Society
On its return, one of the first acts of the government was to establish new ranks for the nobility. Five hundred people from the old court nobility, former daimyo, and samurai who had provided valuable service to the emperor were organized in five ranks: prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron.
It was at this time that the Ee ja nai ka movement, a spontaneous outbreak of ecstatic behaviour, took place.
In 1885 an intellectual, Yukichi Fukuzawa, wrote the influential essay "Leaving Asia", arguing that Japan should orient itself at the "civilized countries of the West", leaving behind the "hopelessly backward" Asian neighbors, namely Korea and China. This essay certainly contributed to the economic and technological rise of Japan in the Meiji period, but it also may have laid the foundations for later Japanese colonialism in the region.
Read more about this topic: Meiji Period
Famous quotes containing the word society:
“Books treating of etiquette ... are often written by dancing-masters and Turveydrops and others knowing little of the customs of the best society of any land.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)