Meiji state-building bundled mass literacy, conscription, and centralized violence

Evidence

Between 1868 and 1871, all residual local ‘feudal’ military units were dissolved, giving Tokyo a centralized monopoly of the means of violence. In 1872, an Imperial Rescript ordered the promotion of universal literacy among adult males. In 1873, well before the United Kingdom, Japan introduced conscription. At the same time, the regime liquidated the samurai as a legally-defined and privileged class, an essential step not only for (slowly) opening the officer corps to all talents, but also to fit the now ‘available’ nation-of-citizens model. The Japanese peasantry was freed from subjection to the feudal han-system and henceforth exploited directly by the state and commercial-agricultural landowners. In 1889, there followed a Prussian-style constitution and eventually universal male suffrage. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 370

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘centralized monopoly of the means of violence’ and nation-of-citizens model scaffold directly into Weber’s state definition and Tilly’s war-making state formation that later Islamophobia/citizenship readings presuppose. — connects to: Modern civilization centralizes rather than abolishes violence — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 284; Restricting access to literacy and discourse is a regime’s central control mechanism — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 107; State power neutralized spectacle by garrisoning execution squares — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 120 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• State dependence on soldiers’ bodies secured social bargaining power #expands (0.85)
• State power depends on borrowing the bodies of its subjects #expands (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 695
• Modern civilization centralizes rather than abolishes violence #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 284
• Japan’s isolation and official-national model drove its imperialist turn #exemplifies (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 373
• State power neutralized spectacle by garrisoning execution squares #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 120
• Restricting access to literacy and discourse is a regime’s central control mechanism #complicates (0.72) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 107