of silk plunged in the US. The countryside
became the breeding ground for militarism. A
strident nationalism, a sort of super Japanese
patriotism with a return to emperor-worship,
marks the 1930s. It unified most of the Japanese
people. Harsh repression in any case ensured
broad conformity, and the educational system was
geared to uphold military national values. The
more ‘liberal’ tendencies of the 1920s, which saw
a strengthening of the Diet, of political parties, of
the influence of big business (the zaibatsu) on
politics, of the civilian politicians as against the
military, was engulfed by the new militaristic
nationalism.
All these changes occurred without any formal
changes in the Meiji constitution. It had never
been a part of that constitution to guarantee per-
sonal liberties and thereby to limit the powers of
the state. Whenever necessary, censorship and
control were instituted. The Japanese were taught
to obey the state, and patriotism centred on the
veneration of the emperor. But it was characteris-
tic of formal Japanese institutions and laws that
they allowed for flexibility. The fount of all power,
however, remained the emperor. Whichever
group succeeded in speaking in his name could
wrap itself in his unchallengeable authority. The
Meiji Emperor had taken a real role in the deci-
sions of crucial national policies on the advice of
his elder statesmen, the genro. The position of his
successors was weaker. Emperor Hirohito was ele-
vated to an object of worship and, as a god, was
thereby moved away from practical influence on
national affairs. Temperamentally gentle and
scholarly, the emperor followed rather than
controlled the tide of events.
Despite the introduction of male suffrage,
Japan was not about to turn into a parliamentary
constitutional state in the 1920s. Its uniqueness as
a society, blending emperor-worship and author-
ity with elected institutions, was not essentially
changed by any democratic demands. A Peace
Preservation Law imposed severe prison penalties
on anyone who even advocated such a change. So
the description of the 1920s as the years of Taisho
Democracy is a misnomer. The people were not
prepared or encouraged to think that they should
decide the policies of the state through their
elected parties in the parliament. Thus the political
parties had no real roots and were the easy victims
of military reaction in the 1930s.
There was a real difference between the poli-
cies pursued by the Japanese in the 1920s and
those followed in the 1930s due to the change of
balance among the groups that exercised power
in the state. The army and navy were not subject
to the control of the government but, through
the right of separate access to the emperor, con-
stituted a separate position of power. The infor-
mal genrohad coordinated civilian and military
aspects of national affairs. With the passing of the
original genrothrough the deaths of its members,
no other body advising the emperor was ever
again able to exercise such undisputed overall
control. The civilian politicians, leaning for
support on parliament and backed by some mod-
erates in the army and navy, in the 1920s gained
the upper hand over the more extreme officers in
the navy and army. It found expression in
Shidehara’s foreign policy and especially in the
naval disarmament treaties of the Washington
Conference. But both in the Kwantung army sta-
tioned in Manchuria and in the navy a violent
reaction to civilian control was forming.
From 1928 until 1936 the leadership groups
were caught in cross-currents of violent conflict.
They were no longer able to provide a unified
Japanese policy. So there is the contrast between
the outwardly unified nation embodied in the
emperor’s supremacy and the breakdown of gov-
ernment culminating in the assassination of those
politicians who had fallen foul of nationalist
extremists. The army was no longer under unified
control. The army command in Tokyo was rent
by conspiracies to encourage the Kwantung army
to act on its own in Manchuria regardless of the
policy of the government. In 1928 the Kwantung
army attempted to seize military control over
Manchuria and so to anticipate Chiang Kai-shek’s
attempts to extend his rule by conquest or diplo-
macy. Chiang Kai-shek might decide to strike a
deal with the Manchurian warlord at the expense
of Japan’s ambitions. The Japanese Kwantung
army command organised the warlord’s murder
by blowing up the train on which he was travel-
ling. Although at the time there was an aggres-