A common theme that appears during this period was the an uncertainty with the past.  By 1884, it became clear that Japan had a past, the discoveries a few years earlier that the history of the land and the history of the people are not the same both separated nature and the environment from history, but it also raised the possibility that the past is different than what had been known.

This discovery is liberating; that after all is one of the goals stated in Kant's essay "What is Enlightenment?"  But this discovery also creates much uncertainty: if the past is anachronistic, then what is it that frames and guides society?  Inquiries into the past appear in many forms, from to what extent is that past anachronistic, what might be preserved, what is essential toward understanding one's society, and what is the relation of the past to a nation and nation-state. This is why the past is not singular, and I have included other categories, such as "ghosts and wonders" and "new pasts."

The common refrain in non-Western societies confronting the imperialist and technologically superior West is that these places need to shed their old and stultifying habits and customs in favor of rational, objective, and scientific means of organizing knowledge and society.  In short, to adapt the structures, codes, and knowledge of modern society.  Often, histories recount how societies imbibe that new knowledge and begin that transformation, but at some point, there is a conservative reaction that hinders the complete adaption of modern society.  This is certainly the trope within which the Meiji 10s (1877-86) have been described.  The middle decade of the 1880s is often fingered as the moment when the conservative reaction in Japan emerged.

The simplistic formula of past to present, old to new, traditional to modern belies the considerable interest of many in the past as well as its fundamental role in giving form to communities, societies, or nations.  There is an interesting interaction with law and policy in this category: the lunar new year was replaced by the Gregorian calendar in 1873, yet continues into at least 1946; religious icons, everyday items, and samurai paraphernalia become commodities, valued as Orientalia, and interestingly, laws meant to regulate sale confirm their status as anachronistic, but valued items; and festivals, such as the fighting kites (and sumo earlier) are outlawed because they reek of primitivism. In addition, public servants were also engaged in transmuting ideas into the dead past: Shigeno Yasutsugu gives the second of three major lectures on the falsehoods of what had been authoritative knowledge of the past, and Inoue Enryo begins work to eradicate ghosts, wonders, and spirits from the archipelago and turn them into folklore.