THE IMMEDIATE POLITICAL FUTURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2845, 23 September 1908, Page 15

THE IMMEDIATE POLITICAL FUTURE.

I How in these circumstances Katsura is j to steer a safe course it is somewhat difficult to conjecture. For European loans are now impracticable, and the immediate enforcement of the new armament programme means still heavier taxation. The , Independents are returned to oppose such a course, and a large section of the Constitutionalists will with them and the majority "of the Progressists raise every possible obstacle against its adoption. — * The situation seems impossible. But there are broad hints in the newspapers that other, means than arguments or discussion are often used for changing the minds of politicians as they are used for persuading electors. Straight charges are made by them (I have heard politicians repeat them), though not against individual members ; and some of these charges were investigated by a parliamentary committee last session without persuading the public to believe in their negative decision. A prominent politician bewailed to me the chaotic and inchoate state of the Japanese party system, and j it^ corruptibility. The newspapers accuse the Daido Club especially, the representative of conservatism and jingoims in Japan, of taking bribes. And I have seen it broadly hinted in one or two newspapers that the House of Peers is not insensitive to such means of persuasion. My poEtical friend . recalled the days of Walpole in England, when, "every man: in politics had his price," and pointedto the United States as an existing- example of corruptibility in an Anglo-Saxon com- \ j munity. But it is the alien element in America and its rush for money that have i made bribery possible and even rampant there ; whilst the English. Parliament of i the eighteenth century had its tradition of corruption from the bad times of Charles 11. Japan has no alien element i and no corrupt past outside of autocracy. ' j THE NEW PASSION FOR MONEY, j | It is the rush" for money that is making i corruption possible in her parliamentary j ! life. My Japanese political philosopher j \ mourned over the growing passion for ■ wealth that is now eating into the heart | of the life. Till the revolution, or rather , restoration, of 1868, the mercantile class ■ was just above that of the Eta or outcast class, whom it was pollution to approach ; and trading, and even inter- j course, with foreigners was on no j higher a basis than smuggling in J England during tho eighteenth century ; it was forbidden under the severest penalties by the Government. The Samu- j rai, the warlike retainers of the feudal nobles, and the embodiment of the I Japanese ethical ideals, despised and < eschewed all money and all ways of acquir- j ing it. It was the training of the spirit, I and as a basis for that the training of ■ the body to its highest perfection, that • formed the aim of their life. At first it . vas for the purposea of war ; Jbut when wars ceased in the beginning of the seven- j teenth century it was for the purpose of i scholarship and the moulding of an ideal \ humanity. In those days it was not wealth that was the standard of power, though, as in all ages and conditions, it was one of the bases and prerogatives of , power ; it was honour, chivalry, or the , "highest efficiency of the human spirit and i body that gave a man his position in life. J Of course this was only for the dominant ' (.losses ; the people were sunk, as now, in unending toil and the sliuggu; for a bare _ .-übsistenee, and boweJ like slaws before ' their lords <md masters. All this is changed, and the occidental i vnte for wealth luifc diawn the whole J nation into its headlong career. The rise of millionaires in Japan from even the j farmer and peasant cla<s. and the pre&tige, j power, and titles they have lapidly i acquired from the possession of wealth, J have dictated her new idea's. How to • get rich quick is the social problem now. The Japanese have realised better even than the American that money i« the stored-up concentration of povver. It is this realisation that makes their po^t-bellum boom periods so pernicious ; it spread? speculation and share gambling through every section of the community ; and the inevitable collapse distributes the suffering' and ruin as widely. Bubble! companies are floated every day. just as , in a mining boom in an Anglo-Saxon j community, and the shares of concerns that have ruin written across them from ' the first are rushed to a bewildering ', price ; it is then that the innocents and ( novices snatch at them, when the esperi- j enced and inner circle have already made their harvest. But the collapse of 1898 had taught the nation something, whilst the absence of an indemnity after the Russian war left it less money to play ' with. So this collapse has been less , severe. Yet even now the knowing I financiers have got bitten ; and in the j Tokio Puck the other day there is a picture of a scarecrow Japanese in illfitting and patched clothes greasing the

axle of a tramcar, and of a slipshod woman with smoothing irons in her hands, and underneath this legend, " Tadahira Sakai. • who was a Baron- and a member of the House of Peers, is now a sweeper in the employ of the Tramway Company, and his wife a work-woman in a rubber company. Peers' true value is such." In a picture above this two Japanese with ! the kimonos drawn up to their thighs are i collecting a stage snowfall of paper from the ground, and the description runs, i " Even Counts Yoshikawa and Seikanji condescend to such a greedy manner of picking up the votes for the by-election . to the Upper House to take place to- ' day." A vacancy had occurred amongst the Counts in the House of Peers, and they had to elect a representative; some ! of the newspapers broadly hinted that there was more than mere canvassing employed by the rival candidates. (To be continued.)