THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL OF JAPAN
Howard, Harry Paxton
The Struggle For Control Of Japan By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD WHAT are the aims of Japanese democracy? What would the Japanese people actually vote for, if they were given ballots as they were 16 years...
...Thus the Imperial oligarchy, by giving way to the militarist elements within its own ranks and by making a deal with the British (and Americans), succeeded in maintaining its own position as against Parliament...
...By 1893 things were reaching an impasse—which was broken by war...
...The struggle between people and militarists in Japan is an old one...
...People vs...
...But it tried among other things to limit Japanese armaments, to reduce military expenditures, to reduce the political influence of the Army and Navy chiefs, to reach rational and peaceful solutions of every issue with China—and with other governments...
...Make no mistake about it: They will fight to the last to prevent such a fate...
...Well, of course," he responded,, in an "anyone knows that" tone, "they've demonstrated that in practice...
...The elected representatives of the people (then chosen on a much restricted suffrage) at once put forth their claims for restriction of taxes and limitation of military burdens, as well as other matters, and sought to wrest control from the Imperial bureaucracy and gain political power themselves...
...He was, of course, speaking "off the record...
...And they know, too, that with the hatred and racialism aroused by this war, a White occupation of Japan would be a horror beyond words...
...The Japanese militarists were actually going into business for themselves...
...The civilian government did not approve...
...The militarists were the real gainers, at the expense of the constructive group known as the "civil bureaucrats...
...A new civilian government was formed, but Premier Inukai was insufficiently obedient to the militarists and was assassinated like Premier Hamaguchi...
...In general, it was a good "business administration...
...It would be the division between people and militarists—between those who are fighting for Imperial domination and those who are fighting simply because they don't know what else to do...
...Labor was increasingly conscious of its interests and its rights...
...A "patriot" inspired by the militarists assassinated Premier Hamaguchi—the untitled civilian who was daring to challenge their power...
...Complete sympathy...
...But the influence on Japanese political life was disastrous in the extreme...
...The Imperial oligarchy, rather than surrender power to Parliament, turned to militarism and a foreign war...
...Alliance Against Democracy The Japanese Parliament, therefore, failed in its first attempt to secure real political power...
...There are other things as well, but this is central...
...The helpless and discredited civilian government had to resign...
...5 was supplemented by another (much better known) of Jan...
...the Japanese are not such unusual people...
...It worked...
...It can, if the American Government wishes: If our Government were to declare democratic war aims for the Pacific, renouncing specifically any desire to establish a predominant position either in China or the Philippines, recognizing the right of all Asiatic peoples to self-government, demanding certain reparations from the Japanese but expressing willingness to have these decided equitably by a neutral tribunal, renouncing any aim to obtain special privileges for American trade and investment in Eastern Asia, but calling upon the Japanese to evacuate occupied territories and to reduce their armaments as we reduce ours—if our Government were to declare such aims, it would create a real division among the Japanese people themselves...
...Stimson's note of Nov...
...A Japanese officer must not surrender to the enemy...
...A certain proportion are of this latter type, and many are of samurai ancestry...
...Stimson was in complete sympathy with the Japanese maintaining their unjust and vicious treaty privileges in Manchuria, even by armed invasion and war, and he expected them to maintain ours as well...
...The Japanese Diet, however, from the very beginning showed itself much more recalcitrant than the German...
...Their feeling towards the samurai—bloody-minded ruffians who used to try out their swords on beggars by the roadside—was demonstrated by what happened in time of feudal conflicts, when one force was defeated by another and forced to flee...
...The Tanaka regime concluded a secret diplomatic alliance with the British Government, dispatched troops to China, shot down thousands of Chinese civilians and soldiers, ousted Marshal Chang Tso-lin from Peking, and murdered him on his return to Manchuria...
...It would have meant a mortal setback to the militarists' restige, a consolidation and strengthening of parliamentary and civilian power in Japan...
...Parliament And Crisis During the 1880's, increasing popular agitation and the occasional throwing of bombs extracted from the new oligarchy a Constitution and a Parliament, based mainly upon the German model...
...The results of the great spread of public education were now evident...
...The samurai were crushed...
...The Japanese Army settled down for 10 days in the occupied areas, to see what the Powers would do...
...If the American Government is sincere in its renunciation of its treaty privileges in China, it can dispense with the services of the Japanese Army in keeping down the Chinese...
...Naval limitations were agreed to, despite the hostility of the Japanese Naval Staff and Supreme Military Council...
...That was the State Department's view of the function of Japanese militarists...
...Tanaka and his gang could not carry on a lone hand in China, and were forced to yield to popular demands for resignation...
...It was not Japan's ordinary voters who decided on the present war...
...Increasingly they denounced the "disarmament mania," and Parliament's "blindness" in "failing to prepare...
...Neither are most of them to be compared to the German Junkers...
...And with the end of Japanese militarism comes the development of parliamentary democracy in Japan...
...18 the Japanese militarists launched their unprovoked invasion of Manchuria...
...At a time when, as Secretary Stimson stated in that same note: "A situation has been created in Manchuria which gives Japan substantial control of southern Manchuria and has, temporarily at least, destroyed the administrative integrity of China in this region . . . my Government neither attributes motives nor passes judgment, but desires solely to point- out the fact...
...Militarism And Democracy There was nothing new about Stimson's attitude...
...Secretary Stimson, appealed to both by the British Government and the League of Nations for cooperation to stop the Japanese, declined to take or participate in any action "against the objection of Japan...
...This bloody regime carried on until British Labor ousted the British...
...For the British Government, which had some years previously asserted a protective position over Korea, this time connived with the Japanese invasion of the peninsula...
...The so-called "Tanaka Memorial" is associated with this government...
...And then, from their base in Manchuria, the militarists steadily and increasingly exercised pressure upon Japan itself, assassinating one Premier after another, assassinating business leaders, aristocrats, even military and naval men who were too "conservative...
...And these things brought crisis, especially when the Premier sent a civilian as chief delegate to the London Naval Conference, and himself (also a civilian) took over the Navy Ministry—a thing without precedent in Japanese history...
...On Nov...
...the outstanding civil bureaucrats opposed the alliance...
...Following the Restoration in 1868, the samurai lost their hereditary privileges, and ceased to exist as a caste...
...Anglo-Japanese negotiations had been going on for many months...
...They knew such subjection once, and do not want it again...
...But the Imperial forces were able to organize and drill peasant armies, which in battle against the samurai showed that heredity was in no way decisive...
...The Tanaka militarist cabinet had been formed in April 1927 for collaboration with British Imperialists in joint aggression against China...
...Down to modern times, 90 per cent of the Japanese people never had regular arms in their hands...
...They are almost 100 per cent literate —a far higher percentage than among the American people...
...all we can do in his case is to insist that he does not extend his totalitarianism beyond his 1938 borders...
...And in 1902, when the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was formed, it was definitely an alliance between the military group and the British...
...But it was not until the 1920's, with the end of the Alliance and the decline of Yamagata—who died soon after his Alliance—that civilian and parliamentary elements began to rise towards an increasing hold on political power...
...Americans would hardly consider it "radical...
...The most terrible fear of retreating samurai was to be set upon and butchered by crowds of peasants, armed with sharpened bamboo pikes or other home-made weapons...
...It strengthened its position not only by the appeal to patriotism,, but by the repeal of extra-territorial privileges in Japan...
...In addition, Tokyo levied heavy indemnities on China which greatly strengthened the militarists and the Imperial administration, and temporarily solved some of Japan's economic difficulties...
...Many of them rebelled...
...But let no one think that the Japanese people will rebel against their military rulers while they feel that the outcome may be colonial subjection to White Powers...
...Mr...
...The Japanese Army put Manchuria under its own direct rule, setting up a puppet "Manchukuo" regime and refusing to admit Western Powers to partnership in it—despite the earnest endeavors of the League of Nations Commission, with American participation, to gain such a partnership...
...These questions are vital...
...But for the past 20 years, the operation of the merit system has brought an increasing number of men of common origin to the fore...
...For if the present war is to be one for democracy, it must aim at the re-establishment and strengthening of representative government everywhere in the world that this is practicable...
...The British Government (and to some extent the American) played an important role in this development...
...It was the military oligarchy, which during the past 12 years has so far usurped authority that Japan is today virtually a totalitarian state...
...Common soldiers may surrender, however...
...7, announcing that our Government would not recognize any agreement between China or Japan "which may impair the treaty rights of the United States or its citizens in China...
...The previous Japanese (civilian) government had refused such collaboration, and had been ousted on Apr...
...These privileges had been one of the Opposition's strongest points of criticism...
...It was the cooperative attitude of the Ham-aguchi Government that made possible the Anglo-American-Japanese agreement at London...
...But this was an ominous example for the militarists, who saw their own power and their own budgets threatened...
...Popular feeling against military burdens continued to- express itself, both inside Parliament and outside it...
...that was what they were built up for—aggression and the securing of new "treaty rights" in China, which they were supposed to share with the other Imperialist Powers...
...In the Summer of 1931, with the British Labor Government on its last legs and the Tories preparing to return to power, the militarist propaganda reached ever more serious heights, and on Sept...
...Finally they liquidated the parties altogether, centering all power in their own hands and those of their picked associates of the Court and the business world...
...During the period of the Alliance, from 1902 to 1921, Marshal Yamagata was the most powerful figure in Japan...
...Most peasants disliked conscription, but when joined in battle against their hereditary en amies they fought with real enthusiasm...
...And the British Government finally agreed to abandon their extra-territorial privileges in Japan, and treat Japan as something of a sovereign nation...
...Helping The Militarists Had the Powers taken a determined stand, the Japanese would perforce have been compelled to withdraw...
...he must accept death as the alternative...
...And it can't be altogether universal, as we cannot successfully insist that Joe Stalin should reorganize his dictatorship on the basis of a parliamentary democracy...
...5, he made his position even clearer by assuring the Japanese Government: "As to the settlement of the broader issues involved in the treaty rights, my Government is in complete sympathy with the desire of the Japanese Government to obtain a solution which will be satisfactory to both parties, and which, being so, would give promise of permanence...
...If, on the other hand, the militarists were permitted to go ahead, it meant that theirs would be the power not only in Manchuria but in Japan itself, with civilian government defeated and discredited...
...More than ever before, Parliament could claim to be the responsible voice of the Japanese people...
...The increasing demand for universal (really, manhood) suffrage grew so powerful that the Imperial oligarchy filially yielded, and in 1928 the elections for Parliament were on a basis of manhood suffrage...
...Parliament had been considerably weakened, as the militarists had secured new regulations which made it impossible to form any Cabinet without high-ranking members of the Army and the Navy respectively...
...it had repeatedly accused the Government of neglect of national interests by failure to do away with them...
...Japanese militarists had always operated in collaboration with foreign friends, and popular elements could only assert themselves successfully in the absence of such collaboration...
...Side by side with the growing demand for reduction of military budgets in this period of economic crisis, grew the fierce propaganda of the militarists concerning the "national crisis," the "insulting conduct" of the Chinese, etc...
...the vast majority of the Japanese people could now read and write...
...Parliament" still exists, but all political parties have been dissolved...
...They would not have dared to challenge Britain and America combined...
...The Japanese Government has always been sensitive to international developments, for reasons already pointed out...
...Japanese militarists of today do not constitute a caste...
...When the Japanese attack was successful, they were taken into formal partnership in the Imperialist front against China, and themselves obtained extra-territorial and other privileges in that country...
...For Japanese voters have shown a capacity for discrimination and judgment not greatly different from other voters in other countries, whether this is assessed optimistically or otherwise...
...Japanese leaders have always been conscious of their precarious position as the only Asiatic country that had gained real independence, and the knowledge that a serious misstep might have disastrous consequences in every way...
...A civilian government was established, headed by Premier Hamaguehi, which devoted itself to peace and retrenchment as vigorously as the Army had devoted itself to war and aggression...
...Certain special "codes," however, survive, separating officers from soldiers...
...The Imperialists launched a war of unprovoked aggression against China, accusing the Chinese of a "sneak invasion...
...Militarists Visiting an official in the State Department at Washington—an intelligent and well-informed man who 'had spent many years in the service in Japan and had observed carefully political developments there—I said to him in the course of our conversation: "Of course, the Japanese are really capable of representative government...
...It is well to remember this distinction...
...Parliamentary Government Early in 1929, the international situation took a turn favorable to democracy...
...Some Americans may have heard similar denunciations here...
...Tories in May 1929...
...many superficial observers are unfamiliar with it...
...by the appeal to "patriotism" in the "war for survival" they succeeded in rallying popular support to their side...
...Only members of this caste could carry swords...
...In the situation as of that year, they could not have done otherwise...
...The militarists were given a green light...
...And now we are at war with them...
...the Italians and French could not agree at all...
...Now, however, the Government was able to present the repeal of these privileges as an accomplished fact...
...It goes far back into the feudal period, when the militarists were a special hereditary caste—the samurai—like the warrior caste in India...
...What would the Japanese people actually vote for, if they were given ballots as they were 16 years ago, to vote in free elections for the candidates and parties of their choice...
...What do the Japanese people—as contrasted with the Japanese militarists and the Japanese ruling class —really want...
...The Powers failed to act...
...And what he said was true...
...They increasingly interfered in elections—especially in 1936 and 1937, when they moved effectively to check the rapid and remarkable growth of the Japanese Socialist People's Party...
...Can parliamentary government be re-established in Japan...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 20
