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The Taisho period (大正 lit. Great Righteousness,
1912 -
1926) is a period in the
History of Japan. It is considered the time of the liberal movement
known as the "Taisho
democracy" in
Japan; it is usually distinguished from the preceding chaotic
Meiji Era and the following
militarism-driven
Showa Era.
Key Historical Events
-
1914,
Aug 23: Japan declared war on Germany, joining the
Allies side
-
1915,
Jan 18: Japan sent the
twenty-one demands to China
-
1923,
Sep 1: :the
Great Kanto Earthquake
In Detail
On
July 30,
1912, The Meiji emperor died and his Crown Prince
Yoshihito succeded the throne, beginning the Taisho period. The end of
the Meiji era was marked by huge government domestic and overseas
investments and defense programs, nearly exhausted credit, and a lack of
foreign exchange to pay debts. The beginning of the Taisho period was
marked by a political crisis that interrupted the earlier politics of
compromise. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the
shift in political power from the old oligarchic clique of "elder
statesmen" (genro) to the parliament and the democratic parties. The shift
and related movements is called the "Taisho democracy".
On
February 12,
1913
Yamamoto Gonbee (1852-1933)
succeeded
Katsura as
prime minister. In
April,
1914
Okuma Shigenobu replaced
Yamamoto. On
August 23,
1914 Japan declared war on Germany, joining the Allies in
World War I. Within three months, Japan secured the control of German
possessions on the
Shandong Peninsula and the
Pacific. On
November 7,
Jiaozhou surrendered to Japan. On
October 9,
1916,
Terauchi Masatake (1852-1919)
took over as
prime minister from
Okuma Shigenobu (1838-1922).
On
November 2,
1917, the
Lansing-Ishii Agreement noted the recognization of Japan's interests
in China and pledges of keeping an "Open
Door" policy. In
July 1918, the
Siberian Expedition was launched with the deployment of 75,000
Japanese troops. In
August 1918, rice riots erupted in towns and cities throughout Japan.
When
Saionji tried to cut the military budget, the army minister resigned,
bringing down the Seiyokai cabinet. Both
Yamagata and Saionji refused to resume office, and the
genro were unable to find a solution. Public outrage over the military
manipulation of the cabinet and the recall of
Katsura for a third term led to still more demands for an end to genro
politics. Despite old guard opposition, the conservative forces formed a
party of their own in
1913, the Rikken Doshikai (Constitutional
Association of Friends), a party that won a majority in the House over
the Seiyokai in late
1914
The influence of western culture in the
Meiji era continued.
Kobayashi Kiyichika (1847
-
1915) adepted western painting as well as continue working in
ukiyo-e.
Okakura Tenshin (1862
-
1913) kept an interest in
traditional Japanese painting.
Mori Ogai (1862
-
1922) and
Natsume Soseki (1867
-
1916) studied in the West and introduced a more modern view of human
life.
World War I permitted Japan, which fought on the side of the
victorious Allies, to expand its influence in Asia and its territorial
holdings in the Pacific. Acting virtually independently of the civil
government, the Japanese navy seized Germany's Micronesian colonies. The
postwar era brought Japan unprecedented prosperity. Japan went to the
peace conference at
Versailles in
1919 as one of the great military and industrial powers of the world
and received official recognition as one of the "Big Five" of the new
international order. It joined the
League of Nations and received a mandate over Pacific islands north of
the Equator formerly held by
Germany. Japan was also involved in the post-war Allied intervention
in Russia, and was the last Allied power to withdraw (doing so in
1925).
During the
1920s, Japan progressed toward a democratic system of government.
However,
parliamentary government was not rooted deeply enough to withstand the
economic and political pressures of the
1930s, during which military leaders became increasingly influential.
These shifts in power were made possible by the ambiguity and imprecision
of the Meiji constitution, particularly as regarded the position of the
Emperor in relation to the constitution.
Seizing the opportunity of Berlin's distraction with the European War
and wanting to expand its sphere of influence in China, Japan declared war
on Germany in
August,
1914 and quickly occupied German-leased territories in China's
Shandong Province and the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall islands in the
Pacific. With its Western allies heavily involved in the war in Europe,
Japan sought further to consolidate its position in China by presenting
the Twenty-One Demands to China in
January,
1915. Besides expanding its control over the German holdings,
Manchuria, and Inner Mongolia, Japan also sought joint ownership of a
major mining and metallurgical complex in central China, prohibitions on
China's ceding or leasing any coastal areas to a third power, and
miscellaneous other political, economic, and military controls, which, if
achieved, would have reduced China to a Japanese protectorate. In the face
of slow negotiations with the Chinese government, widespread anti-Japanese
sentiments in China, and international condemnation, Japan withdrew the
final group of demands, and treaties were signed in
May,
1915.
Japan's hegemony in northern China and other parts of Asia was
facilitated through other international agreements. One with Russia in
1916 helped further secure Japan's influence in Manchuria and Inner
Mongolia, and agreements with France, Britain, and the United States in
1917 recognized Japan's territorial gains in China and the Pacific.
The Nishihara Loans (named after Nishihara Kamezo, Tokyo's representative
in Beijing) of
1917 and
1918, while aiding the Chinese government, put China still deeper into
Japan's debt. Toward the end of the war, Japan increasingly filled orders
for its European allies' needed war matιriel, thus helping to diversify
the country's industry, increase its exports, and transform Japan from a
debtor to a creditor nation for the first time.
Japan's power in Asia grew with the demise of the tsarist regime in
Russia and the disorder the
1917 Bolshevik Revolution left in Siberia. Wanting to seize the
opportunity, the Japanese army planned to occupy Siberia as far west as
Lake Baikal. To do so, Japan had to negotiate an agreement with China
allowing the transit of Japanese troops through Chinese territory.
Although the force was scaled back to avoid antagonizing the United
States, more than 70,000 Japanese troops joined the much smaller units of
the Allied Expeditionary Force sent to Siberia in
1918.
The year
1919 saw Japan sitting among the "Big Five" powers at the Versailles
Peace Conference. Tokyo was granted a permanent seat on the Council of the
League of Nations, and the peace treaty confirmed the transfer to Japan of
Germany's rights in Shandong, a provision that led to anti-Japanese riots
and a mass political movement throughout China. Similarly, Germany's
former Pacific islands were put under a Japanese mandate. Despite its
small role in
World War I (and the Western powers' rejection of its bid for a racial
equality clause in the peace treaty), Japan emerged as a major actor in
international politics at the close of the war.
The two-party political system that had been developing in Japan since
the turn of the century finally came of age after World War I. This period
has sometimes been called that of "Taisho Democracy," after the reign
title of the emperor. In
1918 Hara Takashi (1856-1921),
a prot馮・of Saionji and a major influence in the prewar Seiyokai cabinets,
had become the first commoner to serve as prime minister. He took
advantage of long-standing relationships he had throughout the government,
won the support of the surviving genro and the House of Peers, and brought
into his cabinet as army minister Tanaka Giichi (1864-1929),
who had a greater appreciation of favorable civil-military relations than
his predecessors. Nevertheless, major problems confronted Hara: inflation,
the need to adjust the Japanese economy to postwar circumstances, the
influx of foreign ideas, and an emerging labor movement. Prewar solutions
were applied by the cabinet to these postwar problems, and little was done
to reform the government. Hara worked to ensure a Seiyokai majority
through time-tested methods, such as new election laws and electoral
redistricting, and embarked on major government-funded public works
programs.
The public grew disillusioned with the growing national debt and the
new election laws, which retained the old minimum tax qualifications for
voters. Calls were raised for universal suffrage and the dismantling of
the old political party network. Students, university professors, and
journalists, bolstered by labor unions and inspired by a variety of
democratic, socialist, communist, anarchist, and other Western schools of
thought, mounted large but orderly public demonstrations in favor of
universal male suffrage in
1919 and
1920. New elections brought still another Seiyokai majority, but
barely so. In the political milieu of the day, there was a proliferation
of new parties, including socialist and communist parties.
In the midst of this political ferment, Hara was assassinated by a
disenchanted railroad worker in
1921 (see Diplomacy , this ch.). Hara was followed by a succession of
nonparty prime ministers and coalition cabinets. Fear of a broader
electorate, left-wing power, and the growing social change engendered by
the influx of Western popular culture together led to the passage of the
Peace Preservation Law (1925),
which forbade any change in the political structure or the abolition of
private property.
Unstable coalitions and divisiveness in the Diet led the Kenseikai
(Constitutional Government Association) and the Seiy Honto (True Seiyokai)
to merge as the Rikken Minseito (Constitutional Democratic Party) in
1927. The Rikken Minseito platform was committed to the parliamentary
system, democratic politics, and world peace. Thereafter, until
1932, the Seiyokai and the Rikken Minseito alternated in power.
Despite the political realignments and hope for more orderly
government, domestic economic crises plagued whichever party held power.
Fiscal austerity programs and appeals for public support of such
conservative government policies as the Peace Preservation Law--including
reminders of the moral obligation to make sacrifices for the emperor and
the state--were attempted as solutions. Although the world depression of
the late
1920s and early
1930s had minimal effects on Japan--indeed, Japanese exports grew
substantially during this period--there was a sense of rising discontent
that was heightened with the assassination of Rikken Minseito prime
minister Hamaguchi Osachi (1870-1931)
in
1931.
The events flowing from the Meiji Restoration in
1868 had seen not only the fulfillment of many domestic and foreign
economic and political objectives--without Japan's first suffering the
colonial fate of other Asian nations--but also a new intellectual ferment,
in a time when there was interest worldwide in socialism and an urban
proletariat was developing. Universal male suffrage, social welfare,
workers' rights, and nonviolent protest were ideals of the early leftist
movement. Government suppression of leftist activities, however, led to
more radical leftist action and even more suppression, resulting in the
dissolution of the Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaito), only a year
after its
1906 founding, and in the general failure of the socialist movement.
The victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia in
1917 and their hopes for a world revolution led to the establishment
of the
Comintern (a contraction of Communist International, the organization
founded in Moscow in
1919 to coordinate the world communist movement). The Comintern
realized the importance of Japan in achieving successful revolution in
East Asia and actively worked to form the Japan Communist Party (Nihon
Kyosanto), which was founded in
July,
1922. The announced goals of the Japan Communist Party in
1923 were an end to feudalism, abolition of the monarchy, recognition
of the Soviet Union, and withdrawal of Japanese troops from Siberia,
Sakhalin, China, Korea, and Taiwan. A brutal suppression of the party
followed. Radicals responded with an assassination attempt on Prince
Regent Hirohito. The
1925 Peace Preservation Law was a direct response to the "dangerous
thoughts" perpetrated by communist elements in Japan.
The liberalization of election laws, also in
1925, benefited communist candidates even though the Japan Communist
Party itself was banned. A new Peace Preservation Law in
1928, however, further impeded communist efforts by banning the
parties they had infiltrated. The police apparatus of the day was
ubiquitous and quite thorough in attempting to control the socialist
movement (see The Police System , ch. 8). By
1926 the Japan Communist Party had been forced underground, by the
summer of
1929 the party leadership had been virtually destroyed, and by
1933 the party had largely disintegrated.
Emerging Chinese nationalism, the victory of the communists in Russia,
and the growing presence of the United States in East Asia all worked
against Japan's postwar foreign policy interests. The four-year Siberian
expedition and activities in China, combined with big domestic spending
programs, had depleted Japan's wartime earnings. Only through more
competitive business practices, supported by further economic development
and industrial modernization, all accommodated by the growth of the
zaibatsu (wealth groups--see Glossary), could Japan hope to become
predominant in Asia. The United States, long a source of many imported
goods and loans needed for development, was seen as becoming a major
impediment to this goal because of its policies of containing Japanese
imperialism.
An international turning point in military diplomacy was the Washington
Conference of
1921-1922,
which produced a series of agreements that effected a new order in the
Pacific region. Japan's economic problems made a naval buildup nearly
impossible and, realizing the need to compete with the United States on an
economic rather than a military basis, rapprochement became inevitable.
Japan adopted a more neutral attitude toward the civil war in China,
dropped efforts to expand its hegemony into China proper, and joined the
United States, Britain, and France in encouraging Chinese
self-development.
In the Four Power Treaty on Insular Possessions (December
13,
1921), Japan, the United States, Britain, and France agreed to
recognize the status quo in the Pacific, and Japan and Britain agreed to
terminate formally their Treaty of Alliance. The Five Power Naval
Disarmament Treaty (February
6,
1922) established an international capital ship ratio (5, 5, 3, 1.75,
and 1.75, respectively, for the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and
Italy) and limited the size and armaments of capital ships already built
or under construction. In a move that gave the Japanese Imperial Navy
greater freedom in the Pacific, Washington and London agreed not to build
any new military bases between Singapore and Hawaii.
The goal of the Nine Power Treaty (February
6,
1922), signed by Belgium, China, the Netherlands, and Portugal, along
with the original five powers, was the prevention of war in the Pacific.
The signatories agreed to respect China's independence and integrity, not
to interfere in Chinese attempts to establish a stable government, to
refrain from seeking special privileges in China or threatening the
positions of other nations there, to support a policy of equal opportunity
for commerce and industry of all nations in China, and to reexamine
extraterritoriality and tariff autonomy policies. Japan also agreed to
withdraw its troops from Shandong, relinquishing all but purely economic
rights there, and to evacuate its troops from Siberia.
Ultranationalism was characteristic of right-wing politicians and
conservative military men since the inception of the Meiji Restoration,
contributing greatly to the prowar politics of the
1870s. Disenchanted former samurai had established patriotic societies
and intelligence-gathering organizations, such as the Gen'yosha (Black
Ocean Society, founded in
1881) and its later offshoot, the Kokuryukai (Black Dragon Society, or
Amur River Society, founded in
1901). These groups became active in domestic and foreign politics,
helped foment prowar sentiments, and supported ultranationalist causes
through the end of
World War II. After Japan's victories over China and Russia, the
ultranationalists concentrated on domestic issues and perceived domestic
threats, such as socialism and communism.
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