A NEW GOVERNMENT IN JAPAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 6

A NEW GOVERNMENT IN JAPAN

A Go vemment is in the process of formation in Japan,

but it does not appear to be probable that any great change in national policy is likely to ensue from the new personnel of the Cabinet. Political control docs not exist in Japan. Parliament is shamefully and barefacedly managed. There are two groups of managers—one, the army chiefs, who do not believe in parliamcntarianism; and two, the financial magnates for whom the parliamentary parties are instruments'. When the Hiroti Cabinet resigned General Terauehi took up the reins of office. The latter represented the Army, and he declared that ‘‘ the Army is opposed to the operation of the parliamentary institution along democratic ideas of the western type.”

Parliamentarism, however, stands in a weak position, because the peasants arc prone to favour the Army over the industrial interests. However, since the last general elections the members of Parliament have shown a remarkable tenacity in the exercise of their political veto, and dissolution of the Diet is a constant threat of the Government. Meanwhile expenditure goes on apace, Budgets contain increasing taxes, and the recent German-Japanese Treaty has brought nothing but a measure of onerous obligations to Japan, and lost the rights to the Russian fishing grounds in the Ear Eastern Siberian coast. There must be a considerable volume of discontent in Japan, and although much of it is misinformed and could easily be misled, all of it is not of this character, and the truth has a tendency, like water, to find its own way out. The expected crisis in the political development of Japan has not yet arrived, but it is appreciably nearer than it was a year ago.