NEWS AND VIEWS

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXXV, Issue 8901, 7 April 1936, Page 4

NEWS AND VIEWS

HE ARMY AND POLITICS IN JAPAN

MILITARY INFLUENCE HIROTA'S NO WAR PROMISE Evidently a brave man. Mr Hirota, as Premier of Japan, Is reported as saying that Ins previous pledge that (here would be no war during his Foreign Ministership still holds good. After taking measure of the assassinations I!-." f ys of delay, and then the emergence of Mr Hirota us Premier, the "Sydney Morning Herald" snys:

It apparently requires organised political assassination in Japan to produce the right man as Premier to govern with the Liberal Parliament elected at the recent Japanese elections. But the event was an accident, and the effect cited was a coincidence. For the Japanese Cabinet is not responsible to Parliament, the fighting services are responsible (in our sense) to neither, and Parliament does not necessarily reflect popular opinion from the popular vote. It may be that Japan is entering a new phase in the development o£ Parliamentary government, as some informed observers have predicted. But it was expected last, year that the existing political parties, which have lost real popular confidence, would either dissolve or expire more gradually with the formation of at least one new national political group. That has not yet occurred. While it is true that the Japanese Cabinet can carry on government despite opposition in the Diet, it is also true that Cabinet increasingly desires support of the elected majority.

PEASANTS TRUST ARMY The defeat at the recent elections of the Seiyukai Party did not displace the "non-party" Government of Admiral Okada, to whom Mr Hirota has now succeeded as Premier, but ihe military element which predominated in the Okada Ministry has been displaced by representation predominantly of big industry, which is anti-military, "Liberal," and as such popularly distrusted. So much was this so that at the last moment Mr Hirota was obliged to give way to army protests and exclude two proposed Ministers to whom the army objected. Such a situation puzzles Western minds, and the peculiar standing of the army influence in Japanese politics is one of the features which outsiders least understand about Japan. To British people it is anathema, and criticism usually goes accordingly. But clearly there must be some backing for this condition in public opinion in a country where army service is a natonal institution, and the majority of the people are peasants, live the hardest of lives, and are perpetually demanding more administrative attention to rural grievances. An explanation of the paradoxus provided in a valuable book recently published, "Japan's Place in the Modern World," by Mr E. 11. Pickering, a member of the British House of Commons, who was for some time Professor of English in a Tokio University. The army is trusted by the people, especially the country people, far above, the politicians. The hold of "big business" upon political parties has discredited these parties with the farmers.

CONSERVATISM THE KEY The army, largely recruited from the rural areas, does not so much inculcate an intensely national spirit as express that spirit from the people; for in rural areas are entrenched the ancient principles of Japanese conservatism. The people trust the army to uphold those principles against the modernists in the business and industrial world, who are the vehicle for the spread of Western ideas and methods. Thus the ultra-patriotic movement among the young army officers is thoroughly supported by the distressed farmers. The democratic machinery in Japan is. to our notions, upside down. The Japanese do not regard manhood suffrage as we do, who had to fight for it; it was given to them before they wanted it. Political parties were formed not from the education of public opinion, hut as clans about the personality of a leader. That the assassin's weapon is no remedy for current troubles is recogniesd by all enlightened Japanese, and the recent political murders are, in the broad sense of that people's struggle towards a more enlightened democracy, a matter for sympathy rather than contemptuous condemnation.

THE BEST HOPE The brightest hope of the day is the arrival of Mr Hirota at the head of the political administration. He is an intense nationalist, and was in his youth even a fiery one. Hut In.' is also an enlightened diplomat and an outstanding example of the modern cosmopolitan in Japan. lie knows Britain, the United Slates, China and Russia intimately from the inside, and he honestly believes that Japan can win. to great stature among the nations in peace more certainly than from war. He has been the main hope of true liberalism in Japan, which is liberalism in the internatonal sense. He has withstood military predominance tactfully, yet contrived to co-operate with army and navy colleagues. He knows that while the popular (and military) criticism of "big business" is to some extent justified, it is also exaggerated, for it is commercial enterprise which lias lifted Japan out of her long seclusion. As an internationalist he must look for support there, especially among the younger generation, and there is no figure in Japanese public life more imbued with enlightened good will.