Taisho+and+Showa+Japan

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In 1912, the Titanic embarked upon its maiden and final voyage, the Republic of China was established, and New Mexico became the 47 state in the United States. Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel, Fenway Park opened in Boston, Tiger Park in Detroit, the Summer Olympics were held in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, made a friendship gift to the United States of 300 Japanese Cherry trees to be planted on the Mall in Washington, D.C..

In July of 1912, the Meiji Emperor of Japan died, and was replaced by his son, the Taisho Emperor. In this event, Japan saw the changing of an era, and although the late Meiji period certainly showed trends in the directions toward which Japan and Japanese culture would move in the next 14 years, the Taisho period can also be seen as a break with the realities of Meiji and the beginning of a new global and domestic context for the Japanese people.

The Taisho era is popularly characterized in Japan as the era of "Taisho Democracy". This story emphasizes the fact that Japan began to undergo some serious political changes in the Taisho period. Perhaps most clearly laid out, in English, in Tetsuo Najita's book //Hara Kei and the Politics of Compromise//, the Taisho Democracy story makes the case that the Meiji Constitution, which was not a document "of the people, by the people, and for the people," but a gift to the Japanese People from their emperor (and so presumably one that could be taken away) made no provisions for a democratic system in which elected officials could actually influence real policy. A growing movement within Japan of people and politicians who wanted to change that, a create a party political state, recognized that to change the constitution itself would be nearly impossible, and certainly politically suicidal. They did, however, succeed in created a kind of democratic power, and even were able to gain control of the prime minister's position and the appointment of the cabinet for a short time in the 1920's and early 1930's through what Najita calls the "politics of compromise". The primary compromise, it is clear both from Najita's work, and that of Butow, and other historians of the era, was one of fiscal power for political power.

This exchange of power was based, again, on the provisions of the Meiji Constitution. The constitution had been written primarily by Ito Hirobumi, one of the group that had designed the Meiji Restoration and the policies of the Meiji government afterward who were called the "Genro" or "elder statesmen" of Japan, and who held not only the emperor's ear, but all the real governmental power in Japan. Ito had been killed in 1909 in Korea by "freedom fighters" protesting Japan's occupation and control of Korea as a colony. His most lasting work as genro, however was his constitution, promulgated in February of 1889. To gather information and to understand how constitutions work, Ito had spent 18 months in Europe studying the constitutions of nations he felt had similar political conditions to those in Japan at the time. He finally settled on his primary model - the constitution of Prussia. In many ways, Ito changed the ideas in Prussia's constitution, but in some critical ways he kept things the same. One primary similarity was the limited power of the elected parliament (or, in Japan, the Diet). These representatives were elected to debate, to give some semblance of power to the people through (limited) elections. However, the one power that, like Prussia, Ito did confer on the new Diet was the power to control the purse of the nation. This power was not unlimited. In fact, the Diet did not have the ability to stop funding for the government. It's approval was required, however, in order to increase the budget. If the approval of the Diet was not received for increases in expenditures, then the government was legally bound to use the same budget as the previous cycle. In the Taisho period, astute politicians such as Hara Kei (also known as Hara Takashi) were able to turn this to their advantage for the simple reason that Japan's prosperity was increasing, and the government desired to increase the size of the military and increase expenditures on other budget items as well.

Politicians such as Hara were able, by finding ways to compromise, or not, with the genro of the time, was able to gain the emperor's appointment as Prie Minister in 1918, and remained in office until 1921. Hara was the first commoner prime minister of Japan, and the first who was there due to the popular success of his political party, the //Rikken Seiyukai//. Hara was followed by other Prime Ministers who were also representatives of their respective political parties, but his administration was the first to achieve this compromise.

The story of Taisho Democracy continues to follow the path of various party administrations, with the basic understanding that these administrations achieved a kind of democratic process in the leadership of Japan. To some degree, though, this story is incomplete.

First, the achievement of democracy was much more limited than the story of Taisho Democracy leads us to believe. At no point during the Taisho or early Showa eras was the Prime Minister appointed by his popularly elected colleagues in the Diet. The Emperor (and so the genro) maintained control over the appointment of Prime Minister at all times. The appointment of party politicians was usually seen by this powerful group as a compromise in order to gain increases in the budget. Once the Prime Minister had received his mandate from the emperor to form a government, he named ministers to each seat in the cabinet. The Meiji Constitution specified, though, that the ministers of the Army and the Navy were special members of the cabinet - appointed by the Prime Minister, but not bound by his direction. The only direct line of command for the military was from the emperor to commanders. Civilian leadership was never permitted a role in governing the military in any way.

Still, there was a new atmosphere in the Taisho period, and a new historical context to go along with it. If the political changes were really only superficial, that was not unusual in the world at the time. In many European countries, even as late as 1912, democracy was something the political elite used to placate a growing middle class whose money they needed but whose voices they did not want to hear too loudly. In Germany in 1912, the Reichstag was an elected body, but like its Prussian predecessor and that system's other political progeny in Japan, power to the German body was severely restricted, and the Kaiser seems to have regarded it as little more than an advisory body - and a noisy and inconvenient one at that. The Russian Duma was even more constrained - it was legally no more than a group of elected representatives whose sole legal function was to give advice to the Czar, and he rarely listened, let alone acted upon the advice given. Again like Germany and Russia, Japan's Diet was elected from individuals who paid a certain high level of taxes, and those who were allowed to vote were again property holders who paid above a specified level of taxes. So any representative body, limited as it may be in power, was also limited by the fact that the electorate probably more closely identified with the non-elected ruling elite than they did with the larger "people" of the nation, in Japan as well as Germany and Russia.

So if Japan was not, politically speaking, unique in the world during the Taisho period, what was going on that makes this period one to talk about? In fact, quite a large number of things, most of them cultural and economic in focus.

In terms of global history, perhaps the first most important event after the 1912 change in China from the Qing Dynasty to a Republic, was the advent, in 1914 Summer, of the First World War. The impact of this war on the world, even though it was fought only in Europe and the Ottoman Empire/Balkans areas, cannot be overstated. It was global in terms of involvement, if not in terms of geographic location. As the war became a clear stalemate on the Western Front, the belligerent powers looked for allies in other parts of the world that could help alleviate some of the strain of total war. For the Germans, the primary non-Western ally was the Ottoman Empire. For the English, it was India, and for France its African colonies. These colonized territories were asked to send combat engineers and to participate in the growing of food and the manufacture of war materiel to supply those fighting. In hopes of regaining control of much of its territory, China sent 100,000 men to work as combat engineers for the Allied side, and these men worked under fire, for long hours in horrible conditions to assist with victory in the war.

Ironically, Japan declared war against Germany as well, in 1914 - this is partly because of friendship and defensive treaties signed with Great Britain, but also partly because it provided Japan with the opportunity to fight directly against Germany by consfiscating all of Germany's East Asian possessions, including those in China.

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