Posted on 12/03/2023 7:46:19 AM PST by CheshireTheCat
Unless you’re a Jedi knight, feudal warrior castes and industrial civilization go together like sashimi and fries. So, when the Meiji Restoration made its choice for Japanese modernization, it gained the enmity of the samurai it necessarily dispossessed.
In many cases, said samurai were especially burned at having initially backed the restoration’s restoration of the emperor and attendant jingoistic sloganeering, only to find themselves on the outs as soon as the new government got its feet under it.
Over the 1870’s, the samurai caste was essentially abolished, and it lost its sword-toting privileges along with (come the advent of a new conscript army) its military import.
Small wonder that once-haughty military folk fought this unwelcome progress katana and wakizashi.....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
In Before John Belushi.
Samurai SpeedTyper.
And RTR.
Another silly over-generalization. The fusion of the feudal and bourgeois upper class worked quite well for Britain, as it also did in Germany. In fact, the Japanese adapted the post 1870 constitution of the German Empire precisely because it gave some legal recognition to the feudal aristocracy while clearly establishing a national government.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.