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Concept
Chichibu incident
Summary
The Chichibu incident, also known as Chichibu revolt, was a large-scale peasant revolt in November 1884 in Chichibu, Saitama, a short distance from Japan's capital. It lasted about two weeks.
It was one of many similar uprisings in Japan around that time, occurring in reaction to the dramatic changes to society which came about in the wake of the 1868 Meiji Restoration. What set Chichibu apart was the scope of the uprising, and the severity of the government's response.
After the end of the Tokugawa shogunate with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japanese agriculture was dominated by a tenant farming system. The Meiji government based its industrialization program on tax revenues from private land ownership, and the Land Tax Reform of 1873 increased the process of landlordism, with many farmers having their land confiscated due to inability to pay the new taxes.
This situation was worsened by the deflationary Matsukata Fiscal Policy from 1881, which severely depressed rice prices, leading to further bankruptcies. As tenants were forced to pay over half their crop as rent, they were often forced to send wives and daughters to textile mills or to sell daughters into prostitution to pay for taxes.
The rising discontent of the farmers led to a number of peasant revolts in various impoverished rural areas around the country. The year 1884 saw roughly sixty riots; the total debt of the time of Japan's farmers is estimated to two hundred million yen, which corresponds to roughly two trillion yen in 1985 currency.
A number of these uprisings were organized and led through the "Freedom and People's Rights Movement", a catch-all term for a number of disconnected meeting groups and societies throughout the country, consisting of citizens who sought more representation in government and basic rights. The national constitutions and other writings on freedom in the west were largely unknown among the Japanese masses at this time, but there were those in the movement who had studied the west and were able to conceive of democratic political ideology.
Official source
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