February 11, 1889: The Meiji Constitution is promulgated.
During the reign of Emperor Meiji, which lasted from 1867 to 1912, Japan was transformed from an isolated, shogunate-ruled nation into an industrialized and unified nation that could compete with Western powers economically and militarily. In 1871 the han - territorial domains of feudal lords - were reorganized into a modern prefecture system (a system that remains in place today) that allowed for direct control by the central government. Certain customs, especially those pertaining to the declining samurai class (such as public sword-carrying privileges), were outlawed outright, while Japanese society looked to Western culture for inspiration.
In 1889, the Meiji government adopted a constitution that proclaimed that the new Japanese state would “maintain and secure from decline the ancient form of government” and pursue “a great policy co-extensive with the Heavens and with the Earth”. At the same time, it would “in consideration of the progressive tendency of the course of human affairs and in parallel with the advance of civilization… establish fundamental laws formulated into express provisions of law…” Japan had never before adopted a written constitution, and the Meiji Constitution, which was modeled after that of the German Empire more than any other European country, was in many ways a signal to Western powers that the country was advanced enough, by their standards, to exist as equals on the world stage. Itō Hirobumi, Japan’s first Prime Minister, was largely responsible for researching the governments of the other world powers and for deciding which ideas to incorporate; some of his reasoning can be read in his “Commentaries on the constitution of the empire of Japan”.
The Empire of Japan, the only world power outside Europe and North America and Asia’s first constitutional government, was born when the Meiji Constitution went into effect in November of 1890. The constitution was nullified in 1947 when the new postwar Constitution of Japan was enacted.
Other links: An 1890 article from the New York Times reflecting on “old and modern Japan”:
It has been the mistake as well as the misfortune of our Western world to look upon these far-off peoples as ‘half-civilized’, but the semi-civilization is relative only, not absolute, and it may be open to question whether their half is not quite equal to the fraction we concede them to own in common with ourselves…