Political Institutions in Japan

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

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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
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Approximate Word count = 1351
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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