nt, political parties were abolished, and Japan entered the Second World War under a political system that had some of the characteristics of European fascism. Only defeat and occupation, and a nearly complete break in Japanese political development, made possible the reconstruction of modern Japan as a parliamentary democracy.
The following pages will trace the evolution of political institutions and attitudes in Japan and Australia respectively. The differences in the background and evolution of the two nations are so great that they cannot be compared directly, point by point, as one might compare, say, the United States and Canada. Nevertheless, as two powers that emerged in the Western Pacific during the same period, and both of which sought to adapt parliamentary institutions and a two-party system to their disparate needs, the contrasts between their experiences are instructive.
The modern development of Japan began with the so-called Meiji Restoration of 1868, in which a group of young samurai, recognizing that traditional Japan was unprepared to face the growing Western challenge, overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate. Nominally they did so in the name of "restoring" the Emperor Meiji. Japan's ancient imperial house had existed in the shadows of alternating feudal disorder and rule by warlords (the Shoguns) for a thousand years. The Meiji Constitution, adopted in 1882, created in principle a state modelled along the lines of Imperial Germany, with a representative Diet whose real function was that of sounding-board rather than legislature.
The Japanese Constitution recognized the emperor
as all-powerful, sacred, and inviolable. The people,
his subjects, were admonished to serve him loyally.
Since the constitution was considered a gift of the
emperor to his subjects, constitutional amendments
could only be made by the emperor himself. To advise
the emperor, a privy council was establish...