Oligarchy [과두제]

The overthrow of the Tokugawa rule necessitated the construction of a new Japanese state capable of commanding the loyalty of the people and mobilizing society in the quest for national wealth and power. However the ensuing processes of political centralization, nation building, industrialization, and integration into the international order created new complexities. Nonetheless as time passed new organized interests had been accommodated, conflicts between new classes emerged, radical visions of what kind of country Japan should become were put under control. The nature and purposes of the imperial state itself came into question in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan. This period describes something important which is an oligarchic rule (1880–1918), political democracy in the era of party government (1918–32), and fascism (1932–41) constituted successive, albeit overlapping, phases in Japanese attempts to address ‘‘the fear and problem of ungovernability’’. It is characterized in all modern states. Debates about ‘‘oligarchy,’’ ‘‘democracy,’’ and ‘‘fascism’’ in Japan go back a long way, but in the past fifteen years or so they have been significantly rejuvenated by fresh approaches, interpretations, and discoveries of new evidence.  The term ‘‘Meiji oligarchy’’ refers to the group of seven men who took over from Okubo Toshimichi, Kido Koin, and Saigo Takamori, the original leaders of the Meiji regime, and dominated the Japanese government for most of the period from the early 1880s to 1918. They personified to their contemporary critics the tyranny of the ‘‘Sat–Cho hanbatsu,’’ or the ruling clique comprised of men from Satsuma and Choshu, the two domains which, together with Tosa and Hizen, had led the movement to restore the emperor. Their earlier rise to key bureaucratic posts in the regime had enabled them to appoint many of their loyalist comrades from Satsuma and Choshu to positions of power in local government. Despite their tightening grip on power both in Tokyo and in the provinces, the oligarchs were strongly opposed by loyalists from beyond Satsuma and Choshu who had come from a middle or lower samurai background fought to restore the emperor. Seeking a share of power these challengers mobilized political parties in the ‘‘movement for freedom and popular rights’’ which advocated representative government on the British model, in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1881 the oligarchs responded by announcing the establishment of constitutional government and an elected assembly within ten years. In the 1890s, the first decade of constitutional government, the oligarchs recommended each other as prime minister with the understanding that power would normally rotate between the Satsuma and Choshu camps. Now, the oligarchs are generally portrayed by Western historians as enlightened political pragmatists who built the modern Japanese state. First, the key point about the oligarchs is that by subordinating their personal and political rivalries to the shared priority of building a ‘‘rich country’’ (fukoku) and ‘‘strong army’’ (kyohei), they provided relative political stability and continuity of leadership in a period of rapid change. Second, while the constitutional system they devised was authoritarian and clearly intended to legitimize their informal rule from behind the throne, it provided scope for a loyal opposition in an elected lower House of Representatives that would be balanced by a conservative, appointive upper House of Peers. They opposed party cabinets, but ‘‘The measure of the enlightenment of the oligarchs is that they themselves accepted the fact of real participation in the government by the outs as an irreducible minimum for constitutional government.’’ In this, the oligarchs judged, overoptimistically as it turned out, that the parties might help to mobilize popular support for the government’s domestic and foreign policies if landed and business interests whose taxes were essential to these policies were consulted through their party representatives in the lower house. Third, when, beginning with the first Diet in 1890, the parties repeatedly opposed tax increases by using the one significant power afforded them – the power to block supply it forced the government to revert to the previous year’s budget in financing the rising costs of ‘‘wealth and power’’ policies – the oligarchs (at first Ito and later Yamagata) saw the necessity of compromises with the parties in exchange for their cooperation in the Diet. Fourth, in their prime, the oligarchs had sought ‘‘uncontested control of decision-making. In this they were wonderfully successful.’’ By 1900 they had constructed a modern, rational, and highly efficient central bureaucracy, based upon rigorous civil service examinations and an orderly system of promotion, which was deliberately sealed off from the influence of the parties.  In fact, the oligarchs anticipated that the emperor would reign over, but not rule, Japan. His vast prerogatives were to be exercised by other organs and ministers of state who bore responsibility for success or failure and all laws, imperial ordinances had to be countersigned by a minister of state. The oligarchy, straddling the civil and military sides of government. It was by no means clear what would happen after the oligarchs had died out, namely, the growing and unstoppable  interdependence of the bureaucracy and the political parties.

 Bibliography:

1. The Cambridge History of Japan, 2001

2. Japan History; From Prehistoric to Modernity, 1999

3. The Oxford History of the World, 1997 

4. The Modern Nation: The History of Japan, Second Edition, 2009