Kenseikai, Later Minseito, And Seiyukai Parties Essay ⋆ History Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The Seiyukai and the Kenseikai/Minseito were the two most powerful political parties in Japan in the first decades of the 20th century.

Under the Meiji Constitution of 1889, sovereignty resided with the Japanese emperor, but considerable ambiguity existed in determining from whence the officials who would run the government were to be drawn. An oligarchic group of genro, or elder statesmen, dominated posts in the cabinet and determined who was to occupy the office of prime minister, but by the close of the 19th century there was rising impatience with oligarchic rule. This led to a period of political maneuvering at the turn of the century that helped bring political parties to positions of greater prominence in Japan.

The base of power for the political parties was the lower house of the Diet, Japan’s parliamentary institution. The role of this body was limited, but it nonetheless provided an opportunity for elected representatives to influence affairs of state, most notably in the Diet’s power over the national budget. Originally, a tone of confrontation marked relations between the oligarch-dominated cabinet and the party-led Diet, but by the middle of the 1890s both sides increasingly recognized the possible benefits of cooperation and compromise.

The Seiyukai, a political party founded in 1900 by Ito Hirobumi—himself an elder statesman and one of the architects of the Meiji state—became the leading political party of the early 20th century in Japan. Internal divisions within his party led to Ito’s own resignation in 1903, and another elder statesman, Saionji Kinmochi, became the Seiyukai’s new president. Yet Hara Kei was quickly becoming the leading personality in the Seiyukai. It was he who struck a deal with Prime Minister Katsura Taro in 1904 whereby the Seiyukai, in exchange for its Diet members’ support for government expenditures needed to prosecute the Russo-Japanese War, gained future access to the office of prime minister. Party president Saionji served two stints as prime minister, from 1906 to 1908 and from 1911 to 1912, and the intervening non-Saionji cabinets included party representatives. It was clear that the Seiyukai had become a fixture in Japanese politics. Kai worked to strengthen the party by recruiting members of the civil bureaucracy into the organization, providing funds for local development, and seeking the support of leading industrialists. Each of these efforts was designed to further the Seiyukai’s fortunes in the Diet and to lead to eventual party rule in the government.

In 1912–13 financial constraints forced a showdown between the Seiyukai and the leadership of Japan’s military, the latter of whom wanted funding to add new army divisions, which the Seiyukai leadership was unwilling to provide. In December 1912, the army toppled Saionji’s cabinet by ordering the war minister to resign and refusing to replace him. Katsura resumed the post of prime minister, but discontent over these machinations within the government led a number of political officials, business leaders, and journalists to form a “movement to protect constitutional government,” which helped to spark mass demonstrations. Katsura resigned after just two months in an episode that illustrated the growing power of the political parties, especially the Seiyukai.

Meanwhile, Katsura created a new political party, the Doshikai—this party was renamed the Kenseikai party in 1916 and then reorganized as the Minseito in 1927—in an attempt to build a rival party that could undermine Seiyukai dominance of the Diet’s lower house. Upon Katsura’s death in 1913, his new party was led by Kato Takaaki, and in the election of 1915 the Doshikai succeeded in relegating the Seiyukai to the position of second-largest party in the Diet. The Seiyukai, however, regained a plurality of seats in 1917 and won an absolute majority in 1920.

As prime minister, Kai tried to build support for the Seiyukai through a “positive policy” of public spending on education and developing local infrastructure. Hara’s government expanded the franchise by lowering the tax qualification for voting but did not act upon calls for universal male suffrage.

Hara was assassinated in 1921, and following his death, party government was dealt a setback, as from 1922 to 1924 the post of prime minister reverted back to a series of nonparty officials. The last of these was ousted from office by another “movement to protect constitutional government,” this one consisting of a Diet coalition that included both the Kenseikai (the name for the Doshikai after 1916) and the Seiyukai. Thereupon Kenseikai president Kato Takaaki, whose party had regained a plurality of seats in the lower house of the Diet, became prime minister in 1924. For the next eight years until 1932, the heads of these two major parties alternated as prime ministers.

As early as 1920 the Kenseikai had sponsored, along with a number of smaller parties, a universal male suffrage bill in the Diet. At that time the proposal was voted down by the Seiyukai. With Kato Takaaki as prime minister, however, the Kenseikai was able to achieve passage of legislation guaranteeing universal suffrage for Japanese men aged 25 and older. The Kenseikai-led government took an approach more friendly to Japanese labor than their Seiyukai counterparts did. The new government legalized workers’ strikes, legislated improvements in industrial conditions, and provided for health benefits for workers. In the realm of economics, the platform of the Kenseikai/Minseito party emphasized the imperative of fiscal conservatism and balanced budgets in opposition to the spending programs of the Seiyukai, though both parties spent considerable money on pork-barrel projects.

The foreign policy approach of the Kenseikai/Minseito party in the 1920s was based on conciliation with China and cooperation with the West. Yet this policy engendered discontent in some quarters, especially among the military, who were concerned about protecting Japanese interests in Manchuria, perceived as severely threatened by the end of the decade by Chinese nationalists and the Soviet military. Economically, as much of the globe descended into the Great Depression. Minseito-led cabinets tried to resolve Japan’s financial difficulties, such as imbalance of trade and the too-low market price of rice, which hurt Japanese farmers but could not mitigate Japan’s financial situation.

The era of party government was marked by an increase in public scandals and allegations of corruption that damaged the prestige of the parties, as did the occasionally unseemly conduct of rival party representatives on the floor of the Diet, including physical assaults. Party government also came under heavy criticism from rightist elements who felt that such a parliamentary system ran fundamentally counter to traditional Japanese values. With disenchantment toward party officials now spreading on all sides, popular acceptance or toleration of the existing system was tenuous in an atmosphere of national crisis, and military officials and members of “patriotic societies” were able to undermine the role of the parties in governance.

In late 1931 the Seiyukai again gained control of the government from the Minseito, but it would prove to be a short-lived cabinet. The maneuvering of antiparty elements, culminating in May 1932 with the assassination of prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, resulted in the fall of the Seiyukai cabinet. The era of party rule suddenly ended, as so-called national unity governments headed by military leaders or nonparty elites eroded the influence of the parties, and party representatives in the cabinets declined. The parties continued to function in the Diet, but internal strife over how best to defend the Diet’s prerogatives in the face of increasing military authority may have prevented the parties from asserting themselves more strongly. As the 1930s progressed the Minseito tended to hold to its policy of supporting the nonparty cabinets, while the Seiyukai eventually took a more oppositional stance. The parties still managed to cling to their place in the Diet and even played a vital part in the ouster of multiple cabinets in the late 1930s and into 1940. In the latter year, however, Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro’s government succeeded in formally dissolving Japan’s political party organizations in the name of creating a wartime new order. Former party officials continued to exercise parliamentary influence and as such to play a role in political affairs, albeit a considerably limited one.

Bibliography:

Berger, Gordon Mark. Parties Out of Power in Japan, 1931–1941. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977;
Duus, Peter, ed. The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol 6, The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988;
Duus, Peter. Modern Japan. 2d ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998;
Hastings, Sally Ann. Neighborhood and Nation in Tokyo, 1905–1937. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995;
Najita, Tetsuo. Hara Kei and the Politics of Compromise, 1905–1915. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.

This example Kenseikai, Later Minseito, And Seiyukai Parties Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.