JAPANESE SUFFRAGE

Evening Star, Issue 19020, 15 August 1925, Page 11

JAPANESE SUFFRAGE

THOSE WHO GAN NOW VOTE Up to 1919 the suffrage in Japan was confined to male citizens about twenty-five years of age paying a direct national tax of ten yen (about 5dol) or more. The percentage of voters was a little over 28 for every 1,000 of the male population. In 1920 this law was revised so as to lower the tax paid by tho voter to three yen, or about l.oOdol (states Mr K. K. Kawakami, in the ‘lndependent’).., By this revision the percentage of voters increased to about 102 per 1,000 of the male population. In other words, 2,860,000 out of the total male population of 28,044,341 were qualified voters. By the manhood suffrage law the number of voters has been increased to 14,000,000 —that is, one voter to every two or the male population. Strangely, this signal stride toward democracy in Japanese politics has been coupled with what a Liberal might call a reactionary measure. T«is is a law directed against the Communistic movement which the Japanese of the Conservative class fear might bo strengthened by Russian recognition. Naturally, it was made the butt of ridicule and assail at the hands of practically all the leading Japanese newspapers. The law imposes an imprisonment not exceeding ten years upon any person who “forms a group or joins a group with the object of subverting the national Constitution or of destroying the institution of private property.”