The Charter Oath

1. An assembly consisting of daimyo shall be established and all matters of state shall be decided by open discussion.

2. The high and the low shall unite in carrying out the administration of economic and financial affairs.

3. It is requested that a system be established under which not only civil and military officials, but also the common people may be permitted to pursue their respective callings so that there may be no discontent.

4. Evil practices from the past shall be discarded and all our actions shall follow the accepted practices of the world.

5. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to broaden and strengthen the foundation of imperial rule.

Two things to note:

1. Refer to the ending of Thomas Smith's article, "Japan's Aristocratic Revolution" which concludes with the observation that:

. . .all classes of Japanese, during the first generation or two after 1868, were born cultural equals. One could not learn of these things [i.e., commercial law, German music, French painting and Scotch whiskey] at home, any more than one could learn there a foreign language or the calculus. Such subjects were taught only in the schools, and the schools were open to everyone.

This would seem to be the consequence of Article 5 of the Charter Oath, i.e., that Japan now would look outward to learn all it could from the world and education, under the Meiji reforms, would be compulsory and therefore open to all.

2. Secondly, note that the purpose of it all--the entire Meiji project--was the "strengthen the foundations of imperial rule," a notion that would become a key element in post-Meiji ideology: the centrality of the emperor and the creation of something called the emperor system or the tennosei in Japanese. In many respects, Japanese would become prisoners of this ideology in the 1920s and 1930s.