Japan: From the Japanese Government History

by Unknown

The most melodramatic spectacles of the year were yet to come. The new Janus-like Constitutional Party, whose political composition was as incongruous as its two masters, the idealistic Count Itagaki of the Liberals and the nimble-witted Count Ōkuma of the Progressives, suddenly found itself face to face with an opportunity which had for years been its cherished goal, but which it was at this moment hardly prepared to accept with alacrity. A mongrel cabinet was at last organized, with Ōkuma as premier and foreign minister, Itagaki as home minister, two more former Progressives and three Liberals receiving other portfolios, and, finally, Marquis Saigō and Viscount Katsura as ministers of army and navy. It should be noted that the marquis was one of the Elder Statesmen, under whose wings the viscount also had shaped his political career. The party thus failed to form a cabinet of purely its own complexion, which fact must have been especially disheartening in showing that the powerful military institutions of the empire could not be controlled by the inexperienced politicians emerging from the lower house of the diet. Such a matter, however, weighed little by the side of the grave internal difficulties that beset the new party from its start. The traditional sympathies of its two component parts proved too different from one another, and the individual sense of honor and also interest too little subservient to the common cause, for the members of the new government to hold together for half a year. Moreover, the executive authorities of the party at large instituted a shameless movement of systematic office-hunting, in which the old Liberals and Progressives vied against each other and among themselves. The same disorganized condition characterized the general election of August when a concerted action of the party could hardly be found anywhere in the country. What finally precipitated the downfall of the cabinet was a speech of Ozaki, the Progressive minister of education, which roundly denounced the materialistic tendencies of the age, and declared that if Japan should become a republic her people probably would not hesitate to elect a Vanderbilt or an Astor for president. The former Liberals adroitly chimed in with those chauvinists who pretended to have discovered in the speech a sinister, disloyal motive, on the part of the speaker, against the reigning family. When Ozaki's resignation was thus forced, the premier, without listening to the overtures of the Liberals, appointed another Progressive to the vacant post. At the end of October the dissolution of the party began openly amid considerable bickerings, and the cabinet, which had already been deserted by the non-partisan ministers of army and of navy, and could no longer maintain itself, tendered its resignation. Thus the first attempt at a party cabinet in Japan came to an ignominious failure under extremely untoward circumstances. The old parties parted more widely than before, and the unfortunate ministry passed out of existence before it could face the unfriendly house of peers and tackle the enormous national deficit amounting to thirty-seven millions of yen.

Field Marshal Count Yamagata, who received an imperial summons, formed a cabinet, on the eve of a new diet, in November, 1898, which consisted entirely of Elder Statesmen and their sympathizers. The duty of carrying out the post-bellum measures had devolved upon the new cabinet. The support of the peers could be safely relied upon, but in the lower chamber nothing could be effected without the aid of some party. Perhaps nothing could show more clearly the possibility of the ultimate ministerial responsibility to the diet than the conduct of the field marshal at this juncture. He and some of his colleagues, as well as the majority of the peers, had been known as the most persistent believers in the non-partisan government and in the responsibility of the cabinet to the crown, and yet they could see absolutely no hope of performing their official duties but by allying themselves with the party which once supported Marquis Itō's post-bellum measures. That party was the Liberal, which now monopolized the name Constitutionalist. It demanded certain portfolios, not from the spirit of office-hunting, but, as it was explained, for the sake of establishing the principle that no cabinet can be "transcendental," or absolutely non-partisan. According, however, to an agreement arrived at between the cabinet and the Constitutionalists, the latter satisfied themselves with a manifesto made by Count Yamagata at a social gathering, to the effect that he believed the coöperation of a party or parties commanding a majority in the diet was essential for the discharge of the business of the state. It was significant enough to hear these words from the mouth of the premier from whom they could otherwise have been least expected, and yet it is not too much to say that no cabinet, not excluding partisan cabinets, has succeeded in making a greater use of a party than his. The success was in no small measure due to Tōru Hoshi, formerly Japanese minister at Washington, and at the time under discussion the house leader of the Constitutionalists, who, with his wonderful talent for political tactics, acted for the government as the trustworthy foreman of his party. By his skillful maneuvers, an increase of the land tax, which had, as we saw, failed after causing within half a year the dissolution of two successive houses of representatives, was now, despite the preponderant sympathy in the house with the landowning class of the country, agreed to by a majority of 161 to 134. But for its passage, the deficit of the next fiscal year would have reached beyond forty-six millions of yen.

Let us pause a moment to examine the nature of the Japanese land tax, without an understanding of which neither the past nor the future of the parliamentary politics will be comprehended with sufficient clearness. The reader will recall how before the fall of feudalism most of the arable land in the country was held in fief, and how the tenants paid to their lords onerous rents, ranging between thirty and seventy per cent. of the product of the soil. When the imperial government assumed the control of the state in 1868, it found itself confronted with the colossal task of reorganizing the machinery of the state in nearly all of its parts, and introducing new, urgent measures, some of which were on a large scale, and all of which demanded a considerable outlay of funds. To do this they were supplied with a miserably small income, which hardly covered one-tenth of the necessary expenditures. It was essential above all to institute a sound system of taxation, whose basis, in those days of an insignificant foreign trade, could not but consist in a reorganized land tax. Nothing could, however, be done in that direction, so long as the local daimios still held their fiefs, to which the authority of the new government could not penetrate. It was only when the fiefs were, in the manner already described in a previous chapter, surrendered to the state that anything toward the establishment of a secure system of taxation could be attempted. Pending the assessing of the values of the arable land, which naturally required time, the government resorted to the issuance of inconvertible notes and other measures of purely temporary and irregular nature. The land tax itself was, however, conceived and finally established in the most remarkable manner, its principle being, in the first place, a complete nationalization of land, and, then, the transferring of the ownership to the individual holders who were actually tilling it. The duty of the new owner to pay a tax to the state for his landed property was evidently conceived by the government as a natural consequence of the ownership so bountifully and so completely conferred upon him on their initiative. With the land tax securely installed, the main structure of the new system of national taxation had been finished, for the issue of this new tax at its first complete return amounted to more than two-thirds of the entire revenue of the state. It now remains to be told how the value of each piece of land was assessed and its tax determined. The assessment of value consisted, first, in taking the average of the harvest for five years, then converting it into money at the basis of the average price of rice ruling in the same period, and, finally, estimating the amount of the capital which would be necessary to yield an interest equal to the price just calculated. The estimated capitalization was considered the value of the land in question. The assessment of land throughout the country was completed in 1881. As to the tax itself, its rate was fixed at three per cent. of the official value, and later reduced to two and a half per cent. It would be difficult to overestimate the benefit that accrued to the farmer under the new law. He passed at once from the position of a tenant to that of an absolute owner, his former lord being at the same time recompensed by the state with public bonds for the fiefs he had surrendered. Thus the emancipation of the cultivator from the feudal bondage of land, which still has a considerable hold upon some of the former feudal communities in Europe, was in Japan definite and final. Nor did the new owner find himself under such restrictions as had existed under the feudal régime, either in the alienation of his estate or in its utilization to the best advantage by raising upon it whatever crop he liked. In return, his due to the state was only a sum, no longer arbitrary or in kind, but fixed and in money, which, as has been pointed out by some writers, was no more than one and one-fourth per cent. of the market value of the land, or equal to a rent assessed on the basis of an eighty-year purchase, which is less than a quarter of the ordinary tenant's rent.[2] Add to this the important consideration that between the time when the land tax law went into effect and the year 1898 the price of rice rose nearly threefold, so that the real burden of the tax lessened correspondingly by two-thirds. The market value of land, also, had increased, even as early as 1888, on the average of five or sixfold. If it be said that the farmer's quota in the expenditures of the local government had in the meantime considerably increased, there still remains the fact that the increase was hardly commensurate with the growth of cultivated area and general land value and the rise in both quantity and price of the crops.

To say, however, that the land tax was lenient is not equivalent to saying that it was the most reasonable source for an increased imposition. That it was so, in the opinion of the fair-minded people, remains now to be shown. It should be remembered, in the first place, that although in 1881 the income of the land tax amounted to more than four-sevenths of the total revenue of the government, it had not since increased, but rather fallen from over forty-two millions of yen to less than forty, while, on the other hand, the expenditures of the state had risen from seventy-one and one-half millions in 1881 to eighty-five and three-tenths in 1895, and then, so rapidly after the advent of the post-bellum measures that in 1899 they stood at 254 millions, or more than three and one-half times as large as they were less than two decades before. Such items of taxes as had been created or increased to meet a part of these enormously swollen expenditures had nearly all fallen on the urban population. The public bonds which were issued from time to time and could not be much multiplied by fresh issues were also absorbed mainly by the merchants and manufacturers, and the burden of the indirect taxes, which in 1899 brought in the considerable sum of sixteen millions, was borne by the consumers of foreign goods, who for the most part lived in the cities. This increased assessment of the urban population can be appreciated in contrast with the greatly lightened land tax of the landowners, who gained much and lost little by the rapid development of the economic resources of the country. Their interests were further strengthened by the new régime, under which the lower house of the imperial diet championed their cause with such a decisive majority of its members that no dissolution could change the situation. Some of the peers may have represented urban interests, but their voice in financial measures was as small as the control over them by the representatives was secure.

By the magnitude of these difficulties should be measured the signal success of the Yamagata cabinet in obtaining the passage in the lower house of the land tax bill, on December 20, 1898, by the majority of 161 to 134. It was, however, bought with a heavy cost both to the cabinet and to its allies, the Constitutionalists. The former had been compelled to relinquish its "transcendentalism," and the latter risked the displeasure of their constituencies. Nor was the bill passed without a hard struggle and serious amendments. The original proposition of the government contemplated a permanent increase of the tax rate to four per cent., but the bill as it was adopted fixed it at 3.3 per cent. (the rate of the house land in the cities being, however, 5 per cent.), and limited its validity to the short period of five years, so that the estimated increase in the income of the tax, after its going into plenary force, was only over eight million yen, or less than half the originally intended increase. Even this reduced measure was not agreed to until the government yielded to the demands to revise the land valuation in the country in such a way as to cut the total assessed value by 3,200,000 yen, and, what is more, to transfer the charge of the prison expenditures, amounting to four millions, from the local to the central exchequer. The net gain by the increased tax measure would hardly rise above four million yen annually, and this slight gain would be temporary, while the losses entailed on the government from the reassessment and prison expenditure would be permanent. After the expiration of the five years the government would be left worse off than at the beginning of the term.

In spite of these drawbacks, the credit of raising the income of the land, income, and saké taxes by forty-six millions of yen, and thus enabling the post-bellum measures to be carried out to any real extent, belongs justly to the Yamagata cabinet. If we add to this remarkable success the establishment of the gold standard in 1898 and the passage of the new election law in 1900, and also remember that the cabinet possessed a strong unity, it becomes difficult to understand why it resigned in September, 1900, at the prime of its success. The reason was probably the characteristic modesty and prudence of the field marshal, who saw that he had attained to a success large enough to satisfy any premier, while the prolongation of his office might involve him in embarrassing relations with the new party just formed by Marquis Itō, with which the retiring premier had little sympathy.

The attitude of Marquis Itō toward the Yamagata cabinet during the latter's tenure of office was one of a cordial adviser to a modest inquirer. When the late Ōkuma cabinet fell, the marquis was summoned by the emperor to hasten back from China, where he had been traveling, but before he touched the shores of the main island of Japan the organization of the Yamagata cabinet had practically been completed. Itō may have been somewhat chagrined, but it goes to the credit of himself and of the field marshal that they maintained all through the twenty-two months of the latter's administration the utmost mutual respect and good-will that ever could exist between two men of temperaments so widely different from each other. But the time came when Itō at last found favorable opportunities to organize a large model party, which the former Liberals (lately styled Constitutionalists) joined in a body. He had seen too well in his tours round the country to what abuses the existing party system had everywhere led, and how far the nation stood, mainly owing to the flagrant defects of the present parties, from an ideal constitutional government, the legal foundation for which he had himself designed. Gradually and with increasing force he seems to have convinced himself that there should exist a party powerful enough to counteract the present evils, sufficiently organized and disciplined to possess a distinct unity of conduct, and actuated solely by the best and most logical motives of national progress. The patriotic intention of the marquis himself in these ideas cannot for a moment be doubted: it must have seemed plain to him that his assumption of leadership in a party must mean a radical severance of himself from his past career and friends, and even the silent resentment of the latter, while his disciplinary measures would, even with his imposing prestige and influence, become less binding on the party as the latter grew in size. As soon, however, as his desires of organizing a new party were made known, on August 25, men of all classes and motives flocked under his standard in irresistible numbers. The public inauguration of the party, under the name Constitutional Political Association (Rikken Seiyū Kwai), took place on September 15, and eleven days later was followed by the sudden resignation of the Yamagata cabinet. Upon Itō now logically devolved the duty of taking the reins of the state in hand, but it was only after a considerable hesitation and some unexpected difficulties that the fourth Itō cabinet was finally organized on October 19. Who can deny that this was a genuine party cabinet, in an even fuller sense than the late Ōkuma cabinet, and that Marquis Itō was after all deeply convinced of the futility of a "transcendental" cabinet, which owes everything to the crown and nothing to the diet?

The new cabinet, with its illustrious leader, its absolute majority in the lower house, and its immense following in the country, seems to have been attended from its beginning by no inconsiderable difficulties, some of which, indeed, proved more serious than could have been expected. Foremost among them stood the financial ghost, which would never down, but which now, with the dispatch of troops to North China, made an unusually ominous appearance before the inchoate government. The increased tax measures, mainly in sugar and saké taxes and customs duties, intended to raise twenty-one million yen, readily passed through the house of representatives, where the landed interest still outweighed the urban, but met a different treatment from the peers. That these would be cool toward the cabinet may have been expected, but no man had imagined that they would present so stubborn an opposition and such adroit tactics as they did. Their stand was as determined, when it was taken, as it had previously been unsuspected. Between February 25 and March 12, 1901, were employed in vain the persuasion of the premier, reconciliation by four Elders, and two successive suspensions of the diet. Never before in the history of the Japanese Constitution had the house of peers so seriously opposed the government, nor had its action ever caused a suspension of the imperial diet. The anomaly of the situation becomes more evident when one recalls that the upper chamber was now wielding its weapons against its creator, who had called it into being as a conservative force to check the radicalism of the other chamber. Above the fear of a dissolution, as they were, the peers caused a complete deadlock. How it was removed by an imperial word, and how unprecedented the procedure was, has been described in connection with our account of the Constitution. The survival of the Itō cabinet through this crisis, and the conduct of the premier in allowing his trouble to be remedied by an aid from the throne, were not unattended by the increased ill-will of the peers and even by some significant whispers among the rank and file of his own party.

The cabinet did not, however, live much longer, as it resigned on May 2 from an entirely unforeseen cause, the like of which it is highly improbable would recur. Within a week after the prorogation of the imperial diet, which had passed the increased tax measures, Viscount Watanabe, minister of finance, stunned the premier by declaring that the only possible way of forestalling the impending financial dangers of the government would be to postpone the public works contemplated for the fiscal year of 1901, mainly consisting of the creation or the extension of the iron foundry, railroads, telegraphs, and Formosan enterprises. His argument was not without a plausible ground, as it was plain that the issuing of the public bonds to the amount of more than sixty millions of yen, part of which had been planned to meet the expenditures of the public works, could not have been effected without drawing upon the too scarce productive capital of the nation. But the abrupt proposition of the viscount caused a veritable panic in the cabinet, and in the business world, and was agreed to by his colleagues after a considerable discussion. No sooner, however, did the finance minister carry his point than he gave everyone a fresh surprise by recommending an entire suspension of public works for the ensuing fiscal year of 1902. The breach thus created in the cabinet was complete, and the enigmatical Watanabe would not listen to the plaint of the premier. When all the other ministers tendered their resignation it was seen that the viscount alone was holding to his post, although he also soon joined the rest. It does not seem perfectly clear why the obstinacy of a minister was deemed a sufficient cause for the downfall of a cabinet which commanded an absolute majority in the lower house, and which had survived the deadlock and anomaly of two months before.

However that may be, the party cabinet, for such it was in practice, did not recede from the government service without receiving deep scars on the prestige of the party itself. The internal inharmony of the cabinet so unfortunately caused by the inexplicable conduct of Viscount Watanabe seriously reflected upon the credit of the leaders then in office. For the cabinet and the party at large, however, perhaps no event was of a more serious import than the immense power, followed by the assassination, of Tōru Hoshi. A man of blameless character in his home life and an indefatigable student of the world's new thought, Hoshi, with undaunted courage and consummate talent for party leadership, not unattended by unscrupulous conduct in money matters, had become within a short time a peerless whip of the old Liberals. He was probably the greatest instrument in their secession from the hasty union with the Progressives. During the Yamagata administration the success of the cabinet was mainly due to his efficient maneuvers in the lower house, where he was at once the contractor and the foreman of his party. When the Liberals joined in a body Marquis Itō's new party, no man could have been at once more dangerous and more indispensable to its president than Hoshi. The latter's word was as reliable and his success as assured as his rule in the party was despotic and his means detested. In the proportion that the new association was proclaimed by its founder and expected by the nation to be a model party, the peers and other neutral people deprecated Hoshi for his corrupt deeds and the marquis for allowing them to pass under his eye. The politician, on his part, was too proud to condescend to explain that he retained not a farthing for himself, and that abuses were showered on him some of which should belong to others. The respectable society looked askance at him, but in the political world no one could resist the action of this intrepid and clever politician. During the first months of the Itō cabinet Hoshi was at once minister of state for transportation and a member of the municipal council of Tōkyō, but it was not long before he incurred the ire of the peers and others and resigned his former post. It was mainly as a councilor of Tōkyō, however, that his influence was feared to contaminate the municipal government in all its branches. Finally, on June 21, 1901, he fell victim at the age of forty-one to the dagger of an assassin. The latter, Sōtarō Iba by name, formerly a fencing master and now a man of respectable social standing, and of the same age as Hoshi, had been actuated by the simple fear of the widespread corruption wrought by this engrossing enemy of the public, on whose removal he staked his life. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment. With the passing of Hoshi, the Constitutional Political Association and its president lost their most powerful and most detested figure. Marquis Itō was no longer subject to the calumny which had fallen upon him for his close association with the deceased politician, nor could he again count upon the coöperation of one whose talent and tactics had been the badge of his discipline as leader, and whose concentration of censure upon himself had relieved the marquis from the share which would otherwise have been apportioned him. The political atmosphere was as purified, as was the forecast of its immediate future rendered uncertain, by the resignation of the Itō cabinet and the assassination of Tōru Hoshi.