The was a large scale peasant revolt

Peasant revolt

Peasant, Peasants' or Popular is variously paired with Revolt, Uprising and War and may refer to :*Daze Village Uprising 209 BC*Yellow Turban Rebellion 184...

 that occurred in November 1884 in Chichibu, Saitama

Chichibu, Saitama

is a city in Saitama, Japan. As of April 1, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 68,701, with a household number of 26,230. The total area is 577.69 km²....

, a short distance from Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

's capital

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, and lasted approximately two weeks.

It was one of many similar uprisings in Japan around that time, occurring in reaction to the dramatic and drastic changes to society which came about in the wake of the 1868 Meiji Restoration

Meiji Restoration

The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...

. What set Chichibu apart was the scope of the uprising, and the severity of the government’s response.

Background

After the end of the Tokugawa bakufu with the Meiji Restoration

Meiji Restoration

The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...

 of 1868, Japanese agriculture was dominated by a tenant farming system. The Meiji government based its industrialization program on tax revenues from private land ownership, and the Land Tax Reform of 1873

Land Tax Reform (Japan 1873)

The Japanese Land Tax Reform of 1873, or was started by the Meiji Government in 1873, or the 6th year of the Meiji era. It was a major restructuring of the previous land taxation system, and established the right of private land ownership in Japan for the first time.-Previous land taxation...

 increased the process of landlordism, with many farmers having their land confiscated due to inability to pay the new taxes.
This situation was worsened by the deflationary Matsukata Fiscal Policy

Matsukata Masayoshi

Prince was a Japanese politician and the 4th and 6th Prime Minister of Japan.-Early life:...

 from 1881, which severely depressed rice prices, leading to further bankruptcies. As tenants were forced to pay over half their crop as rent, they were often forced to send wives and daughters to textile mills or to sell daughters into prostitution

Prostitution

Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 to pay for taxes.

The rising discontent of the led to a number of peasant revolt

Peasant revolt

Peasant, Peasants' or Popular is variously paired with Revolt, Uprising and War and may refer to :*Daze Village Uprising 209 BC*Yellow Turban Rebellion 184...

s in various impoverished rural areas around the country. The year 1884 saw roughly sixty riots; the total debt of the time Japan's farmers is estimated to two hundred million yen, which corresponds to roughly two trillion yen in 1985 currency.

A number of these uprisings were organized and led, through the , a catch-all term for a number of disconnected meeting groups and societies throughout the country, consisting of citizens who sought more representation in government and basic rights. The national constitution

Constitution

A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...

s and other writings on freedom in the West were largely unknown among the Japanese masses at this time, but there were those in the movement who had studied the West, and were able to conceive of democratic political ideology

Ideology

An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...

. Some societies within the movement wrote their own draft constitutions, and many saw their work as a form of . Songs and rumors among the rebels often indicated their belief that the would alleviate their problems.

Uprising

While many groups and political parties across the country debated political issues peacefully, the self-titled "Revolutionary Army" erupted in revolt on 31 October 1884, in the Chichibu district of Saitama prefecture

Saitama Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of the island of Honshu. The capital is the city of Saitama.This prefecture is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, and most of Saitama's cities can be described as suburbs of Tokyo, to which a large amount of residents commute each day.- History...

. The uprising was triggered by the refusal of creditors to allow a moratorium on repayment of loans. The insurgents sought to attack a government building and loan shark

Loan shark

A loan shark is a person or body that offers unsecured loans at illegally high interest rates to individuals, often enforcing repayment by blackmail or threats of violence....

 offices and to destroy records of their debts.

Accounts of the size of the revolt varied widely, from 5,000 to over 10,000 men. Most of the rebels were armed with farming implements, bamboo

Bamboo

Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

 spears, swords, wooden cannon, and hunting musket

Musket

A musket is a muzzle-loaded, smooth bore long gun, fired from the shoulder. Muskets were designed for use by infantry. A soldier armed with a musket had the designation musketman or musketeer....

s. The rebels poured out of their small mountain villages, armed not only with weapons, but with banners and slogans; declaring "New Rule of Benevolence," and labeling the seized district office as the "Headquarters of the Revolutionary Army."

Having established a headquarters, the ringleaders adopted a new calendar, and began to issue decrees, labeling all as being issued in "Year One of Freedom and Self-Government." The revolutionaries also dispatched smaller groups to seek out and oust individual government officials in the neighboring villages before recalling their forces and marching toward Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, where the movement first met with significant resistance.

The precise number of revolutionaries killed in the battle against the overwhelming firepower of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the new professional Imperial Japanese Army

Imperial Japanese Army

-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...

 remains unknown. Roughly ten days after the seizure of the district office, the Chichibu uprising was finally fully quashed at the foot of the Yatsugatake Mountains

Yatsugatake Mountains

The Yatsugatake Mountains are a volcanic mountain range on the border between Nagano Prefecture and Yamanashi Prefecture on the island of Honshū in Japan.-Description:...

. Many survivors were arrested, and nearly 3,000 were found guilty. Three hundred were convicted as felon

Felony

A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...

s, and the seven ringleaders were sentenced to death

Capital punishment in Japan

Capital punishment is legal in Japan. The only crimes for which capital punishment is statutory are homicide and treason. Between 1946 and 1993, Japanese courts sentenced 766 people to death , 608 of whom were executed...

. Five of the seven were hanged less than three months later, in February 1885.

Although this was the largest popular uprising of the Meiji period, or perhaps because of it, the government sought to dismiss it by describing the rebels as little more than hooligans.

Legacy

Overall, the Chichibu Incident was caused by a combination of liberal, revolutionary ideologies and economic motivations. Though the traditional view of the event reduces the peasants' motivations to being purely economic, some scholars see it as part of a suppressed peoples' rights movement in this period. Irokawa Daikichi of Tokyo Keizai University

Tokyo Keizai University

is a private university in Tokyo, Japan. It has campuses at the cities of Kokubunji and Musashimurayama. The predecessor of the school was founded in 1900, and it was chartered as a university in 1949.-External links:*...

, describes the incident in detail in his book, The Culture of the Meiji Period, and argues that it was not simply part of a yonaoshi movement, nor an ordinary uprising by poor peasants looking to absolve themselves of their debts. The leaders of the uprising, if not the majority of their followers, were active thinkers of the Freedom and People's Rights movements, and sought no less than to challenge the Meiji government itself. According to Irokawa, they were guided by "the revolutionary ideology of the Liberal Party; they had a revolutionary faith that they could 'reform the government, make freedom come to life, and join battle for the people.'"

Though a monument

Monument

A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture...

 to the fallen was erected several decades later, a great number of the ringleaders and others who escaped formal punishment have never had their names formally cleared. A film, Kusa no Ran, was also made in 2004, directed by Seijirō Kōyama

Seijirō Kōyama

is a Japanese film director.-Career:Born in Gifu Prefecture, Kōyama attended Nihon University but quit midway to join the independent production company Kindai Eiga Kyōkai, where he worked as an assistant director under such directors as Kaneto Shindō, Kōzaburō Yoshimura, and Tadashi Imai...

, commemorating the incident's 120th anniversary.