Japan’s New Political Era

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 172, 21 April 1928, Page 19

Japan’s New Political Era

< < F"' HE waves of democracy are beating up against the ancient 3 institutions and customs of Japan,” says the London I “Times.” “Manhood suffrage is now the law of the land, JI and the last Diet elected under the old limited franchise has. just been dissolved after a tenuous existence long drawn out.

• “The electorate to which the parties now have to make their appeal is swollen to three times its former size; it numbers ten millions instead of three, and these ten millions represent a very wide range of interests and ambitions, dreams and discontents. “Can the old cope with the new electorate? Do all the new voters realise their privilege, and will they come to the polls? “Japan is quickly changing. The mystic element in the government of the nation is losing its appeal, though there is no apparent diminution of loyalty or national spirit. The race of Elder Statesmen, who guided the destinies of Japan during the modernising Meiji era, is dying out; of those chosen pilots Prince Saionji alone is left. Greater stress has inevitably been laid, in the practice of government, upon those modern institutions against which administrative safeguards were so carefully provided and maintained.

“An alternative to the old system, in the shape of democracy, is coming slowly into its own. Modern ideas in a thousand subtle ways are penetrating into the social structure of Japan. No kind of mental isolation is any longer possible. The War, and all that followed after, has compelled Japan to throw in her lot' unreservedly with the general destinies of the modern world. It is in the spirit of thsi changing time that she had adopted manhood suffrage, and so has taken a further step towards genuine Parliamentary Government. “In the present circumstances'this is, in fact, for Japan a very bold move. It was perhaps inevitable. The weakening of the old forms of authority, the ferment of popular opinion, what may be called the externalisation of power—in the sense that Cabinets formed of representatives of Parliamentary parties were growing less and less dependent on hidden forces behind them and more sensitive to popular moods—all these developments seemed to render necessary some stronger assertion of democratic principles.

“The very temper in which manhood suffrage was adopted by the interested political groups is in itself significant. It indicates the prevalence in the country of a vague and restless modernism which is not yet completely organised or crystallised, but is profoundly aware of new needs in the life of the nation and is seeking to satisfy them by any available means. As the world goes, manhood suffrage seems to be the logical next step, and Japan has taken it. But it is not surprising that the politicians arc facing the consequences of their action in some perplexity, and that they are not quite certain of the efficacy of the old methods in dealing with this large unknown electorate. “No one quite knows what the Japanese people are thinking after the stern experiences of the last few years, borne with a marvellous stoicism, She has no alliance. At her doors she has a Bolshevist Russia and a China in anarchy. Hei- relations with the other Great Powers are friendly indeed, as Baron Tanaka declared last Saturday, but it is a friendship that is cool, correct, and distant. Future developments in the Pacific are wholly uncertain. “No rapid solution for the thronging problems of Japan is visible. Such a strain so gallantly and patiently endured inspires respect and sympathy, and, while in this difficult period the statesmen have shown great, sagacity, the strength and tenacity of the national character have been for them a marvellous resource. That character, indeed, is the best guarantee that the extension of the suffrage, in broadening the basis of government, will not endanger its stability, for all that subversive agents may hope and plan. “It is the fashion nowadays to seek correctives and safeguards, against chaotic tendencies in democracy. Italy and Spain have abandoned democracy altogether; in Poland it is languishing, and other new States have devised methods of their own for tempering its uncertainties. The sad fate of a short-lived democracy in Russia is notorious. Yet at this very moment, when democratic ideals are being so sharply critised and so severely tested, Japan has chosen to test democracy in her awn national experience. “It is a profoundly interesting development.”