Political History of Japan During the Meiji Era, 1867-1912 by Walter Wallace McLaren

Author:Walter Wallace McLaren [McLaren, Walter Wallace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780598587572
Google: KUBAAQAAMAAJ
Publisher: G. Allen & Unwin
Published: 1916-01-15T01:19:58+00:00

PART II

THE PARLIAMENTARY REGIME

CHAPTER IX

THE FIRST FOUR YEARS

IF the Constitution had been promulgated in a period of sabbath calm, induced by the wholesale suspension of the Opposition Press as well as by an appreciation upon the part of the educated classes of the event’s significance, the spell was soon broken. In a few months editors and politicians regained their accustomed volubility, and long before the Diet was elected the political arena was again the scene of turmoil. Itagaki and Okuma, the two foremost party leaders, quickly decided upon the action which the situation demanded. Itagaki had stood outside the oligarchy, a voice crying in the wilderness, practically throughout his whole career, and he knew only too well after a single perusal of the provisions of the Constitution that his demands for an Executive responsible to the Diet had not been heeded. Article LV alone would have been enough to have driven him into Opposition once more. Okuma, on the other hand, having been a member of the oligarchy which drafted and issued the instrument, may be regarded as having consented to its terms: his quarrel, therefore, was not primarily with the terms of the new Constitution, but with the two leading Choshu members of the Government, Ito and Inouye. In 1881 they had ruined his political career by defeating his scheme for a Parliament in 1883, and six years later they had again triumphed over him. Toward the close of 1889 these two men headed the opposition within the Cabinet to his treaty-revision negotiations, and forced him out of the circle of the oligarchs. Okuma’s revenge is written large upon the parliamentary records of the period which followed, from 1890 to 1894.

But in order to understand the events of these four years, the previous history of the political parties must be recounted in some detail. It has already been related how Itagaki’s party, the Jiyuto (Radicals), was dissolved in 1884 because of the participation of some of its members in the Fukushima plot and the Ibaraki and Saitama riots, not to mention the Korean embroglio of 1882–4. Okuma’s party, the Kaishinto (Progressionists), was disrupted in the same year for similar reasons. But whereas the Jiyuto dissolved its organization, the Kaishinto was kept alive by a section of the party which rebelled against its leaders’ action. The next year, 1885, in its first few months witnessed the conclusion of treaties with Korea and China, both of which were denounced by the public as proving the weakness of the Government’s foreign policy. The Korean treaty provided for the opening of that country to Japanese trade, but as it was followed almost immediately by similar treaties between Korea and Western nations, the Japanese saw Korea slipping out of their grasp. The terms of the treaty with China, signed at Tientsin by Ito in April 1885, seemed even more unfavourable—in fact, a surrender of Japanese rights in Korea. By the articles of this treaty Korea’s independence was acknowledged by both China and Japan, and

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