An African effort to replicate Japan's Meiji restoration. In Lissan:
More hereIn the Selected Annual Proceedings of the Florida Conference of Historians for 2004, a fascinating paper was presented by Professor J. Calvitt Clarke III. Titled “Seeking A Model For Modernization: Ethiopia’s Japanizer’s” it is a window into an almost forgotten Ethiopia.
Front row, right to left: Lij Araya Abeba, His Excellency Heruy, Lij Tafari, and the interpreter, Daba Birru. On the back row are Mr. and Mrs. Sumioka. Picture taken from Heruy’s Dai Nihon.
The story begins after the 1896 victory over Italy at Adwa in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. If you don’t know much about this battle Professor Donald Levine outlines its historical significance in his article “The Battle of Adwa as a “Historic” Event”. Ethiopian Filmmaker Haile Gerima made an exceptional documentary about the battle; “Adwa: An African Victory” in 2000.
Some excerpts from Professor Clarke on the Japanizers
In the early twentieth century, these foreign-educated Ethiopians (the Japanizers) generally sought positions at court, and many of them refused to share the complacency of their countrymen after Ethiopia’s military victory over Italy at Adwa in 1896.
The term (Japanizers) highlighted the impact of Japan’s Meiji transformation on Ethiopia’s intellectuals. Japan’s dramatic metamorphosis by the end of the nineteenth century from a feudal society—like Ethiopia’s—into an industrial power attracted them. For these young, educated Ethiopians, Japanization was a means to an end—to solve the problem of underdevelopment. Japan’s rapid modernization, after all, had guaranteed its peace, prosperity, and independence, while Ethiopia’s continued backwardness threatened its very survival.
