Emergence of Party Government
The Jiyutō and the Shimpotō united in 1898 against Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi's proposed new taxation plans, and formed the Kenseitō, which emerged with a majority of seats in Diet in the subsequent election. Itō resigned, and was replaced by Ōkuma Shigenobu, making the first time that a political party had assumed power. Although the Ōkuma government collapsed within months, a precedent had been set.
The Kenseitō evolved into the Kenseitō Hontō, followed by the Rikken Kokumintō in 1910. Itō Hirobumi joined into the fray, by organizing the Rikken Seiyukai in 1900 to combine elements from the former Jiyutō with elements from the oligarchs and bureaucrats. The more conservative elements rallied around Katsura Taro, and his Rikken Doshikai, which was reconstituted as the Kenseikai in 1916. From 1922 onwards, politics was a rivalry between the Seiyukai and the Kenseikai, rather than political parties and oligarchs.
During this period, a bewildering array of parties advocating socialism, Marxism or agrarianism appeared. All provoked hostility from the mainstream political parties, oligarchs and military alike, and many were either banned or went underground soon after formation. Following the successful Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the emergence of labor unions in Japan, the Nihon Shakai Shugi Domei (1920), Japan Communist Party (1922), and other left-wing parties emerged.
Read more about this topic: Political Parties Of The Empire Of Japan
Famous quotes containing the words emergence of, emergence, party and/or government:
“Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”
—George Marshall (1880–1959)
“Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”
—George Marshall (1880–1959)
“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)