Political Institutions in Japan

This research examines the emergence of political institutions in Japan in the 1910s and 1920s and the impact of political development in the country as a consequence of the way in which the institutions developed. One view of the dynamics is that through the 1920s Japan was developing democratic institutions at home and emerging as a status-quo-oriented country in geopolitical terms, and that the economic downturn in the 1920s affected internal politics in ways that enabled the rise of a policy of militarist imperialism and ultimately to the geopolitical aggressions of the 1930s. Other interpretations are also possible, as this research will show.

The forces driving Japanese national development in the first decades of the 20th century can be distinguished from the aggressive position of Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. Rule by oligarchs in the Meiji period progressed to a form of parliamentary government in the 1920s, but then shifted to totalitarianism and total war in the 1930s and 1940s. The transformation of Japanese political culture from Meiji rule toward parliamentary rule can be seen as being based on appeals to the special qualities of Japanese society, people, and historical traditions. Pyle (p. 161f) refers to the mobilization of the nation along these lines, also noting the shift in Japanese political institutions that had been originally conceived in terms of Tokugawa feudalism but that increasingly became subject to partisan politics (with the emperor a definite

Related Essays

Political Institutions in Japan & Australia .... democracy. The following pages will trace the evolution of political institutions and attitudes in Japan and Australia respectively. The .... (5017 20 )

Foreign Policy of Japan .... the implication is that Japan is a second-class state vis-a-vis the US: Japan is economically dependent; Japan's political institutions are incapable of .... (2222 9 )

Changing Role of the Emperor of Japan .... Japan did not produce truly liberal political institutions in spite of the adoption of Western parliamentarianism, but Japanese economic modernization along .... (982 4 )

Early-Modern Political Development of Korea .... Koreans the message that they would have to reform their political institutions if they .... also realized that they, as was true for China and Japan, had little .... (2267 9 )

Opening Japan to the West .... Japan did not produce truly liberal political institutions in spite of the adoption of Western parliamentarianism, but Japanese economic modernization along .... (3773 15 )

y agendas (Pyle, pp. 163-4). The result was "an unwieldy political system" (Pyle, p. 165). Accordingly, after World War I, when the agrarian economy failed and unrest spread throughout Japan, there was created a "crisis atmosphere," complicated by: extraordinary influx of radical thought. The Russian Revolution, the popularity of Wilsonian democracy, the growing alienation of intellectuals from the social order in Japan, and the unrest in society . . . led to a striking diversity of ideologies that could not but be worrisome to government leaders (Pyle, pp. 168-9). The worries developed something of a life of their own in the context of economic failure. The political-party system turned out to be vulnerable to the vagaries of economic unpredictability, and Pyle explains that, even in Japan, which was historically priding itself on having a stable society in which people always knew their social place and class, there was social unrest. Society had become more complex under the parliamentary system of the 1920s than it had been under the feudal system of the Tokugawas or the rule of the oligarchs under the Meiji. This created problems of governance: Social unrest, militant labor, and radical ideologies were all present for eve

Category: Foreign - P