The Making of Modern Japan / An Account of the Progress of Japan from Pre-feudal Days to Constitutional Government & the Position of a Great Power, With Chapters on Religion, the Complex Family System, Education, &c.

by John Harington Gubbins

The first parliamentary elections were held in the summer of 1890, the first session of the Diet taking place in the following autumn.

CHAPTER XIX
Working of Representative Government—Stormy Proceedings in Diet—Legal and Judicial Reform—Political Rowdyism—Fusion of Classes.

The simultaneous creation in Japan of a Parliament and a Constitution offers a contrast to the sequence of political history elsewhere. There is no essential connection between the two. Some countries have enjoyed parliamentary rights of various kinds before being endowed with Constitutions. In others, again, the order of precedence has been reversed. The fact that in Japan the two came together may be regarded as the natural outcome of the decision of the new Government formed at the Restoration to reorganize the general administration of the country on Western lines. The establishment of parliamentary institutions of some kind was the fixed idea of all reformers. The working of this leading idea may be traced throughout the whole course of administrative reconstruction. Reference to it was made in the Imperial Oath of 1869—spoken of by Japanese, when writing in English, as the “Charter Oath of the nation.” It is seen in the introduction of a deliberative element into the otherwise archaic form given to the new administration; in the subsequent creation of a Senate (Genrō-in); in the creation of prefectural assemblies in 1880; in the definite promise of a Parliament, to be accompanied by a Constitution, in 1881; in the creation in 1890 of smaller local assemblies on the same representative basis as the prefectural assemblies; and, finally, in the promulgation in 1889 of the Constitution which came into operation in the following year, simultaneously with the Diet, signalizing the accomplishment of the purpose in view from the first. That the Constitution, when promulgated, was of a less liberal kind than that which had been originally intended, and was still desired by advanced reformers, was due to the pressure of reactionary influences already described. This, as well as the short space of years covered by the transition from feudalism to constitutional government, of the working of which the nation had no experience, save what little had been acquired in connection with the revision of local government, accounts to a large extent for the stormy character which marked the proceedings of the Diet for several years after it came into existence.

The final establishment of representative government was accompanied in the same year by evidence of further substantial progress in the direction of legal and judicial reform. The Code of Civil Procedure and the Commercial Code were completed. Of these, the first came into operation immediately; the latter not until eight years later, by which time it had undergone careful revision. The law of the organization of Judicial Courts was also promulgated, and the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, which had been in force since 1882, appeared in new and revised forms. In the preparation of all these laws, as in the framing of the Constitution and other subsidiary measures, much assistance was rendered by foreign jurists, amongst whom the names of Mr. (now Sir Francis) Piggott and the late Mr. Feodor Satow may be mentioned.

The interval of nearly two years which elapsed between the promulgation of the Constitution and its coming into operation was a period of increased political agitation and unrest. On the very morning of the promulgation of the Constitution the Minister of Education, Viscount Mōri, whose pro-foreign tendencies had caused much irritation in reactionary circles, was murdered by a Shintō priest in the presence of his guards as he was stepping into his carriage to proceed to the Palace. It was to his initiative that the addition of the English language to the curriculum of elementary schools had been due. It was reported at the time that his assassination was the result of some real, or fancied, slight on the part of the deceased statesman when paying an official visit of inspection to the national shrines at Isé. What truth there was in this rumour will probably never be known.

The resumption at this time of negotiations for the revision of the treaties with foreign Powers led to further agitation also on this subject. When it became known that in the new proposals put forward by the Japanese Government the appointment of foreign judges was contemplated, popular indignation at what was regarded as a slight to the dignity of Japan found vent in an attempt in the autumn of the same year on the life of the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count (afterwards Marquis) Ōkuma. Though escaping with his life, he was so severely injured by the explosion of a bomb thrown by a political fanatic, a native of his own province of Hizen, that he was forced to resign. Nor did the opening of the first session of the Diet have any calming effect on the general unrest which prevailed. So serious, indeed, was the recrudescence of anti-foreign feeling that in the spring of 1891 the late Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, who, as Crown Prince, was on a visit to Japan, had a narrow escape from injury at the hands of a policeman on duty, who attacked him with a sword. If, however, the state of things both on the eve of the opening of the Diet, and after parliamentary institutions were in full operation, wore a disquieting aspect, the anxieties of the Government were lessened by the want of unity among the various political factions in opposition. The dissolution of the General Agreement Union, one of whose prominent leaders, Count Gotō, rejoined the Government, showed that internal dissensions were stronger than the motives which brought its adherents together, and its example was followed by other equally ephemeral associations. In the reconstruction of political parties which subsequently took place the Jiyūtō was revived under the leadership of Count Itagaki, its numbers being reduced to very small dimensions; the General Agreement Union reappeared in the form of an organized political party, a character it had not possessed before, and under the changed name of the Daidō Club; while the Kaishintō which had narrowly escaped dissolution, retained its original constitution, but without its most prominent leaders.

Meanwhile the first elections for the Diet had taken place in the summer of 1890. The result was in accordance with what might have been anticipated in view of the confusion of ideas then existing in the political world, and the local feeling which stood in the way of combined action. The members who were returned to the first Parliament owed allegiance to ten different political groups, the most numerous of all being the free lances, who belonged to no party and were grouped together under the name of Independents. It was not, therefore, an organized nor, in any sense, a united Opposition which confronted Ministers in the Diet; but, much as they might differ among themselves on questions of the day, the various groups were capable of forming temporary alliances, which, owing to the uncertainty resulting from the large number of independent members, caused no little embarrassment to the “Two-Clan” Government which had called them into parliamentary life. The general tone of the first House of Representatives was unmistakably democratic.

Buckle, in his History of Civilization, makes some remarks on the social conditions prevailing in France on the eve of the French Revolution which are applicable to those existing in Japan at the time of which we are speaking. In the latter country, however, these conditions were the result, not the forerunner, of revolution. “As long,” he says, “as the different classes confined themselves to pursuits peculiar to their own sphere they were encouraged to preserve their separate habits; and the subordination or, as it were, the hierarchy of society was easily maintained. But when the members of the various orders met in the same place with the same object, they became knit together by a new sympathy. The highest and most durable of all pleasures, the pleasure caused by the perception of fresh truths, was now a link which banded together those social elements that were formerly wrapped up in the pride of their own isolation.” And he goes on to point out how the new eagerness for the study of science at this time in France stimulated democratic feeling.

In Japan the separation of pursuits, to which Buckle alludes, had been a striking feature of pre-Restoration days. Not only were there the class distinctions, rigidly maintained, between the samurai, the farmer, the artizan and the merchant; but two of these classes, those of the merchants and artizans, were split up into guilds of an exclusive character. The towns, moreover, like those of mediæval Europe, were divided into quarters inhabited by those following the same trade, or handicraft. The fusion of classes had begun even before the Restoration. The first impulse in this direction had arisen out of the economic situation which existed towards the close of the Tokugawa administration. The distress of the farmer, and the poverty of the samurai, caused breaches in the barriers separating class from class, and notably in those which divided the two classes mentioned from the rest of the nation. These were, however, only premonitory symptoms. The real fusion of classes came after the Restoration, when the abolition of feudalism put an end to the privileged position of the samurai, diminishing at the same time, though not wholly extinguishing, class prejudice. The various reforms which followed: the establishment of schools and colleges which brought education within the reach of everyone; the measures affecting land tenure and taxation; the codification of laws; and conscription—to name only a few—all tended to promote uniformity; the final factor in the process being the creation of parliamentary institutions, which supplied a meeting-ground for all sections of the nation, and a common field of interest for all.

An increase of democratic feeling was thus a logical consequence of the policy of reform on Western lines, on which the Government had embarked after the Restoration. When the Monarch and his Ministers proclaimed with one voice their intention to associate the people in the work of government, when local autonomy was by degrees introduced, when a Constitution was in operation, and a Parliament in session, it would have been strange indeed if the general stream of popular tendencies had not set in the direction of democratic ideas. Nor were such tendencies incompatible with Imperialist sentiment, the feeling that had counted for so much in the overthrow of the previous régime. For this latter feeling was simply a habit of mind, a passive tradition, a principle which, so far as politics were concerned, had rarely been translated into practice, though it formed the groundwork for a more active, if somewhat artificial, loyalty, and an exaggerated patriotism.