Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 543, A Day in the Life of Meiji Japan, Part 1.

When we talk about Japan's Meiji period, there is a standard narrative we tend to use.

The sweeping transformation of Japanese society under the leadership of the Meiji oligarchy,

the core of samurai from Satsuma and Choshu, who won both the war against the Meiji oligarchy, the corps of samurai from

Satsuma and Choshu who won both the war against the shogunate, and the bloody struggle for

control of the new state that took place over the next decade and a half.

As a result, as we know, they were able to direct the shaping of the new Meiji state and set

Japan on the course towards becoming

a great power while also laying the groundwork for its disastrous defeat in the Second World War.

It's a very important story, naturally enough, one that helped create Japan as it exists today,

but it's also one that tends to leave out an important part of Japan's history.

Until very recently, particularly in English-language academia, study of the Meiji period

tended to focus heavily on the political and intellectual side of the era,

on the people who were making the decisions that shaped the new Japan,

and on the academics who pondered what it

meant to remake a society to be quote-unquote modern. But that leaves an unimportant question

answered. What was it like to actually live through these changes? If you were not one of the

elite, one of the powerful, what was it like to live day to day

in Meiji Japan? That's what the next two weeks are going to be all about, but first, of course,

a few quick notes. First, these episodes are going to presume some familiarity with the history

of the Meiji period, and in particular are going to be building off of ideas from episodes 531 and 532.

These are the episodes respectively on the politics and the economic life of Meiji Japan,

...