🔻 BOOK DATA - The Meiji Restoration
English title: Meiji Restoration (明治維新)
Author: 井上清 / Kiyoshi Inoue (1913-2001)
ISBN: 9784122046740
Language: Japanese
Publisher: Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc.
(The first edition was published in 1966; the latest edition, 04/2006)
🔻 Learning from Meiji Restoration for Hong Kong Reform
Meiji Restoration, Showa Restoration (February 26 Incident), postwar democratic reform, and Heisei neoliberal reform
To study the universal and particular laws of reform, revolution, and reaction, I completed an important study of the 2019 anti-extradition bill movement. Hong Kong's political soil is dominated by reaction, and its political techniques are highly developed. The official and unofficial histories are mostly the narratives of the ruling class. And the ruling class's own narrative is fundamentally different from what actually happened. The complexity of the ruling class's own narrative is far greater than that of the Russian Revolution or other cases of permanent revolution or cases of imperialist powers undermining the political power of other countries during the Cold War. The point is that when we see the conspiracy of the ruling class, we cannot look at a single event in isolation. The events before and after, and especially a series of seemingly unrelated political events that occurred later, reveal the power and desire of the ruling class that consistently dominates the situation. This is why, after the arrest of the "ringleaders" of the movement, we have seen the consistent process of powerful, homogeneous local political forces destroying and nullifying national politics over the past few years. Hong Kong remains the best material for studying reaction.
Therefore, when people think about reform in Hong Kong, they can compare it with examples from world history, which require events that occurred on soil similar to that of Hong Kong. The political soil of Japan is similar to that of Hong Kong in that it is a place where old and new political forces and elements that originally belonged to different historical periods coexist in a surprising mixture. This time, the Meiji Restoration will be used in this article. Its positioning is controversial, but it is also the inevitable result of its soil. The Meiji Restoration is a highly mixed hibrid of reform, revolution, and reaction. In fact, the postwar democratic reforms of the GHQ are also a mixture that defies categorization. The representative figure of the Meiji Restoration was Saigo Takamori (January 23, 1828 - September 24, 1877). The representative figure of postwar democratic reform was Douglas MacArthur (January 26, 1880 - April 5, 1964). All of them inevitably had a revolutionary, progressive side and a reactionary side, and could not be categorized as a single side. Therefore, the common ground of the above-mentioned political soil always influenced the nature of events and characters. The social conditions of the time were imprinted on its superstructure.
According to the dialectic, the Meiji Restoration was neither a reform nor a revolution nor a reaction, but it was all of them, intentionally or unintentionally.
In China, the famous and respected Professor Inoue Kiyoshi is a Japanese historian and a true Marxist. Along with Itsurō Sakisaka (February 6, 1897 - January 23, 1985) of the Socialist Party, he is another of the best Marxists in Japan or Asia who has successfully applied Marxism's materialist view of history and dialectics to the study of Japanese history. It can be said that the essence of Japanese-style Marxism or localized Marxism in Japan is the work of Professor Inoue Kiyoshi. Among them, "The Meiji Restoration" (originally published in 1966, Chuo Koron Shinsha) is the most complete, most dynamic and most unrestrained work, free from the dogmatic framework of the right and the left. It is also the perfect work of materialist dialectics, and it is also the classic of history that I admire the most. Here I will try to extract a chapter on the universal and particular laws of reform, revolution and reaction. It would be great if China could publish Inoue's complete works!
🔻 My brief analysis of the recent development of Hong Kong politics or reform is as follows:
1. The HKMAO's Xia is actively instructing the HKSARG to carry out the reform that integrates Hong Kong into national politics, while only the PRCCG's initiative can make the unwilling and inept HKSARG act. This is in China's national interest. However, it is obvious that the HKSARG's terribly 'sluggish' political maneuvering, the ill-mannered malpractice of the HKSARG, will at most make 'efforts' to freeze the present status quo for the next one or two decades. During that time, nothing can be changed forever. Besides, what we can see at that time is only the real estate waiting for tenants.
(2/9/2025): Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO), heard economic and financial services plans from Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po and seven other senior officials on Sunday as he toured two special cooperation zones run by the city and neighboring Shenzhen. His visit came two weeks before Chan unveils his annual budget on Feb. 26, which forecasts a deficit of nearly HK$100 billion (US$12.8 billion) for the current fiscal year.
2. Based on the first thesis, why Northern Metropolis must be accelerated is to save Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of China, to provide land supply. Hong Kong can only be saved by continuously prosperous high-tech, AI city of Shenzhen and its expansion. At the current stage, Hong Kong is not a protagonist, but only a deindustrialization force, a heavy anti-industrialization burden in this region. Therefore, one or more reforms are needed to re-industrialize itself through the expansion of Shenzhen.
3. Therefore, the most prosperous city of China, Shenzhen and China's economic engine, Canton Province (In 2023, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Guangdong Province in China amounted to approximately 13.6 trillion yuan) competing with Jiangsu Province (In 2023, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Jiangsu Province in China amounted to approximately 12.8 trillion yuan) is a driving force for Shenzhen's expansion in economy and geography. According to the data, both provinces are not in decline, contrary to the mainstream narrative. When we think about Hong Kong's "reform", the center is Shenzhen, the entire Canton province, not Hong Kong at all, while Hong Kong can only save itself if Shenzhen successfully withstands the pressure of hollowing out its key industries and expands itself to help Hong Kong realize its re-industrialization. In other words, Shenzhen is the key protagonist of the whole "reform" of this city.
🔻 The logic of revolution and reform:
So where did the determination and courage of Saigo, Okubo, and the others come from? It goes without saying that their superior natural talents were forged by repeated brushes with death and many years of political struggle, but the greatest source of their courage must surely have been their conviction that forcing Tokugawa Yoshinobu to resign his post and return to his estate was the only way that was in accord with public opinion, reason, and the hearts and minds of the people.
To be in line with public opinion, reason, and the hearts and minds of the people of the land is to be in line with the progress of history. And objectively speaking, opposing Yamauchi Toyoshige's course of abandoning the name of the Tokugawa Shogunate while retaining its real power and establishing a kind of coalition government of the various domains was in line with the progress of history at that time, because it resulted in the overthrow of the Shogunate in name and in reality, and even deprived the Tokugawa family of its fiefdoms.
This is because without passing through the stage of overthrowing the shogunate system, there was no way for Japan to make further progress in history, that is, to abolish feudalism and achieve national unity among the Japanese people, as well as to gain independence from the status of a semi-colonial country of the West, and to move forward in the direction of achieving these things.
However, just because Saigo and his followers' course of overthrowing the shogunate was in line with the progress of history, it does not mean that it was revolutionary. At that stage, they were progressive reformists who used the people, but they were not a revolutionary party that represented the people, either before or after. They did not have the idea of a revolutionary people's right that rationalized the overthrow of the existing power. What they could authorize, and the only thing they could rationalize, was to exercise the authority of the emperor, who was the supreme authority above all other just causes, based on the feudal theory of just cause that they and their immediate enemies shared. If you follow the idea of people's revolutionary rights, the basic strategy for overthrowing the shogunate would be to rely on the people and organize them, but if you want to overthrow the shogunate using the authority of the emperor, your first priority must be to win the court coup.
The December 9th coup was planned by Saigo, Okubo, Iwakura, and the leaders of the Choshu clan, including Kogoro Katsura (Kido Takayoshi), who had not yet appeared openly on the political stage in Kyoto. They had learned a serious lesson from the two crushing defeats of the radical Sonno Joi faction in August 1863 and July 1864. Namely, they had to make sure that they kept the "jewel" firmly in their own faction. In the third year of Bunkyuu, the leader of the Sonno Joi faction, Emperor Komei, who they thought was on their side, actually said, "I do not like those who are extreme and violent," and because he was in contact with the shogunate, they were completely defeated in a coup by the shogunate. In the first year of Genji, the radical faction also lost after raising an army without making preparations to win over the emperor. This time, they had to keep the jewel at all costs. In this respect, it was fortunate that the young Emperor Meiji did not have the same firm ideas as his predecessor. And the fact that they were able to win over the emperor's grandfather, Nakayama Tadayasu, who was the emperor's most trusted advisor, was the first major success for the anti-shogunate faction (and for this reason, Saigo and Okubo were on tenterhooks every time Tadayasu and the others showed any signs of wavering. In Saigo's letter of December 11th, he wrote: "The fear of the court nobles is disturbing"). In addition, they were meticulous about tasting the emperor's food and monitoring the doctors who came and went from the court on the day of the coup and after. With such careful planning and meticulous attention to detail, they were able to keep the jewel in their own hands from beginning to end and succeed in their coup. (pp. 37-38)
It is interesting to note that the Ancien Regime of France, the Tokugawa Shogunate, and the Qing Dynasty all fell due to the collapse of the state financial system and heavy foreign debt from corruption.
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