LAND OF DICTATORS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 187, 21 May 1938, Page 2

LAND OF DICTATORS

HISTORY OF JAPAN. HOW THEY RETAINED THEIR POWER. The Japanese have been ruled by more dictators than any other people in history, writes Kimpei Sheba to the “Chicago Tribune” from Tokio. From the ninth to the nineteenth centuries this country was almost continuously under the rule of dictators. To-day the people are strongly opposed to one-man dictatorships, because experience has taught them that dictators invariably oppress the common people, often reducing them to a position of practical serfdom, and usually plunge the country into civil strife.

In the twelfth century two rival dictators inaugurated an era of civil war which held the country in the throes of almost continuous battle for 450 years, placed it under the administration of a military feudalism and educated a. nation of warriors.

Even when there was peace under a dictator, profuse extravagance on his part and that of his followers conspired to sink the working classes into greater depths of hardships than evei. Farmei's had to boiTow money axicl seed-rice from local officials oi* Buddhist temples, binding their land as security with the result that while the power of the dictator increased more and more, the agricultural population fell into dire straits. The example set by dictators of the four shogun families, the Fujiwara, the Tira, the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa turned the people completely against this form of government and memory of their sad experience remains so fresh—the Tokugawa dictators were not overthrown until 1867 that they are not likely to welcome a return to the old condition despite the officially inspired praise that is being lavished on Hitler and Mussolini. 1

Provided thie Consort.

The first of the shogun dictators was named Fujiwara. His methods were simple but thoroughly effective. As one historian^describes them: “By progressive exercises of arbitrariness he gradually contrived that the choice of a consort of the sovereign should be legally limited to a daughter of their family. When a son was born to an Emperor, Fujiwara took the child into one of his palaces and, on his accession to the throne, the particular Fujiwara noble that happened to be his maternal grandfather became Regent, of the empire. This office of Regent was part of the scheme, for Fujiwara did not allow the • purple to be worn by a sovereign after he had maintained his majority, or if he suffered a sovereign to wield the sceptre during a few years of manhood ho compelled him to abdicate so soon as any independent aspirations began to impair his docility.

Although Fujiwara based his power on matrimonial alliances with the throne, the dictators who followed him based theirs on the possession of armed strength which the throne had J no competence to control. Invariably the dictators ultimately misruled the country and, fortunately for the people, their misrule e entually wrought the downfall of dictatorship in Japan. A Golden Period.

This much, however, must be said for the dictators. Some of them, on assuming power, took ju A, 'ce, simplicity, and truth for guiding principles. They despised luxury and pomp; they never aspired to high official, rank; they were conxgnt with a few provinces for estates <md they sternly repelled depraved customs. Thus the greater part of tlig thirteenth century was, on the whole, a golden era for Japan. Sooner or later, howevei, dictators, caused the constitutional powers to become completely disorganised, especially in regions at a distance from the chief towns. The peasant was impoverished, his spirit broken, his hope of better things completely gone. He dreamed away his miserable existence and left the fields untilled. Bands of robbers followed the armies through the interior of the country, and increased the feeling of lawlessness and insecui*ity.

As is tho ease with every modern dictator, the shogun dictators of Japan invariably set up elaborate espionage systems. Blood purges were frequent, although nothing like that which is going on in Soviet Russia ac present is recorded in Japanese history. Like present-day dictators the

usurpers of power in ancient Japan suspected most people. To safeguard himself from plots among his “trusted” chieftains the Tokugaw? dictator Iyeyasu conceived a clever system of keeping hostages. Every ciaimyo or secondary lord had to send his heir or other close relatives to live in the shogun headquarters in Tokio each alternate year. The year which his heir or close relative was not in Tokio, the daimvo was obliged to slay with the shogun himself.