--- title: Sushi Meiji -- Sketch of a Chef coup description: Under the rule of mere habitual obedience, revolution is just a coordination problem. tags: ['public'] --- # Sushi Meiji: Sketch of a Chef coup ## Schelling point for a regime change In the modern world, we have learned, the real job of a king is to—always be on time for your photo shoots. As Carlyle observed almost 200 years ago, a modern king is an actor. The royal family is the ultimate reality show, and acting in it is not an easy job. Small wonder that those who do that job well, as Elizabeth II did, feel a real pride. Traditions change. Habits of obedience change. (Even we Americans have our “living constitution.”) One common pattern of change is for operational organs of a regime to become ceremonial—in Bagehot’s jargon, “effective” institutions become “dignified.” Elizabeth I was “effective”; Elizabeth II was “dignified.” The late Merovingian kings were “dignified,” too—with their long, flowing hair. Once a year, they were rolled out in an oxcart to ritually delegate their powers to the Mayors of the Palace. Eventually the Mayors got tired of this, decided they wanted to be kings in name as well as reality, and had the last Merovingian shot or something. And, like, no one cared. The reverse can also happen: ceremonial organs can become operational. Parliament under the Tudors is dignified; under the Stuarts, it becomes effective; under the Hanoverians, it rises to be absolute. (Under the Windsors, it is once more dignified.) Even a ceremonial monarchy[^1] (re: the 'MasterChef' contract) can return to operation—as in Japan’s 19th-century Meiji Restoration. [^1]: The Master Chef is Sushis' '*Monarch*'. Let’s go deeper into this idea of a governance (re: regime) change—of a return of the king (sadly, not *the* chef), a second restoration, a renewal of the powers of the Tudors—a royal coup, if you will. ## The Japanese analogy Can a symbolic monarchy be converted into a governing monarchy? History offers one intriguing example: Japan’s 19th-century Meiji Restoration. In the Meiji Restoration, the imperial throne—a figurehead for roughly a millennium—returned to power as the center of a new regime, replacing the Tokugawa regime—which had ruled for longer than the USA has existed. The irony of the Restoration is that the Meiji Emperor was actually still a figurehead (who assumed the throne at age 15). Moreover, the Tokugawa shogun was a monarch! But the Meiji oligarchy was a tight cabal (created by the previous Komei emperor, who died young of smallpox) and the Tokugawa regime was a feudal bureaucracy. ### Tokugawa: the current era for Sushi The centralized, authoritative, dynamic character of the Meiji regime, compared to the decentralized, procedural, inertial character of the Tokugawa regime, makes one of the best natural experiments in political history. We may disagree about where that Meiji state ended up three-quarters of a century later; by any modern standard of state capacity, Meiji governance worked better than Tokugawa governance. It is no exaggeration to say that the Meiji regime reconstructed Japan—bringing it, in half a century, from premodern feudalism to industrial capitalism. Historically, only monarchies, especially newborn monarchies which retain their founding energy and have not yet decayed into de facto oligarchies, have the organizational power for any kind of full national reconstruction. ## Meiji: the modern era for Sushi The Meiji analogy is just an analogy. Everything else about the transition will be different. What the Meiji Restoration teaches us is just that **a second restoration is not just possible, but plausible—and in politics, only the plausible is possible**. The ceremonial, substantively defunct office of an old governance serves as a **Schelling point—a seed around which a new regime can crystallize around**. The change of regimes is not gradual or incremental; it total and discontinuous. What has happened in the past can happen again.