Looking from Both Sides

I've had my nose deeply into microfilm copies of some old - very old - Chiba-ken statistics today. The tables I've been working on, converting them from faded pages of kanji into modern Excel spreadsheets, date from Meiji 14 - in the Western calendar 1881. I've also been reading recently a book by James Baxter about changes at exactly this time in Ishikawa-ken on the other side on Honshu. It has helped me understand more of the story behind the numbers.

The early Meiji years are arguably the most interesting time in the history of Japan - a country with more 'interesting times' worthy of study than most. In the middle of the nineteenth century the Western nations insisted that Japan be opened up to foreign trade. Most of the next fifty years involved a struggle by the Japanese to avoid becoming the next colonial 'lunch' on Britain's or America's or Russia's plate. In 1868 the percieved foreign threat led to the coup d'etat now known in Western versions of history as the 'Meiji Restoration' and in Japan as the Meiji 'ishin' or 'renewal'

One thing that strikes me looking at these old numbers is how unthinkingly we look at such moments in history through the filter of hindsight. Most people take a very 'positive' view of the Meiji era because it led to the 'successful modernisation' of Japan which thereby kept its integrity as a sovereign state - actually I think that only non-Western nation to do so. We hear how the government planned railways, a modern army and navy, manufacturing industries a new system of schools etc. - 'Progess!' All this must surely be a 'Good Thing' eh?

But when people are actually 'living history' (and we all do that!) they never do have the benefit of hindsight, the ability to see how things will turn out. They can only look backwards and see what is at risk, how the lives and things they value might change. There is no view 'forward', the world in that direction still lies in darkness. And they don't judge events at the time by the same yardstick that history later holds up as 'the only possible' yardstick by which to judge the outcome as successful which is, unsuprisingly I guess, the yardstick of the victors and not the vanquished.