Government Forms in China and Japan
China in the beginning of the 19th century was governed upon the highest level by the Emperor. He was the state and religious head of the nation. The duties of the supreme leader of the executive, legislative, and judicial were his. However, he was still subject to the Confucian restrictions of leading a proper and moral life as were his subjects. The emperor governed with the advice of six boards. Provincial governors governed their respective regions of the state, and circuit attendants and district magistrates were the officials in the smaller regions of each province. At the head of the basic local level, the scholar gentry dominated as the bearers of the Confucian and Chinese cultural traditions.
The Japanese structure of government should be divided into two periods: Tokugawa and Meiji. In both the Tokugawa and the Meiji periods, the government was headed by the emperor, who was considered the descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. The shogun ruled through the legitimacy of the emperor. Power in the lands was distributed among the regional daimyos, who each vowed their loyalty to the shogun. In each daimyo, the people were subdivided into a four class system, with the samurai at the top, followed by the peasants, artisans and merchants. For the majority of the Tokugawa period, the government followed an isolationist policy towards foreigners. The governmental structures changed form upon the arrival of the Meiji period in 1868. The emperor remained the center of the "political orthodoxy." Meiji Japan was not a monarchy though; it was ruled on an oligarchic basis. A cabinet system was used, composed of a "prime minister and several additional ministers who presided over individual bureaucratic departments." A limited legislative capability was established with the formation the Diet.
Japan's adoption of its oligarchic system was a direct result of its attempt at trying to shake the ties of foreign encroachment and imperialism that had entered the worlds of both China and Japan. The response to this foreign contact was the major reason that Japan was able to succeed and the cause of China's decline. China's lack of understanding of Western ways led it to the very resistive method of dealing with the western nations.
The website is organized, as you can see on the left hand tool bar of this screen (the homepage) with toggles for accessing the factors leading up to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and 1895 for both Japan and China. Navigation is possible by just clicking those to go to where you would like, or just by clicking the back or forward buttons on your browser toolbar. The sources for this website are also located on the left hand tool bar of this website, under "Website Sources." I hope that you enjoy your visit here. If you have any suggestions for making this website more useful or value adding, please don't hesitate to email me at roadtrekker1@hotmail.com. Thank you.