著者

磯野 有秀

出版者

山口県立大学

雑誌

山口県立大学國際文化學部紀要 (ISSN:13427148)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, pp.102_a, 29_a-21_a, 2002-03-25

---

Yamaguchi City was formerly the 'western capital city' of the flowering Ouchi culture, whose name was known to Western Europe. The city expanded world trade ranging from the Far East to the South-Eastern Asia on behalf of Japan, amidst the deterioration and rebellion of the aristocratic Muromachi Shogunate from the Middle Ages to the age of civil strife. The reign of the Mori succeeding the Ouchi doesn't have, regrettably enough, culture and prosperity worthy of our notice. However, from this obscure era of reign arose the second brilliance or what we call 'the Meiji Restoration'. Yamaguchi City became its seismic center. A common opinion calls this movement modernization, ascribing the seismic center to the Mori of Hagi, but rather, it should be ascribed to the presence of the times of the Ouchi. The Meiji Restoration was won by the total war involving the Mori clan for which the descendants, local people and peasants, and samurais of the lower class fought. These people of no name once glorified the joys of the Ouchi culture, launched to the world sea with energy. At the earlier stage of the Meiji era, the struggle for the equality of the sexes in law and the civil rights surged up. Thus, the then era was called 'the age of civilization and enlightenment'. However, the Meiji era gradually changed into the time of wealth and military strength. At the middle stage of the Meiji era, the patriarchal Tennoism with the three pillars of the Constitution of the Great Imperial Japan, the Imperial Rescript on Education and ie or family system civil law was integrated, and thus Meiji changed its character drastically. Its effect still persists down to the present day. The two great figures who guided the change in quality of Meiji were Hirofumi Ito and Aritomo Yamagata, local royalists of the Restoration period who held real power, but it is hardly known that at about the same period, Akiyoshi Yamada, another royalist from the same province and Minister of Justice, died an unnatural death. Considering that he followed French example of the civil law, and was loyal to the civil social law, what his death meant was of vast importance. It seems not too much to say that the movement of rebirth of the Ouchi culture in Yamaguchi City is the movement to restore the real quality of the Restoration.