The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System

Junji Banno, JAA Stockwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134780952
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The 1889 Meiji constitution: how it actually worked, the establishment of the Diet and the shifting roles and interests of the parties. A Japanese classic translated by one our leading authorities.

Part I
The political situation before the Sino-Japanese War

1 Some problems of transcendentalism

The fundamental attitude towards the Diet and the parties expressed by the Meiji Government at the time of the inauguration of the Imperial Diet [1890] was termed ‘transcendentalism’. The word ‘transcendentalism’ was born out of a speech made to a gathering of prefectural governors on the day following the proclamation of the Imperial Constitution by the Prime Minister of the day, Kuroda Kiyotaka, in which he declared: ‘The Government must always steadfastly transcend and stand apart from the political parties, and thus follow the path of righteousness.’¹ The word thus originated unaccompanied by any definition. As an official of the Ministry of Home Affairs pointed out in 1892: ‘Already two years have passed under the Constitution, and in this time each Government has declared that it is observing what it calls “transcendentalism”, but nobody has ever explained what doctrine it is that the word refers to. This is because the meaning of the word is extremely vague, and the same word “transcendentalism” can describe two doctrines having mutually quite opposite meanings.’² It was indeed, as he perceived, a multi-faceted term.

The Cabinet of Kuroda, who was the first to make a speech about ‘transcendentalism’, was complex in nature. The Foreign Minister in this Cabinet which had proclaimed that it must ‘stand apart from the political parties’ was Okuma Shigenobu, who in effect was president of the Kaishinto [party]. The Kaishinto, with the entry of Okuma into the Cabinet, aimed to ‘make a start at realizing progressivism [kaishinshugi] from within the Government, and in the future gradually to remould the Diet on the English model’.³ Moreover Inoue Kaoru, the Minister for Agricultural and Commercial Affairs, had planned ever since retiring from public office following the failure of his attempt to revise the treaties, [the ‘unequal’ treaties imposed on Japan by the Powers in the 1850s and 1860s] to organize a political party based on Europeanization and the politics of autonomy.⁴ Tani Tateki writes as follows in his diary concerning the relation between the presence of Okuma and Inoue in the Kuroda Cabinet and the ‘transcendentalism’ speech:

The notion of standing apart from the political parties…should last for a time. But it is crystal clear that eventually it will change. Indeed, there are even signs of it already. Even if Okuma and Inoue are not formally enrolled as party members of the Kaishinto and Jichito respectively, the fact that they protect their own positions by secretly giving assistance to their parties outside the Government, means that while Okuma, Inoue and others claim to stand apart from the parties, in fact nobody can doubt that Okuma belongs to the Kaishinto and Inoue to the Jichito.⁵

Subsequently, about a month after the ‘transcendentalism’ speech, the leading advocate of the Daido Danketsu [Grand Coalition], Goto Shojiro, entered the Kuroda Cabinet as Minister of Communications. Although he came in for criticism from various quarters, Goto himself said of his entry into the Cabinet:

The best way to remove personal considerations and create a Cabinet properly founded in constitutional politics, is first, as a temporary measure, to build a coalition Cabinet which would sweep away old customs and old ways, introducing new laws and new procedures in their stead.⁶

Goto also intended, as a first step towards the creation of a party Cabinet, to act as the advocate of the Daido Danketsu faction within the Cabinet once he was a Cabinet member. Moreover, about the same time as Goto entered the Cabinet, even Tani Tateki, a central figure in the opposition Kokken [Nationalist] faction, was approached through the Grand Chamberlain, Tokudaiji Sanenori, the Vice-Minister of the Imperial Household Agency, Yoshii Tomozane; and the Privy Councillor Motoda Eifu, with a view to persuading him to return to the Government as a Privy Councillor.⁷ Although Tani’s reaction was to maintain that ‘in my opinion the Government wants me to join in the knowledge that in present circumstances I cannot support it’, he nevertheless judged that ‘it would be a quite a different question if the Privy Council were to accept my humble regrets…and if my entry into the Cabinet were to be given honourable consideration’,⁸ Tani had a definite desire to join the Cabinet.

Tani’s entry into the Cabinet did not materialize, but the Kuroda Cabinet, including as it did leaders of the Kaishinto, Jichito and Daido Danketsu, was closer to a Cabinet of national unity than to a transcendental Cabinet, and more like a Cabinet that included the political parties than one that ‘stood apart’ from them. The composition of the Diet, which was to be inaugurated in 1890, was as yet unknown, and at the time when the Meiji Constitution was proclaimed there were various possibilities still open, as well as a variety of responses which might come from within the ranks of the oligarchs. It was not entirely out of the question that if the most important leaders of the Kaishinto, the Jichito and the Daido Danketsu could be included in the Cabinet, then friction between the Government and the Diet might be avoided. In fact, however, as the time for the inauguration of the Diet approached, the oligarchs became increasingly isolated. The inclusion in the cabinet of Okuma, of the Kaishinto (early 1888); of Inoue, who was planning the organization of the Jichito (July 1888); and Goto, who was actively promoting the Daido Danketsu movement (March 1889), indicated a response to the activities of the former Minken faction, which was making rapid efforts to regroup anticipating the Diet inauguration and the general election. If it was impossible to suppress this regrouping even by bringing Okuma, Inoue and Goto into the Cabinet, then the only course left open was to form a Cabinet which to outward appearances at least ‘stood apart from the parties’. Whether the ‘transcendentalism’ speech meant that a tranquil Diet should be created by expanding the parties supporting the Government, or whether it meant that without bothering about party support, the Government should simply rely on the administrative bureaucracy and directly confront the legislature, was essentially a matter of demarcation. The speech itself appeared to come down clearly on the latter position, but the composition of the Cabinet which was responsible for the speech showed that the oligarchs were not completely ruling the former course out of account. As will be shown below, if one takes into account the political situation at the end of 1888 and the beginning of 1889, when the genro [elder statesman] Inoue Kaoru had not entirely given up the idea of organizing a party similar to the Kaishinto, and Tani Tateki of the Kokken faction was placing high expectations on the Daido Danketsu movement, this can be well enough understood. Thus on the one hand there was a type of criticism which interpreted the ‘transcendentalism’ speech in terms of a Cabinet of national unity; an example of this kind of criticism is that of Nomura Yasushi given in a letter to Yamagata Aritomo of 1889. ‘If politics is conducted by combining the main policies of each party, then it is likely to be a politics of many different colours, with centralization of power achieved in the morning, and regulations dispersing power to the provinces appearing in the evening, while budget expenditure would be similarly unco-ordinated.’ On the other hand the speech was also interpreted as a defence of the executive against the legislature, as evidenced in the statement that ‘there is no chance of controlling the Cabinet through the politics of the Diet’.⁹ Since it became clear that the supremacy of the former Minken faction in the Diet was difficult to undo, the latter meaning of ‘transcendentalism’ became the accepted usage.

In what follows we shall first investigate the plan for organizing a party to be called the Jichito [‘local autonomy party’], put forward by Inoue Kaoru, who was one of the Choshu genro along with Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo. This may help us understand the variety of reactions within the hanbatsu Government around the time when the Meiji Constitution was promulgated, as well as their limits. After that, for comparison, we shall examine the more or less simultaneous reaction by the group centred on Tani Tateki, who was in some ways more conservative than the Sat-Cho clique and in some ways more progressive, had no connections whatever with the Minken movement, and was in a broad sense a member of the hanbatsu Government.

Finally, by comparison with these two groups, and as an example of bureaucratic transcendentalism after the opening of the Diet, we shall look at the transcendental argument of Tsuzuki Keiroku. Our aim is to show the contrast between the variety of responses by the hanbatsu before the inauguration of the Diet, and their unity of purpose afterwards, but we shall also attempt to explore why the clash that developed between the oligarchs and the parties from the outset of the Diet made for a sudden change of direction by one wing of the oligarchs.

INOUE KAORU AND THE PLAN TO FORM THE JICHITO

Inoue Kaoru, who resigned as Foreign Minister in September 1887, taking responsibility for the failure of the treaty revision negotiations, wrote the following letter of resignation to the Prime Minister, Ito Hirobumi:

For the past few days I have been considering the future, and I have come to the conclusion that the present Cabinet too is tending to become isolated, with the number of its attackers increasing as before. Occupying a position of weakness, it continually changes tack, but finds its room for manoeuvre more and more restricted. It therefore adopts an increasingly intransigent posture, whether it is attempting to deal with a situation by the use of the police, or is warning local governors. By leaving the Cabinet I shall become a private citizen, but I shall tour the provinces countering the Cabinet’s attackers, and having conferred with the Cabinet Ministers I shall make speeches to the people in which I shall arouse them from their misconceptions and point out the errors committed by the newspapers. In this way I believe I shall be able to exercise a beneficial influence by circumspectly enlightening people about certain aspects of the course being pursued by the Government.¹⁰

He was saying, in other words, that in order to deal with the attacks on [incomplete] treaty revision being made by the Kokken and former Minken movements, the Cabinet had been relying on such tactics as the use of police power and issuing instructions to local officials, thus succeeding in isolating itself more and more. He himself would have to make speech tours of the provinces. In the same letter he also wrote as follows:

According to recent reports from the various regions, it is said that there is a tendency to circulate petitions and to stir up the people in the provinces, while Itagaki is even said to be embarking upon a plan to overthrow the Cabinet, and recently Goto has been publishing speeches in the newspapers and elsewhere. Surely various measures ought to be taken. In particular it is most necessary to stop listening to all this and to establish administrative order. Consideration should also, in my opinion, be given to the problems of expanding our insignificant shell hole.¹¹

Thus he thought that a resurgence of the former Minken movement was inevitable given the failure of the treaty revision negotiations, and in order to cope with it the Government needed to broaden its base of support. As a means of expanding ‘our insignificant shell hole’, Inoue thought first of all of having Okuma of the Kaishinto as his successor,¹² and secondly of making speeches in the provinces. It was clear to Inoue that the former Minken movement, which had re-emerged as a result of the campaign against his treaty revision policies, had been preparing for the inauguration of the Diet in 1890, and that as 1890 approached the movement would become increasingly active. At the close of 1888, Inoue wrote to Ito in the following terms:

By next summer the temperature of politics can be expected to have risen to fever level, and the Government will be placed in the unfortunate position of having to choose between sitting back and doing nothing or of using force. The responsibility of both of us in acting as the vanguard of civilization, lies in the fact that the result of introducing civilization may well be to lead the nation into weakness and disorder. Thus looking to posterity, and taking our stand on morality and responsibility, we must not submit to this ultimate shame which looms ahead of us. Today we must not allow the Constitution and the other laws which you have drafted to come into operation automatically without having the enterprise to develop active policies about them. We must be clear-headed and not give way to anxiety, nor must we spend our days in inactivity. I intend independently to exert myself for this cause.¹³

Here may be seen very clearly the anxieties of the Choshu genro Inoue Kaoru just before the inauguration of the Meiji Diet. Neither the independence of the House of Representatives, as desired by the former Minken movement, nor the naked use of power in order to prevent the same thing, squared with the constitutional image painted by Inoue. He did not think, like Ito, that the situation could be dealt with simply by drafting a constitution and some laws. He well realized that in the field of practical politics, ultimately governed by power relationships, there was...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• General Editor’s Preface
• Translator’s Introduction
• Introduction: Issues and Methods
• Part I: The Political Situation Before the Sino-Japanese War
• Part II: Political Conflict After the Sino-Japanese War
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Guide to Sources
• Notes