Season 14, Episode 1: Crisis and Opportunity
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Season 14: The Taisho Period. The cover art for this season features a speeding train - a symbol of Japan’s continued progress which began during the Meiji Period. The thing about trains, however, is that they take a long time to slow down or stop, and it can be difficult to cause a train to change directions if you have not laid the appropriate track ahead of time. Some of the events which we will discuss this season are the continuation of things set in motion during the Meiji Period while other events will begin during Taisho and carry over into the reign of Emperor Showa. Some of these are broadly positive developments, and some will eventually have devastating repercussions.
The Taisho Period spans from 1912 to 1926. I would not normally plan an entire season just to cover fourteen years of history, but this particular cluster of fourteen years was incredibly busy within Japan, in the wider sphere of East Asia, and in the even broader sphere of the entire world. The troubles and dust-ups of far-off Europe have seldom concerned us during this podcast thus far but ignoring global developments is no longer an option.
Guiding our discussion this season, as they did last season, are primarily three books which attest to this period in history. “The Making of Modern Japan” by Marius B. Jensen, “A Modern History of Japan,” by Andrew Gordon, and “Korea’s Place in the Sun” by Bruce Cumings are once again front and center. I’ll continue using all three for the remainder of this show, which will conclude with Season 17 probably around this time next year. I often joke that the great thing about history is that there is more of it every day but for the purposes of this podcast we will probably end around the 1970s.
The 1910s were an extremely important decade globally and the world in 1912 was gripped with anxiety about the future. A combination of the expansion of global imperial powers combined with the extremely bad blood some of them nurtured against each other convinced many worldwide that a European war was inevitable. Efforts had been made throughout the early years of the 1900s to form deliberative bodies dedicated to world peace in hopes of avoiding another disturbance of continental peace. Unfortunately, they would ultimately fail in this mission.
In the midst of this world on the precipice of large-scale imperialist conflict, occupying the northeastern corner of many maps, was the empire of Japan, which had managed to carve out a decent chunk of east Asia as its own. When Emperor Taisho was enthroned in 1912, Japan had essentially incorporated Okinawa and Hokkaido into its home domains and had a firm grip upon the island of Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula. They had also managed to take control of the Liaodong Peninsula and technically owned the southern half of Sakhalin Island. However, this expansion had come at a significant cost, both of lives lost fighting wars against China and later Russia, and of the ever-increasing expenses of the imperial military.
From the perspectives of the imperial military’s top brass, this increasing expenditure was well-justified as the cost of maintaining an empire. Although the Korean peninsula was largely pacified, Uibyeong militias created occasional headaches for the armed occupiers and counter-insurgency was needed. The military leaders were also just as capable as anyone else of following global news and coming to the reasonable conclusion that an impending war in Europe would not be contained to Europe alone but would conceivably be enjoined by various powers worldwide. The Meiji Era wars against China and Russia had been won in part because the political leaders gave military leaders the funding they required to obtain a victorious outcome in both conflicts. The imperial top brass had no intention of scaling down their efforts at keeping the empire’s military up-to-date with the latest war technology and training.
The wrangling between civilian and military leadership over the annual budget would account for no small amount of political strife at the beginning of the Taisho Period, which we will discuss in greater detail later in this episode. First, however, I want to discuss some of the broader trends of the Taisho Period for Japan itself. Politically, the right to vote was still limited to men who met the income tax requirement of an annual income of 10 yen, a sizeable sum at the time. This amounted to around three percent of Japan’s population being eligible to elect representatives in the Imperial Diet. Liberal activist groups like the Freedom and People’s Rights Party and their many successors continued, throughout the Taisho Era, to clamor for an expansion of suffrage. The ultimate objective for many of these groups was to obtain universal suffrage, some even advocating for establishing women’s right to vote.
Such talk of universal suffrage made Japan’s conservative elite very nervous and they frequently accused the advocates of socialist and communist sympathies, accusations which would carry significantly more weight toward the end of the Taisho Period for reasons which will become apparent. In many ways, the tensions between democracy and autocracy would come to define the 1910s all across the globe. France’s Second Empire had been vanquished in 1870 after losing the Franco-Prussian War and it had been replaced by a democratic republic. In Russia, Tsar Nicholas II was forced by the violent uprisings of his common people to accept the authority of the Duma, a parliamentary body of elected representatives. There was, however, one particular European nation who clung to conservative, autocratic, royal power like a drowning sailor to a driftwood log: Germany.
The German Empire had an Imperial Diet which was elected through universal male suffrage. However, the Chancellor of the Diet was appointed by the Kaiser and served at his pleasure. The sovereign enjoyed absolute command over the military, being its commander-in-chief.
Like many international observers in the 1910s, the sovereign of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II, believed that a European war was fast-approaching and inevitable. In particular, he believed that Germany would go to war with France, who was still eager to avenge the shameful defeat they suffered in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The German state worked hard to prepare for this inevitable war, building what was, at the time, arguably the most efficient warmaking infrastructure in the world. Parallel rail lines criss-crossed the nation, allowing for rapid deployment and reinforcement to various strategic fronts. The German state was also prepared for rapid mobilization when the time inevitably arrived for war to commence, but we’ll discuss the first World War in greater depth later this season.
On July 29, 1912, Emperor Meiji died and his son Yoshihito took the throne. Upon taking said throne, the new emperor proclaimed the name for the new imperial era: Taisho, meaning “great righteousness.” He would thus be remembered posthumously as Emperor Taisho. Although he came to the throne at the fairly ripe age of 32, he would prove to be a far less active monarch than his father. You may recall that several of Emperor Meiji’s children had died young and while Yoshihito survived well into adulthood, he had suffered a particularly harrowing brush with cerebral meningitis, an inflammation of the protective membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, when he was just three weeks old. This early bout with an often-fatal condition seems to have permanently damaged his constitution, and he frequently suffered with serious chronic illness throughout his life.
His frequent illness was disruptive to his education and by his middle school years he was withdrawn from school in favor of a homeschool program which had the flexibility which his health required. That being said, sources indicate that he was an able student who especially enjoyed language study and nurtured a fascination with so-called western cultures. He frequently and precociously mixed French words into his sentences, a habit which became a source of irritation for his imperial father.
He was married to Kujo Sadako in 1900 and by the time he was elevated to the throne in the summer of 1912, the pair were raising four healthy children. At the insistence of Ito Hirobumi, he had regularly attended cabinet and privy council meetings throughout his young adulthood. The now-late Hirobumi probably hoped that this would help nurture an interest in politics and leadership within the future emperor, but mostly it seems that prince Yoshihito spent the time being bored.
Saionji Kinmochi had been serving as prime minister for about a year when the new emperor was enthroned. Being the protege of Ito Hirobumi, he had continued advocating for greater civilian control over the government and was locked in a struggle with the military establishment over funding and appropriations. Uehara Yusaku had been appointed as the cabinet’s Minister of the Army in April 1912 and by December of that same year, just five months after the ascension of Emperor Taisho, Yusaku and Kinmochi had become deadlocked over the military’s budget. Specifically, Yusaku wanted funding to train and equip two additional infantry divisions. When Kinmochi made it clear that funding cuts were coming no matter what, Yusaku resigned in protest.
Typically a cabinet minister resigning meant only that the prime minister needed to find a replacement. Under otherwise normal political conditions, this shouldn’t have been a problem. However, there was a legal requirement for naming someone to a military-designated cabinet position: said nominee had to be an active officer of the military in good standing. Uehara Yusaku anticipated Kinmochi’s need for a new military minister and encouraged his fellow generals to refuse any nominations until their demands for increased funding were agreed to. Thus, Prime Minister Saionji Kinmochi was unable to acquire a new Minister of the Army and, being unable to form a proper cabinet, resigned on December 21, 1912.
A powerful military had always been part of the general vision of Japan promoted by Emperor Meiji. You may recall the aspirational slogan, Fukoku Kyohei, “Rich Country, Strong Army.” However, Uehara Yusaku’s maneuver in essentially forcing the resignation of a prime minister was a big deal. Japanese agitators who advocated for increased civil rights and suffrage always found a ready enemy in the conservative leadership of the imperial military, and by forcing the prime minister’s resignation, many of these agitation groups arranged protests and lambasted General Uehara in op-eds and pamphlets.
Emperor Taisho needed to intervene at this point, and so he appointed a new prime minister. His selection, however, only worsened public outcry. To replace Saionji Kinmochi, he chose as the new prime minister Katsura Taro. A protege of Yamamoto Aritomo, Taro was notoriously conservative and was perceived as being beholden to military interests above civilian needs. The common people of Japan who objected to Taro’s appointment following Kinmochi’s unceremonious ouster responded to this development with their favored method for expressing outrage: they organized massive protests which frequently evolved into riots.
Soon after he once again took office as prime minister, Katsura Taro found himself in a similar situation to his predecessor, though this time it was the Navy that was demanding a large funding increase to build new battleships. His Minister of the Navy resigned in protest when he refused to support the expenditure. Unlike his predecessor, however, Taro had no intention of giving up his premiership. He appealed directly to Emperor Taisho, and the sovereign issued a direct order for the Navy to provide an appropriate minister for the cabinet. They obeyed this order. Crisis averted, right?
Haha, no. Not even close. Katsura Taro’s many political enemies in the Imperial Diet seized upon this incident as proof that Taro himself was not sufficiently committed to liberal constitutional government. The power which the constitution granted the emperor was, for people who favored popular consent as the basis of government, a looming problem that threatened to disrupt the political unity of the empire itself. Liberal agitators took to both the pages of newspapers and to the streets to express their discontent at the authoritarian maneuver and at the failure of the government to provide any kind of check against military power.
The situation was not at all helped by the fact that a political party known as Seiyukai, or “Friends of Constitutional Government,” held a significant number of seats in the Imperial Diet. Founded by Ito Hirobumi, the leader of Seiyukai was Saionji Kinmochi. Seiyukai was supported in the streets by liberal Japanese activists who staged anti-Taro demonstrations across the country, with particularly large demonstrations being held in Tokyo itself.
By February of 1913, just a few months after Kinmochi’s resignation and Taro’s subsequent ascendance, things were looking grim for Taro’s government. On February 7, desperate to defend his government from his relentless opponents, Taro cobbled together his own political party composed of various like-minded smaller parties and defectors from smaller parties. Called Doshikai, or “Comrades of the Constitution,” this new party was forged specifically to defend Taro’s cabinet and counterpunch against opponents like Seiyukai. While this party would later accumulate significant power, in the moment its formation was too little, too late. On February 10, a massive riot engulfed Tokyo and participants set fire to multiple police stations, vandalized the offices of newspapers which supported Katsura Taro, and even threatened the Diet building itself. Politically speaking, blood was in the water.
The Imperial Diet, following the lead of Katsura Taro’s opponents, passed a vote of no confidence in the prime minister - the first successful no confidence vote in Japan’s history. On February 20, Taro bowed to the political headwinds and resigned from office after serving as Prime Minister for 62 days - the second lowest all-time single term of office for a Japanese prime minister to date. That being said, Katsura Taro had previously served much longer terms as prime minister and his cumulative time in office is second only to the recently deceased Abe Shinzo. However, this final two-month term would be his last turn in the office of Prime Minister. He died in October of 1913 from stomach cancer.
The messy politics which defined the entire first year of the Taisho Period are remembered collectively as Taisho Seihen, or the Taisho Political Crisis. While the rest of the period would not be quite as tumultuous, the spirit of public involvement in political affairs, often expressed through discontented riots, was obviously going to be carried over from the Meiji Period.
To replace the embattled Katsura Taro, a retired admiral of the Imperial Navy who had served as Minister of the Navy in previous cabinets was chosen. Yamamoto Gonnohyoe was well-known as both a skilled politician and a dedicated naval officer who was credited with guiding the navy to victory through the tumultuous Russo-Japanese War. Like Saionji Kinmochi, he was a member of Seiyukai. One of his first accomplishments was abolishing the law that the military ministers of the cabinet had to be chosen from active duty officers. The public saw this rule as being the primary source of their discontent and, for about a year, Gonnohyoe was lauded as a champion of constitutional order in contrast to the tyrannical Katsura Taro. However, his administration soon fell into the choppy waters of a good old-fashioned bribery scandal.
As seems only appropriate, this particular incident involves… wait for it… the Japanese Imperial Navy. The modernization for which the Meiji Period is so well remembered was made possible, in part, by foreign firms signing lucrative deals with the Imperial government. In order to secure higher profits and long-term contract awards, some of these firms had resorted to bribing the entities in question in exchange for sweetheart deals. One such firm was the German conglomerate Siemens AG, who had secured a near-monopoly on supplying Imperial Japan with Naval goods and services.
The trouble began when some of the relevant naval officials, who had been receiving a regular fifteen percent kickback on contracts they awarded to Siemens, were contacted by Vickers, one of Siemens’ British competitors. Vickers was offering twenty-five percent kickbacks, which was making some Japanese officials reconsider their previous relationship with Siemens. When rumors started flying that the Japanese navy might award large contracts to their competitors, Siemens sent telegrams to their contacts in Tokyo demanding an explanation. A German employee of Siemens in Japan read one of these telegrams, which discussed the bribery situation in fairly plain language, and decided to act. He leaked the story to Reuters news, sold them the telegram in question, and fled to Germany before his employers knew what had happened.
When the story broke in early 1914, public outrage swiftly followed. The Taisho Political Crisis had, after all, begun in part because of demands for increased expenditure for the military. The idea that the military brass was using taxpayer money to secure bribes from foreign corporations who were, by necessity, overcharging on their contracts, and that the officers in question were lining their pockets with the proceeds generated understandable outrage among the Japanese populace. On February 10 and 14 of 1914, riots engulfed Tokyo as the prime minister, his cabinet, and his remaining allies in the Imperial Diet scrambled to find an adequate response.
The navy reduced its budget request by tens of millions of yen but the Upper House of the Diet, called the House of Peers, summoned Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonnohyoe to berate him with questions. Ultimately both houses of the Imperial Diet refused to pass a new annual budget for the Navy and members of the lower house began organizing a vote of censure against the prime minister.
To be fair to Yamamoto Gonnohyoe, there is no evidence that he was directly involved in what came to be known as the Siemens Scandal. However, the fact that he had come from the navy and that this had all become public knowledge under his purview was enough to condemn him in both the court of public opinion and in a later court martial. On March 24, 1914, Prime Minister Gonnohyoe resigned rather than face censure and, potentially, a vote of no confidence. In the flurry of court martials that followed, many officers were discharged from the navy, severe fines levied against both Siemens and Vickers, both companies banned from bidding on future contracts, and the former prime minister himself given the indignity of a demotion in rank.
Seiyukai, the party which Gonnohyoe had been a member, had turned against him during the ensuing months of scandal and public outrage. One particular member, Hara Takashi, had led this revolt against the party leadership and emerged as a Seiyukai leader for a new generation in the process. If he hoped that his actions would result in being named the new prime minister, however, that hope was in vain. Taking Yamamoto Gonnohyoe’s place as the new prime minister was none other than longtime friend of the pod Okuma Shigenobu.
As we discussed last season, Shigenobu had been an influential early member of the Meiji government but fell out several times with Ito Hirobumi and was essentially drummed out of politics by public outrage at a renegotiated treaty he had arranged between Japan and western powers. After inciting public outrage at what the public believed was yet another unequal treaty, an assassin tried to kill him by throwing a bomb under his carriage in 1889. He survived, but his left leg was amputated at the hip and he understandably retired from politics shortly thereafter. That retirement lasted until 1896 when he once more started organizing political parties and even serving a few times in various cabinet posts throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.
He would serve as Prime Minister of the Empire of Japan from April 1914 until October of 1916, guiding the ship of state through the beginning of what was, at the time, the bloodiest conflict in world history. A few episodes from now, we will examine the beginnings of that conflict, which until its much worse sequel, was generally known as “The Great War.” Next time, however, we will discuss the events in China during the early 1900s following the Boxer Rebellion and witness the end of the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history.