China Lost the Opium War. Japan Was Terrified—How a Different Sense of Crisis Helped Bring About the Meiji Restoration

In my previous article, I discussed a video about the Opium War, which Britain waged against the Qing dynasty.

Britain sold opium to China and sent in warships when the authorities cracked down on the trade. It was a remarkably brazen business model, even by the standards of the British Empire.

This time, I would like to continue the story by looking at the impact the Opium War had on China and Japan.

What is interesting is that Japan, which merely heard the news from across the sea, may have seen it as a greater threat to its national survival than the Qing dynasty, which had actually lost the war.

Why did the two countries react so differently?

Threats from Other Peoples Were Nothing New in Chinese History

Looking back at Chinese history, wars with and conquest by non-Chinese peoples were hardly unusual.

The Mongols founded the Yuan dynasty, and the Manchus founded the Qing dynasty. Indeed, the Qing dynasty that ruled China at the time of the Opium War was itself a dynasty established by the Manchus.

China had a long history of preserving its political system after military defeat by making peace and conceding money or territory to its opponent.

There was also the traditional worldview that Chinese civilization stood at the center of the world.

An opponent might be stronger militarily, but China was still culturally superior. That perception may have made it harder to understand the threat posed by the Western powers.

Of course, there were intellectuals in the Qing dynasty who recognized the danger, and efforts to modernize the military and industry followed.

However, the government found it difficult to go so far as to fundamentally transform the dynasty’s system of rule itself.

If Japan’s Shogunate Lost Militarily, It Would Lose Its Authority

Japan, by contrast, was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate, a government led by the warrior class.

The Tokugawa family also derived authority from the emperor’s appointment of its head as shogun, but one of the main pillars supporting its rule was the military power with which it kept the country’s feudal lords, or daimyo, under control.

What would happen if the shogunate proved powerless against a foreign force?

“Is it really safe to entrust Japan to such a weak shogunate?”

That question would naturally arise.

In fact, during the final years of the shogunate, its authority was shaken by disputes over how to deal with foreign powers, and the movement to overthrow it gained momentum.

For Japan, then, the threat from the Western powers was not merely a diplomatic problem.

Losing to a foreign power could directly lead to the collapse of the domestic political system.

The Japanese Had Been Studying Before the Black Ships Arrived

Another important factor was how the Japanese responded.

News of the Opium War reached Japan through reports from the Dutch and books from China.

The shogunate stepped up its collection of information about other countries, while interest in Western military technology grew.

However, rangaku, or “Dutch learning,” had existed before the Opium War. The Japanese did not suddenly awaken to Western scholarship.

There were already intellectuals studying fields such as medicine, astronomy, and surveying.

Until then, Western learning had occupied a marginal position. After the war, however, people suddenly began studying it in far greater numbers, especially its military technology.

Then, in 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry’s “Black Ships” arrived.

For the first time, the Japanese were confronted with Western military power before their own eyes.

Yet the West was not a completely unknown adversary.

People had already been collecting information and researching Western technology.

In the end, the shogunate was forced to open the country and proved unable to bring the political turmoil that followed under control.

Even so, the accumulated knowledge of these earlier scholars can be seen as one reason Japan was able to make the transition to a modern state in a relatively short period of time.

Was the Difference Between China and Japan Really Just a Sense of Crisis?

At this point, it is tempting to reduce the story to a simple contrast: the Japanese felt a strong sense of crisis, while the Chinese were complacent.

In reality, however, there was another major difference.

The Qing dynasty ruled a vast empire.

It governed an enormous territory and population while facing repeated rebellions at home. Fundamentally rebuilding the system that governed such a state was no easy task.

Japan, by contrast, was a relatively small island country with a political structure made up of the shogunate and regional domains.

Even if the shogunate fell, each domain still had people with experience in administration and military affairs.

The new Meiji government was able to pursue modernization by reorganizing those people and institutions.

Japan also had the opportunity to observe the Qing dynasty’s defeat in the Opium War without fighting the war itself.

The Qing sacrificed itself to demonstrate how dangerous the Western powers were, while Japan gained time to consider how to respond.

For Japan, it was an extremely useful precedent.

For the Qing, it was an intolerable one.

The Real Danger Is Learning Nothing When a Crisis Comes

Looking back at the period from the Opium War to the Meiji Restoration, one lesson emerges.

Recognizing a crisis does not mean that a society can change immediately.

Japan, too, was unable to fundamentally change the shogunate’s system before the Black Ships arrived.

Even so, there were people gathering information from abroad, studying Western technology, and preparing during that time.

When the crisis became real, that accumulated knowledge proved useful.

The same may be true of modern organizations.

Even when a new technology appears, existing systems cannot always be changed at once. There is no budget. There is no precedent. Everyone is too busy with their current work.

There is no shortage of reasons.

Even so, it is still possible to gather information, learn the technology, and prepare.

One factor that made the Meiji Restoration possible was that some people had begun learning before the crisis arrived, rather than waiting until it did and then scrambling to catch up.

Still, history reveals one more irony.

Japan was able to learn how terrifying the Western powers were because China had suffered first.

It is said that the wise learn from the failures of others.

But those who are turned into the lesson are in no position to laugh.