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The Meiji Era and the Modernization of Japan...Part 2

© Maria Christensen

A simple story illustrates how enthusiastically and effectively the Japanese borrowed and adapted from other countries during the Meiji Era. It is no secret that baseball (besuboru) is one of Japan's most popular sports. What is less well known is that the first baseball team in Japan formed in 1873. A Christian missionary teacher by the name of Horace Wilson taught students the game at what would later be Tokyo University. Unfortunately for Wilson, baseball became much more popular than did Christianity. In 1891, a Japanese team challenged the Americans in Yokohama to a game. The American Athletic Club initially did not take the challenge seriously. Convinced of their own superiority as the masters of an American game and sure of a win over the smaller Japanese, it took five years before they finally agreed to a game. The game took place at the Club, where Japanese had previously not been allowed to enter, and the Japanese team showed no reaction to the boos and catcalls of the gaijin (foreigner) crowd. What happened next shocked the complacent Americans. The Japanese won 29-4. In a later rematch the Japanese once again won with another large gap in the scores. They had been playing for national honor.

Many characterize what Japan did at this time as "rational shopping." They borrowed technology, social systems, infrastructure, and educational methods from countries around the world and adapted and fitted them to their own needs and culture. They used what worked and abandoned what did not. To do this, the Meiji oligarchs set off on an around the world junket in 1871 known as the Iwakura Mission, named for the head of the delegation, Iwakura Tomomi. They spent several months each in the United States, England and Europe, and studied everything they encountered from banking systems to zoos. They brought home anything which might be useful to Japan, in one form or another, including a police system modeled somewhat on the French system, an educational system influenced by both America and Prussia, and new forms of agriculture.

Exchange of bodies also occurred during and after the mission. Several students, including young children, were a part of the Iwakura Mission. These students stayed behind in different countries with host families for years of foreign education before returning home. Many of them would later play important roles during the Meiji Era. Upon return to Japan, the oligarchs also invited foreigners to serve Japan in an advisory capacity. Well over 2,000 people from 23 countries ended up on the Japanese payroll for a period of time.

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