protectorate, including insistence on employing
Japanese ‘advisers’ in financial, military and
administrative affairs in the Chinese government.
Until the close of the First World War there was
little the Western powers could do to restrain
Japan, beyond diplomatic pressure.
In the Taisho (meaning ‘great righteousness’)
era from the Meiji Emperor’s death in 1912 until
the death of his son in 1926, it seemed that,
despite Japanese assertiveness in China during the
Great War, the overall trend would be towards
greater liberalisation and peace. The genro were
ceasing to play so critical a role, especially after
Yamagata’s death in 1922, and one great obstacle
towards constitutional parliamentary development
was thereby removed. The new emperor was weak
and the powers of the government increased. Yet,
as developments after 1926 were to show very
clearly, in the end the ‘liberal’ Taisho period
marked only a transition to a more illiberal and
authoritarian state than had developed in the Meiji
era. There were signs too that Taisho was ‘liberal’
only in a very restricted sense. Industrial expan-
sion, first fostered by the state, was later handed
over to a few large business enterprises still pre-
eminent today. These huge business empires, the
zaibatsu, were conducted paternalistically and
required loyalty from their employees from the
cradle to the grave. Links between big business
and the state remained unusually close. There was
no possibility of the growth of a strong and inde-
pendent democratic labour movement under such
industrial conditions.
Distress arose in Japan at the end of the war
due to the phenomenal rise in the price of rice,
the country’s staple food; this led to serious riots
all over Japan in the summer of 1918. Troops
repressed the violence in the towns and villages
with great severity. Hundreds of people were
killed and thousands more arrested. The collapse
of the war boom in 1921 led to further repres-
sion of any signs of socialism or of attempts by
labour to organise. The devastating Tokyo earth-
quake in September 1923 became the pretext for
arresting Koreans, communists and socialists who
were accused of plotting to seize power. Many
were lynched by ‘patriotic gangs’. The police were
given authority to arrest and imprison anyone sus-
pected of subversive thoughts, and many were
brutally treated. Compulsory military training of
Japanese youth was seen as a good way to
counteract ‘dangerous thoughts’. Thus the 1930s
cannot be seen as a complete reversal of the
Taisho period.
In Japan’s relations with the world, too, there
is more continuity than at first appears. On the
one hand the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the
emergence of the US as a world power had reper-
cussions of enormous importance in eastern Asia.
The Soviet leaders succeeded for a time in forging
an alliance with Chinese nationalists in a joint
drive against Western and Japanese imperialism.
On the other hand, the US was calling for a new
deal for China and an end to the pre-war power
alliances, particularly the Anglo-Japanese alliance,
which had enormously strengthened Japan’s posi-
tion in Asia. But the Japanese government, beset
by severe economic problems in the 1920s,
and dependent on American trade, was in no
position to resist the US. This became clear at
the Washington Conference in 1921–2. Several
treaties were signed, placing the security of the
eastern Pacific and the integrity of China on a
multinational basis. The Japanese were obliged to
return to China the Shantung province gained at
the Paris Peace Conference. A naval limitations
treaty placed Japan in a position inferior to Britain
and the US, which were allowed a ratio of five
battleships each compared to Japan’s three.
Finally, Japan became a co-signatory to the nine-
power treaty to seek to uphold the unity of
China. It is true that Japan also received private
assurances recognising its special interests in
Manchuria; nevertheless, the Washington Treaties
placed a considerable check on any Japanese
unilateral action in China.
The ‘spirit of Washington’, as the great-power
cooperation in eastern Asia came to be described,
proved as unsuccessful in the long run as the
‘spirit of Locarno’ in Europe. Foreign Minister
Kijuro Shidehara became identified with Japan’s
pacific policy in Asia and he loyally did his best
to act in its spirit. But there were ominous signs
of the troubles to come. With the passing of genro
control the army became more independent and
chafed under the consequences of Japan’s new