The Five Charter Oath: The Night Kido Drafted the Constitutional Spine of Modern Japan

On April 6, 1868 (the fourteenth of the third month of Keiō 4), in the Shishinden of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, the Meiji Emperor promulgated the Five Charter Oath. Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by public discussion. All classes, high and low, shall unite in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state. Officials, military, and common people shall all be allowed to pursue their own callings so that there may be no discontent. Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of nature. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule. The five articles were promulgated as the basic policy of the new Meiji government and became the starting point of modern Japanese institutional design.

The Drafting Process

The first draft was prepared by the Echizen-domain figure Yuri Kimimasa (Mioka Hachirō), who proposed a five-article 'Gist of the Deliberative Body' in early March. Fukuoka Takachika of Chōshū then revised it, and Kido Takayoshi gave it its final form. The largest substantive intervention by Kido was on the meaning of the first article, 'Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by public discussion.' Yuri's original draft had this meaning a council of domain representatives; Kido's revision expanded the scope to include something closer to the general citizenry. Responsibility for the final wording, order, and political idea rested with Kido.

Why the Oath Form

The 'Oath' form had the Meiji Emperor swear before the nobles, daimyō, and assembled officialdom in the presence of heaven and earth. It was not merely a political declaration; it was a religious-political ritual in which the Emperor personally underwrote the legitimacy of the new institutions. As a device for visibly establishing the legitimacy of the new government, the Oath's ceremonial form was carefully engineered. Kido was deeply involved in setting up the ceremony as well as the text. The Meiji state was at once the starting point of a modern nation and a composite polity that embedded an imperial religious rite into its constitutional foundation.

Twenty-One Years to the Constitution

The first article — 'Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by public discussion' — required twenty-one years of work to produce its formal institutional embodiment in the Constitution of the Empire of Japan in 1889. Across those years the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, the campaign for the opening of the Diet, and the treaty revision negotiations all proceeded with the Charter Oath as their reference point. Kido himself died in 1877 and did not live to see the promulgation. The Oath drafting, however, set the structural framework of modern Japan's institutional development — a reference point that constitutional history continues to return to.

"Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established, and all matters decided by public discussion."