A DICTATORSHIP

Hokitika Guardian, 9 December 1940, Page 2

A DICTATORSHIP

MINUS THE FUEHRER

A JAPANESE EXPERIMENT

(By Richard Hughes in the Sunday Telegraph).

“New Structure,” Prince Konoye eall,s it. “New Stricture,” Liberal members of the Japanese Diet call it sourly. They, at any rate, have no doubt that the Prince’s extraordinary experiment in totalitnrian-advisory-patriarchal Government, now rechristened (although still unborn) “Imperial Rule Assistance” Association, means the ultimate emasculation of the /Diet and the removal of even the empty form of Representative Government, which is practically all that now remains of Democracy in Japan. At present no one except the Prince—and .not even he, his critics acidly protest—could forecast exactly -[the proposed 'functions and the powers, of. the T.R.A., 4 or pretend to know whether those functions and powers, when fully revealed, will be the same in practice as in theory. (It is .an unholy coincidence that the New Structure should have the same initials as the Irish Republican Army). The Prince and the directors of the provisional association deny that the New Structure is another step by Japan in the direction of dictatorship (by o- Government—as distinct from dictatorship by the more familiar Fuehrer Prinzip. “How can we have a dictatorship l when we have the Emperor!” they demand. “ , Help for the Emperor is their excuse. Unity under the Emperor is their justification. The Emperor has, in fact, become the alibi for the I.R.A. He is an alibi that no loyall Japanese—and I have never met a disloyal one—will ever challenge. Many responsible and ifang-siglit-ed Japanese regard this development as the greatest indictment of -the Konoye-Matsuoka-Tojo Government.

They believe that the Government will weaken the divine sovereignty of the Emperor if it continues to monkey with the unwritten Japanese political rule that the Emperor must be above and outside, not of politics—A symbol and not a protagonist, a Holy Grail, But never a standard-bearer. These Japanese accuse tlie Government of growing reckless in identifying 'die Emperor personally with tlieijr national' and. .international policy gambles—firstly with the Axis Pact and .now with the I.R.A. emasculation of the Diet. The Prince has announced that the aim of the , New Structure is simply “to unite the total energies of the State and the people, to make one living whole of our one hundred million fellow-countrymen and enable them all to fulfil perfectly their duty as subjects of the Throne.” There’s nothing wrong with that. No Japanese could criticise the sentiment. The Prince has also stated that “this must Be a solid, nation-wide structure, in which all the component partes are organised vertically and also bound together horizontally.” Nor is there anything wrong with that. If you know what it means. More ispecically, hut jess successfully, he has declared that “this new organisation must provide for harmonious co-operation Between the High. Command and the administrative branch of the Government.” The High Command promptly and characteristically replied that the Army and Navy would be delighted to give “general co-operation in the New Structure,” hut that,., “as a matter of principle,” they -would “not participate in the Central Guidance Agency.” * * * «

In plain language, the Army will co-operate with the 1.11. A. as it cooperates with the Diet and the Govern - ment. It will support the organisation when it chooses .ignore it when it chooses, defy it when it chooses. Other vague statements and denials ; interminable wrangles about the numbers, titles, and order of precedence of the governing committees, counsellers, advisers, directors, and other swarms oi political medicine men; a frank admission that the association lacks legal status under the Menji Constitution; an angry and amusing refusal by the Woman’s National Defence Association (8,000,000 strong) to disisolve their identity and organisation in the New Structure (“Our organisation always has fulfilled the Utilise of womanhood ever since it was organised by assisting in the strengthening of national defence”) ; and an assurance by ihe Prince that the fund a mental objective is strictly Japanese ideology”—all this welter of wrangling and ballyhoo has not helped to clear the air, some deductions can perhaps be made Australians if the developement of the New Structure, as already disclosed, is explained in Australian terms. Mr. Menpies establishes a- “Help the King” Association —legally and nominally dissociated from the frame-

work of democratic Australian Government. He becomes president of this association. He spends most of bis time, while Prime Minister of the constitutional GovoinmixU, (organising and directing the association. He forces tin l dissolution of all parties in the Senate and House of Representivos, and makes all members join his association.

He appoints the Federal Government service, the secretariat of the association, and names all his Ministers as executives. He includes his unconstitutionallyreformed, 110-party Federal Parianient, without summoning it- for debate, m the directorate of the association, hut denies former Opposition leaders representation *in. the controlling committees. He finds a humble place in tlie structure for all city and town councils and country progress associations in Australia. He compels Big Bllsinos.sv.to cooperate in an advisory Economic Coutvil and univesity and educational authorities to co-operate in an advisory Cultural Council.

He discloses that his association will have the right to study and amend Budgets ;fitd any legislation before submission to i lie 1 louse. Finally, he announces tha the vvilj, shortly introduce a bill into the House of Representatives “to revise the election system,” and then (as the Prince did at Kyoto three weeks ago) complains in aggrieved tones that he has -“heard criticism at times that the new national structure envisioned under the I.U.A. bears a suspicious resemblance to Communistic doctrines, while others have thought they discerned strong Nazi characteristics. ’ That is what has happened and is happening in Japan to-day. *** * *

No oho knows for certain the basis of the Prince’s intended electoral reforms, but 1 imagine that in similar circumstances in Australia Air Curtin, Air Beasley, and even Sir Earle Pago would have a pretty shrewd suspicion of the shape such proposals would fe likely to take. The Prince is clearly hammering out a characteristic Japanese imitation of the New Deal, Communism, Fascism, and Nazism —all rolled together—for his New Structure.

No doubt much of -his ■ inspiration has come from Yosuke Alatsuoka, who Y" seven years ago resigned his seat in the Diet to urge vainly the abolition, of the parliamentary system and theestablishment of a “Sliowra Restora- * tiou” group, animated' by stronger persona? service to the Emperor. It is appropriate, on reflection, that Prince Konove should have the responsibility of attempting- to blend all these dissimilar and, opposed incuts. , Because he is blue-blooded aristocrat. who was a Marxist until he was “rescued”’ by Japan’s • grand old Liberal statesman, Prince Saionji, and lie Ijas now developed'ah academic ad- • miration for Nazi executive technique L —although lie still shakes, his head y ■over the Axis Pact that Air Alatsuoka talked him into.