Factors that undermined democracy in Japan in the interwar years?
What factors undermined democracy in Japan in the interwar years?
Now that a century has passed since the start of World War I, what links that era with the Japan of today? Human rights and democracy have become the basis for Japan’s contemporary political system, and their influence extends beyond politics to every corner of society. Democracy in Japan is commonly associated with the reforms implemented during the Allied Occupation following World War II, particularly the adoption of a new constitution including explicit provisions for a parliamentary system of government.
But the origins of Japan’s democracy predate this period. Even the Allies who defeated Japan in 1945 realized this: Among the terms for surrender given in the Potsdam Declaration, there is reference to the removal of obstacles to “the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people.” This demonstrates the need to look back to Japan’s political history in the period before World War II.
Japan experienced a groundswell of liberalism in the early twentieth century that was dubbed “Taishō Democracy” by historians in the 1950s.(*1) The term “Taishō Democracy” refers to the flourishing of new ways of thinking, strengthening of social movements, and development of party politics in a period centered on the Taishō era (the reign of Emperor Taishō, 1912–26).
From 1924 to 1932, seven successive cabinets were formed by political parties, laying the foundations for genuine party politics in the Diet; this was lauded at the time as “the normal course of constitutional government” and had a high degree of legitimacy. In this article, I will consider the World War I centennial from the perspective of Taishō Democracy, sketching the history of the party politics that developed in Japan’s interwar period.(*2)
Japan declared war on Germany in August 1914, entering World War I on the side of the Allies shortly after the conflict broke out in Europe. At the time, Japanese politics was in an era of change. Following the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1867 and formal restoration of imperial rule under Emperor Meiji (the Meiji Restoration) the following year, Japan embarked on the construction of a new set of political institutions befitting a modern nation-state, including its first constitution, the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (Meiji Constitution), adopted in 1889, and a national legislature, the Imperial Diet, established in 1890.
In the early years following the establishment of the Diet, the government continued to be dominated by hanbatsu, the cliques of former samurai from the domains of Satsuma and Chōshū who played leading roles in the Meiji Restoration. However, around the turn of the twentieth century, hanbatsu dominance came under challenge from political parties, particularly Rikken Seiyūkai (Friends of Constitutional Government), a party founded in 1900 by Itō Hirobumi.
Japan entered a new era of politics in the twentieth century in two senses. The first was that older leaders from the time of the Meiji Restoration passed on the torch to a new generation. The second was that the political order shifted from one strongly influenced by the genrō, senior statesmen from the hanbatsu, to a more open system of governance. From 1901 to 1913 power alternated between the next-generation leaders Katsura Tarō, a Chōshū bureaucrat and former army general, and Saionji Kinmochi, who succeeded Itō Hirobumi as the head of Seiyūkai, the majority party in the House of Representatives.
This transitional stability did not last. In 1912, the first year of the Taishō era, Japanese politics entered into turmoil. When Saionji would not increase the army by two divisions, the army refused to supply a minister and his second cabinet fell. The first Movement to Protect Constitutional Government erupted with calls for abolishment of hanbatsu government.
Under the Meiji Constitution, the prime minister was appointed by the emperor, with the selection being made in practice through discussion among the genrō, but the new movement demanded “the normal course of constitutional government,” a prime minister chosen by the majority party in the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Diet). Social pressure reached a boil in the Taishō Political Crisis of 1913, forcing Katsura, who had just replaced Saionji and started his third term as prime minister, to resign after little more than 50 days in office. A naval corruption scandal in early 1914 brought further outrage and political upheaval.