But the betweenness is not between the Tokugawa, pre-modern or feudal, modes of social organization vs. the new modern nation-state; it is between the reforms that seemed to promise political participation and economic opportunity and an increasingly centralized and authoritarian state.  This betweenness enables a multiple temporality that suggests that the communities on the archipelago are changing, not uniformly, but differentially, by region and community and at different rates. They do not come out as ``backward,'' ignorant, unimportant or minor in a narrative of gradual liberalization from a traditional or feudal society to a modern one, but as participants in the transformation, reacting differentially to the alteration of and pressurs upon their lives and customs.

Without doubt, these movements share a discontent with the increasingly centralized government, limitations on popular input into decision makings, and a desire to change. Moreover, members and leaders of the Jiyuto were often involved in the other parties. But the developing political party movement, the increasing violence of politics, and the dissolution of the the Jiyuto(Freedom party), can be seen as a movement to use and extend the access to government granted earlier, and eventually led to revolutionary rhetoric and activity. On the other hand, the rise of tenant parties, the Debtor party, and the Poor People's parties bring out the hierarchies of the new market economy. Farmers sought relief from the devastating economic conditions; the government responded by reinforcing law, while the farmers turned toward their collective knowledge of the peasant rebellions.

In these events the central government utilized its repertoire of laws, police and incarceration, politics, and the military (conscript army) to enforce its tutelary role. On the one hand it uses the idea of a bodily order, of the norms through which people must act. For example, in 1881 the emperor, sent a letter to Saionji Kimmochi, a noble, that he desist in his activities as editor of the Toyo jiyu shimbun, advocating popular participation. It was unbecoming of a noble (Bailey). Second, the 1880 (and the revised 1882) Regulations for Public Meetings and Associations imposed many restrictions on meetings, content, and communications. Here, we have the parameters that establish constraint, beyond which one is threatened with a different violence, incarceration or execution. And at the local level, governors, such as the infamous Mishima Michitsune, used their authority (in Mishima's case, abused) to suppress opposition parties. The arrest of Tanaka Shozo, at that time a member of the Tochigi Prefectural Assembly because of his criticism of Mishima, is an example of the governor's heavy handed tactics.  In another case, the owner and editor of Marumaru chinbun were fined 50 yen each for an image that supposedly slandered Mishima.

Mishima was the common figure in the Gunma and Mt Kaba incidents.  The Gunma incident could be considered an outgrowth of the Fukushima incident in 1882 when Mishima abused his position to build roads and try to break the Jiyuto.  It began as plans conjured up by some members of the Gunma Jiyuto to assassinate Mishima and other government dignitaries at the opening ceremony of the railway to Takasaki. The ceremony was postponed, but organizers proceeded anyway. As many as 3,000 participated; a moneylender's house was destroyed and police barracks occupied. The Mt Kaba incident was much smaller. Sixteen members of the Jiyuto were camped out on Mt Kaba, waiting for the scheduling of the opening ceremony of new government buildings at Utsunomiya, the new capital of Tochigi (as one of his first acts as new governor of Tochigi, Mishima changed capitals from Tochigi to Utsunomiya). They planned to assassinate Mishima and other dignitaries. The subsequent battle with police became the Mt Kaba incident. One of the banners raised by the rebels read "Headquarters of the Kabasan Revolutionary Party" and "Charge Ahead for Freedom." They also sang the "Song of American Independence"(Bowen 31-32).

Indeed, even after the Jiyuto dissolved itself, and Chichibu revolt was put down , radical Jiyuto members continued to plot. In December police uncovered a revolutionary plot to form a militia and start a revolution. This Iida incident was a non-event in a sense. Today we would cite this as success of the Homeland Security against terrorism. Radical members of the Jiyuto in Iida and Nagoya had been planning for months infiltrate the military barracks, foment mutiny and mobilize farmers, and take over Nagoya and Osaka. The purpose was revolutionary. They called themselves the Patriotic Righteousness society (Aikoku Seigensha). While the Iida incident entailed the arrest of a number of plotters, it was one of the major news events of 1884. It shows the extent to which the government was worried about this popular, democratic movement, the extent to which many people were willing to go to achieve greater political participation in the evolving government, and the extent the government would go to to surpress this threat to its power.

In the end, government suppression eliminated many of the leaders---Inoue Denzo disappeared and lived in Hokkaido where he reappeared over 30 years after the uprising as Ito Fusajiro---and convicted thousands of suspected participants. In Chichibu the government found 4,000 people guilty, convicted 300 as felons, and sentenced 7 to death. Perhaps Robert Ward summed up best the unease with mass movements, that they "seriously derogated from the unity, stability, and efficiency of political leadership" (Ward, 587). In other words, the desires, efforts, and protests of the body politic to participate in liberal government is harmful to liberal capitalist development.