Meiji Civil War losers in Asia: mapping Miyazaki Tōten’s transnational revolutionary space

Thesis

The 1877 Seinan Civil War (also known as the Satsuma Rebellion), has been seen as an historical endpoint in Japanese history. The leader, Saigō Takamori (1828-1877), who died fighting the Meiji government, became known as the ‘last samurai,’ marking a last heroic stand against ‘modernity.’ History has cast those who opposed Meiji reforms as anti-modern in a misleading teleological framework that pits modernizers against traditionalists. Yet, many who opposed the Meiji government envisioned modernity in multiple ways. The civil conflicts in Meiji Japan were not over ‘forwards’ or ‘backwards,’ but of ‘which way forwards?’ This dissertation uses the life of Miyazaki Tōten (1871-1922), a popular intellectual, author, revolutionary activist, and naniwabushi balladeer, to explicate the role of the Seinan ‘civil war losers’ in modern Japan. It uses non-colonial, non-state, transnational history to uncover the new ways ‘forwards’ articulated by the likes of Tōten. He was a leading figure in the early twentieth century Asian revolutionary space and ‘opening’ of Japan in terms of his activism in Siam, the Philippines, and China, before becoming a cultural leader in the most popular form of popular entertainment in Japan in the early twentieth century — naniwabushi. It demonstrates the explanatory power of the civil war loser lens to find consistency throughout Tōten’s writing, activism, and relationships — which are linked to his concepts of autonomous freedom, nihilism, and anarchist communitarianism. It finds continuity between the 1880s Freedom and People’s Rights Movement to the Russo-Japanese Transwar Period (1902-1910). The feeling that the promises of the Meiji Ishin (1868) were unfulfilled intensified during the Russo-Japanese War and Tōten called for a ‘world revolution,’ which he thought would begin in China. This dissertation, through Tōten, sheds light on the multiple imaginations of the future in Meiji Japan which were central to the early twentieth century Asian revolutions and part of popular culture and protest in modern Japan.

Authors: Littler, J

• Alternative title: Meiji Civil War losers in Asia
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-8n25jnrpb
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: intellectual history; Nihilism; revolution; transnational; Japan; history; Miyazaki Tōten
• Subjects: Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905