
Manchukuo or Manshū-koku was a puppet state in Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia, governed under a form of constitutional monarchy. The region was the historical homeland of the Manchus, who founded the Qing Empire in China...
, Japanese authorities encouraged further Korean migration to Manchuria. The nationality status of Koreans in Manchuria was ambiguous.
Japanese Nationality and Repatriation after World War II
When Japan surrenderedSurrender of Japan
The surrender of Japan in 1945 brought hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent...
in August 1945, there were more than six million Japanese nationals outside of what is now Japan. The process of repatriating these individuals—about half of whom were civilians—revealed the inconsistencies of nationality practice in the Japanese Empire. Despite the rhetoric of equality, naichi Japanese were treated differently from other Imperial subjects.
Koreans
During the summer and fall of 1945, hundreds of thousands of conscripted Korean laborers in Japan abandoned their jobs and returned to Korea. Defining the remaining 600,000 Koreans—many of whom were long-time residents or had been born in Japan—as foreigners, Japanese authorities began to limit the citizenship rights they had enjoyed as imperial subjects resident in Japan. During the colonial period, it was illegal to transfer a Korean koseki to Japan; therefore, Japanese authorities were able to target residents of Japan whose names appeared on Korean koseki. See Loss of Japanese nationality. Since Japan did not have diplomatic relations with either Korean government until 1965, Koreans remaining in Japan became officially stateless.Okinawans
The treatment of Okinawans during the post-war repatriation programs reflected both the ambiguous status of Okinawans with the Japanese Empire and the strategic goals of the United States Military. Interpreting 'Okinawan' as a distinct nationality reinforced the legitimacy of governing Okinawa separately from the rest of Japan. Okinawans, defined as individuals registered in an Okinawan koseki, were repatriated to Okinawa from both naichi Japan and former colonial territories in the Pacific. About 56,900 Okinawans were repatriated from Nan'yōchō and the Philippines and as many as 79,000 from naichi Japan. Like other Okinawans, repatriates were officially Japanese nationals but were governed by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryūkyū Islands. Okinawans who traveled overseas or emigrated during the period of US administration (1945–1972), were issued US travel documents rather than Japanese passports.Japanese Colonists
About 1.5 million Japanese who were left in Manchuria after the Soviet invasion were transferred to labor camps in Siberia, where they remained for as many as five years. Since military personnel, government officials and employees of major companies had preferential treatment during the evacuation, rural settler colonists were overrepresented in this group. Once they returned to Japan, settler colonists regained Japanese nationality, but their former status as colonial subjects continued to have meaning. For example, colonists who had been conscripted into the Japanese militia in Manchuria were ineligible for the pension benefits available to other veterans of the Japanese military. The same was true of Japanese veterans of the paramilitary forces (gunzoku 軍属) in the Philippines."Japanese Orphans" in China
During the chaotic retreat from Manchuria, an estimated 10,000 children of Japanese colonists were left behind and adopted by Chinese families. In the 1980s, the Japanese government instituted a program to facilitate the belated repatriation of these individuals, known as Japanese orphans in ChinaJapanese orphans in China
Japanese orphans in China consist primarily of children left behind by Japanese families repatriating to Japan in the aftermath of World War II. According to Chinese government figures, roughly 2,800 Japanese children were left behind in China after the war, 90% in Inner Mongolia and northeast...
(残留孤児 zanryū koji). Those who could locate their name on a prewar Japanese koseki were allowed to live in Japan indefinitely, but did not automatically regain Japanese nationality. Approximately 20,000 orphans and their relatives have moved to Japan under this program. Some “orphans” contend that, even if they undergo the cumbersome process of regaining Japanese nationality, they are not offered full citizenship because they have little access to social benefits, such as pensions, available to other Japanese.