MrP
Banned
The following is part of the Superpower Empire: China 1912 canon. You can read the original TL here. I am reposting it on Maverick's behalf and with Hendryk's approval.
If only the world
Would always remain this way
Some fishermen
Drawing a little rowboat
Up the river bank
-Minamoto no Sanetomo
As it had been with the year of 1914 and the continent of Europe, the year of 1912 was for a turning point for Asia, one which found Empires old and new at the Crossroads of History and the balance of power in the region irremediably changed. In China, the Qing Dynasty was brought to an end by the forces of Revolution after 268 years in power, replaced at first by a republic and then by the foundation of a new Empire; in India, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, finally accepted as the greatest living writer of Bengal after more than 30 years of work, found himself dissatisfied and set off to the West, to London and America, just as his Gitanjali was to be released in English and earn him the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year; in Thailand, the young King Rama VI faced an unsuccessful rebellion by young officers of his army and navy, perhaps inspired by events in China; and in Japan, the life and reign of the Emperor Meiji came to an abrupt end on the night of July 29th, after more than 45 years on the throne.
The Emperor, whose life had been signaled by some of the most momentous events in Japan’s history, had been born a mere eight months before the arrival of the Admiral Matthew Perry to the shores of Kanagawa, had lived to see the ‘Opening’ of his country to the world after two centuries of isolation, as well as the dying Shogunate’s attempts to reform, ascended to the Throne at the age of 16 upon the death of the Emperor Kōmei and then became the first Emperor restored to power after 500 years of rule under the shogunates and the daimyō, an event that much like the ascension of the Emperor Jianguo in China, proved to be a turning point that meant the end of an old, decrepit system and the entry of a new, young and dynamic power to the world stage.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 was not only the defining event of modern Japanese History, but also a defining moment for modern Asian history as a whole: for Asia, from Beijing to Istanbul, it was a shining example; for Europe, an ominous portent. In less than fifty years Japan had shaken the weight of a centuries-old feudal regime, taken to the ways of Europe, created modern industries and institutions based on lessons the country had learnt from the West, built a modern army and navy, carved a sphere of influence around herself, ending those of China and Russia in Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in the process establishing a nascent Empire that could rival the nascent Germany, the proud Britain, the sclerotic China of the Manchus and the decaying Russian of the Tsars. The end of the Unequal Treaties imposed upon the arrival of the West in the 1850s, the victories over China and Russia, the alliance with Great Britain, the conquest of Korea and Kwantung, it all meant but one thing: that Japan was part of the brave new world of the great empires.
Yet things were not as bright as they seemed: in the West, the great powers of Europe and America still refused to recognize Japan as an equal; in the Empire itself, despite the reforms and attempts at normalization, real power remained in the hands of a few –the army and the navy, the elder statesmen of the Meiji Oligarchy and the Genrō-, and while elections were held regularly and political parties been a part of the national life for the past two decades, voters still represented but a tiny fraction of the total population and the big decisions that guided the Empire’s destiny were still being made behind closed doors by the Great Men that had led the forces of the Restoration and never left their grasp of power weaken, nor allowed it to pass to other hands. What was more, the forty glorious years of growth and modernization had come at a great cost: after the bloody civil wars and rebellions that followed the Restoration, came foreign adventures, and with them grew the appetite of Japan’s leaders and public for more; and with the appetite, the army and navy grew, in size and ambition, just as the treasury dwindled in equal proportion.
The funeral of Emperor Meiji.
Thus, the death of the Emperor on the summer of 1912 saw a Japan still struggling to find its place in the new century and in the new world. The country that saw the young Emperor Yoshihito, known to history as the Emperor Taishō, ascend to the throne on July 30th, was not only radically different from the country that had seen his father born and restored, but also increasingly different from the country that had triumphed over Russia at Port Arthur and Mukden 7 years prior, and for many it was clear that the time of the elder statesmen and the oligarchs had gone, and that the time of the people had come.
Amongst those who understood the precarious situation in which Japan was placed was the Prime Minister, the Prince Saionji Kinmochi, a cultured, Liberal reformist who stood for constitutional and democratic government, in direct opposition to the Genrō, the elder statesmen that had guided the forces of the Meiji Restoration and seized the great offices of the state, sidelining all those who opposed them, steering the nation in the path that they saw fit and monopolizing the institutions of the Meiji Government, occupying the office of Prime Minister since the office’s creation in 1885, and then, with the turn of the century, passing it over their protégés: Katsura Tarō, a general in the Imperial Army and political heir of Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, and Saionji Kinmochi, a statesman and member of the court nobility of Kyoto, whose mentor had been the liberal statesman and first Prime Minister of Japan, Itō Hirobumi. (1)
In the conflict between the conservative elements of the Oligarchy that wished to maintain their privilege, represented by the leader of the five surviving Genrō (2), Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, and those who advocated for reform and constitutional government, also stood the other forces of Japan, old and new: the Imperial Army and Navy, the political parties, the Labor unions and workers’ movement, the great business and financial conglomerates and interests, ultranationalist and imperialist circles, cliques and secret societies, both within and outside the institutions of government.
The clouds had been gathering for years, decades even, but few people anticipated the storm. The first cracks in the edifice of Meiji government had already shown four years before, when the Prince Saionji’s first ministry was brought down by the arch-conservative Yamagata on July of 1908, a precedent that the Prime Minister more than kept in mind when he was asked by the Emperor Meiji to form a new government on August of 1911. But little had changed since then: the death of the Emperor had done nothing to bring a feeling of national unity, but rather it precipitated a crisis long in the making.
The trigger would finally come in the form of the national budget. Years of military adventurism and unchecked government spending had left the financial situation of the state in a critical condition, its resources limited, and further hampered by diminished reserves and little credit that could not cover the constant expansion demanded by the army, the navy and the public administration. Compounding the problem was the Prime Minister’s own party, the Rikken Seiyūkai (Friends of Constitutional Government) at the time the dominant force in the Diet, which stood for a “positive policy” of government spending in public works and internal reforms in the name of economic development since its very inception. Opposing them was the Imperial Army, and behind them General Katsura and Field Marshal Yamagata; an increased budget was a permanent demand of theirs, and an expansion program calling for the creation of two more army divisions their aim for the proposed budget.
Trapped between a rock and a hard place, the Prince Saionji opted for a policy of austerity and retrenchment. The cabinet postponed several expensive public works projects, such as the improvement of port facilities, initiated tax reforms and reduced public spending, but found a major impediment in the Imperial Army and Navy, both of which were committed to their own seven-year programs for expansion: 350 million yen for the Navy, 50 million for the army. The cabinet found both unaffordable, but the army was the one to act. As the debate for the 1913 budget raged in the diet, the Army Minister Uehara Yūsaku resigned from his post, leaving a vacant position in the cabinet that the Prime Minister was unable to fill: the army simply refused to even nominate a successor for Uehara, and under the conditions of the Meiji Constitution, only active-duty generals could occupy the Ministry. The Imperial Army’s intransigence meant that Saionji was unable to form a cabinet, and as such the Prince was forced to resign, along with the rest of his cabinet, on December 21st.
Thus reentered the scene general Katsura Tarō, who had already served as Prime Minister between 1901 and 1906, and between 1908 and 1911, and was asked to form a new government. But the return of the problematic army man only served to worsen the crisis. Seen as the choice of the Genrō and the army clique, the return of Katsura proved wildly unpopular with the public, which believed he defended only for the interests of the Imperial Army rather than the people or even the country at large. His role as Yamagata Aritomo’s protégé and heir only heightened the suspicions that he was appointed once more to the premiership as a ploy to weaken the constitutional government and maintain the privileges of the army and the oligarchy.(3)
Faced with a Seiyūkai majority in the Diet (4), growing discontent amidst the general public and opposition from the Imperial Navy, it was clear from the beginning that the Katsura Cabinet would be forced to fight an uphill battle to get any sort of program implemented, and what had a first seemed like a great victory for the militarists had in fact left them in a dangerous position. But unlike the moderate Saionji, Katsura proved more forceful and direct in his approach to the problems at hand: thus, when the Navy, incensed by the army’s unruly behavior and their inter-service rivalry, refused to provide Katsura with a Navy Minister, the former army General did not hesitate and immediately turned to the Emperor himself for an edict forcing the Navy’s hand, a move that Saionji had refused to consider. The solution, a proverbial cutting of the Gordian Knot, nevertheless did little more than further escalating the crisis, as it prompted the opposition parties into action: led by the majority party, the Rikken Seiyūkai, and the two great parliamentarians Ozaki Yukio and Inukai Tsuyoshi, the constitutional parties joined in the Kensei Yōgo-kai, the “Movement to Protect the Constitutional Government”.
Aided by the press, businessmen and public opinion, the alliance of the Constitutional Parties denounced Katsura’s greed and opportunism –having abandoned the Emperor’s service as Lord Chamberlain to grab the political spotlight- and his lack of commitment to the Constitution, having used the Emperor himself to salvage his position. Katsura responded by following the example of the late Itō Hirobumi, who 12 years before had done the unthinkable for a member of the Genrō and founded a political party, the Rikken Seiyūkai. Unable to face the opposition parties without a structure of his own, the Prime Minister gathered a clique of talents not involved in the Constitutional Movement against him: with the Count Gotō Shinpei, a seasoned bureaucrat and politician, as his right-hand man, he used a faction of the Rikken Kokumintō (Constitutional Nationalist Party) along with the Chūō Club (Central Club) as foundation of the new party, termed the Rikken Dōshikai (Constitutional Fellow Thinkers’ Association) on February of 1913.
The situation, nevertheless, soon moved beyond Katsura’s control: popular anger spread and the people took to the streets. Just as the Prime Minister conspired behind the scenes in a vain attempt to rein in the Diet, thousands of protesters rioted in the streets of Tokyo, surrounding the building of the National Diet and attacking police stations, as well as the offices of pro-government newspapers. Similar protests and rallies had been common in the past days and weeks, but the violence reached on February 10th was unprecedented.
In the Diet, where Katsura’s new party was still very much a minority, an alliance of the two biggest parties in the lower house -the Seiyūkai and the Kokumintō-, prepared a motion of no confidence. His position now untenable, the Prime Minister tried one last gamble: an appeal to the Emperor himself. Through his own rival, the Prince Saionji, Katsura let the opposition parties know that the Emperor himself requested that the non-confidence vote be put to rest. This, nevertheless, proved to be the last straw for the Constitutional Parties and the political opposition in the Diet. To use the Emperor in such a self-serving, selfish manner, and put personal interests over the well-being of the nation, was too much for the party leaders to tolerate, and thus they refused to comply with the Emperor’s order.
On February 20th, Katsura Taro was forced to resign, after barely two months in office. The crisis was for the most part over, the winter of discontent had largely passed and Japan entered into a new phase of its history.
Notes:
1. These being the first four Prime Ministers of Japan and members of the Genrō: Ito Hirobumi, Kuroda Kiyotaka, Yamagata Aritomo and Matsukata Masayoshi. The only Genrō not to serve as Prime Ministers were Inoue Kaoru, Saigō Tsugumichi and Ōyama Iwao.
2. By 1912, Only Inoue, Ōyama, Yamagata and Matsukata were alive. Katsura was added in 1911, year in which he left government for a second time, being made a Prince in the peerage and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. Saionji would be appointed a member of Genrō in 1913.
3. By 1913, though, Katsura had already broken with Yamagata and allied with party politicians instead, which the Genrō saw as a threat and a cancer for the national body of Japan.
4. In the elections held on May 15th of 1912, the Seiyūkai won 211 seats in the House of Representatives; the Rikken Kokumintō (Constitutional Nationalist Party) won 95, the Chūō Club (Central Club) 31 and political independent held 44 seats.
***
The Sun and the Mirror:
A Japanese Spin-Off of the Superpower Empire TL by Maverick
1. At the Crossroads of History
A Japanese Spin-Off of the Superpower Empire TL by Maverick
1. At the Crossroads of History
If only the world
Would always remain this way
Some fishermen
Drawing a little rowboat
Up the river bank
-Minamoto no Sanetomo
As it had been with the year of 1914 and the continent of Europe, the year of 1912 was for a turning point for Asia, one which found Empires old and new at the Crossroads of History and the balance of power in the region irremediably changed. In China, the Qing Dynasty was brought to an end by the forces of Revolution after 268 years in power, replaced at first by a republic and then by the foundation of a new Empire; in India, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, finally accepted as the greatest living writer of Bengal after more than 30 years of work, found himself dissatisfied and set off to the West, to London and America, just as his Gitanjali was to be released in English and earn him the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year; in Thailand, the young King Rama VI faced an unsuccessful rebellion by young officers of his army and navy, perhaps inspired by events in China; and in Japan, the life and reign of the Emperor Meiji came to an abrupt end on the night of July 29th, after more than 45 years on the throne.
The Emperor, whose life had been signaled by some of the most momentous events in Japan’s history, had been born a mere eight months before the arrival of the Admiral Matthew Perry to the shores of Kanagawa, had lived to see the ‘Opening’ of his country to the world after two centuries of isolation, as well as the dying Shogunate’s attempts to reform, ascended to the Throne at the age of 16 upon the death of the Emperor Kōmei and then became the first Emperor restored to power after 500 years of rule under the shogunates and the daimyō, an event that much like the ascension of the Emperor Jianguo in China, proved to be a turning point that meant the end of an old, decrepit system and the entry of a new, young and dynamic power to the world stage.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 was not only the defining event of modern Japanese History, but also a defining moment for modern Asian history as a whole: for Asia, from Beijing to Istanbul, it was a shining example; for Europe, an ominous portent. In less than fifty years Japan had shaken the weight of a centuries-old feudal regime, taken to the ways of Europe, created modern industries and institutions based on lessons the country had learnt from the West, built a modern army and navy, carved a sphere of influence around herself, ending those of China and Russia in Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in the process establishing a nascent Empire that could rival the nascent Germany, the proud Britain, the sclerotic China of the Manchus and the decaying Russian of the Tsars. The end of the Unequal Treaties imposed upon the arrival of the West in the 1850s, the victories over China and Russia, the alliance with Great Britain, the conquest of Korea and Kwantung, it all meant but one thing: that Japan was part of the brave new world of the great empires.
Yet things were not as bright as they seemed: in the West, the great powers of Europe and America still refused to recognize Japan as an equal; in the Empire itself, despite the reforms and attempts at normalization, real power remained in the hands of a few –the army and the navy, the elder statesmen of the Meiji Oligarchy and the Genrō-, and while elections were held regularly and political parties been a part of the national life for the past two decades, voters still represented but a tiny fraction of the total population and the big decisions that guided the Empire’s destiny were still being made behind closed doors by the Great Men that had led the forces of the Restoration and never left their grasp of power weaken, nor allowed it to pass to other hands. What was more, the forty glorious years of growth and modernization had come at a great cost: after the bloody civil wars and rebellions that followed the Restoration, came foreign adventures, and with them grew the appetite of Japan’s leaders and public for more; and with the appetite, the army and navy grew, in size and ambition, just as the treasury dwindled in equal proportion.
The funeral of Emperor Meiji.
Thus, the death of the Emperor on the summer of 1912 saw a Japan still struggling to find its place in the new century and in the new world. The country that saw the young Emperor Yoshihito, known to history as the Emperor Taishō, ascend to the throne on July 30th, was not only radically different from the country that had seen his father born and restored, but also increasingly different from the country that had triumphed over Russia at Port Arthur and Mukden 7 years prior, and for many it was clear that the time of the elder statesmen and the oligarchs had gone, and that the time of the people had come.
Amongst those who understood the precarious situation in which Japan was placed was the Prime Minister, the Prince Saionji Kinmochi, a cultured, Liberal reformist who stood for constitutional and democratic government, in direct opposition to the Genrō, the elder statesmen that had guided the forces of the Meiji Restoration and seized the great offices of the state, sidelining all those who opposed them, steering the nation in the path that they saw fit and monopolizing the institutions of the Meiji Government, occupying the office of Prime Minister since the office’s creation in 1885, and then, with the turn of the century, passing it over their protégés: Katsura Tarō, a general in the Imperial Army and political heir of Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, and Saionji Kinmochi, a statesman and member of the court nobility of Kyoto, whose mentor had been the liberal statesman and first Prime Minister of Japan, Itō Hirobumi. (1)
In the conflict between the conservative elements of the Oligarchy that wished to maintain their privilege, represented by the leader of the five surviving Genrō (2), Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, and those who advocated for reform and constitutional government, also stood the other forces of Japan, old and new: the Imperial Army and Navy, the political parties, the Labor unions and workers’ movement, the great business and financial conglomerates and interests, ultranationalist and imperialist circles, cliques and secret societies, both within and outside the institutions of government.
The clouds had been gathering for years, decades even, but few people anticipated the storm. The first cracks in the edifice of Meiji government had already shown four years before, when the Prince Saionji’s first ministry was brought down by the arch-conservative Yamagata on July of 1908, a precedent that the Prime Minister more than kept in mind when he was asked by the Emperor Meiji to form a new government on August of 1911. But little had changed since then: the death of the Emperor had done nothing to bring a feeling of national unity, but rather it precipitated a crisis long in the making.
The trigger would finally come in the form of the national budget. Years of military adventurism and unchecked government spending had left the financial situation of the state in a critical condition, its resources limited, and further hampered by diminished reserves and little credit that could not cover the constant expansion demanded by the army, the navy and the public administration. Compounding the problem was the Prime Minister’s own party, the Rikken Seiyūkai (Friends of Constitutional Government) at the time the dominant force in the Diet, which stood for a “positive policy” of government spending in public works and internal reforms in the name of economic development since its very inception. Opposing them was the Imperial Army, and behind them General Katsura and Field Marshal Yamagata; an increased budget was a permanent demand of theirs, and an expansion program calling for the creation of two more army divisions their aim for the proposed budget.
Trapped between a rock and a hard place, the Prince Saionji opted for a policy of austerity and retrenchment. The cabinet postponed several expensive public works projects, such as the improvement of port facilities, initiated tax reforms and reduced public spending, but found a major impediment in the Imperial Army and Navy, both of which were committed to their own seven-year programs for expansion: 350 million yen for the Navy, 50 million for the army. The cabinet found both unaffordable, but the army was the one to act. As the debate for the 1913 budget raged in the diet, the Army Minister Uehara Yūsaku resigned from his post, leaving a vacant position in the cabinet that the Prime Minister was unable to fill: the army simply refused to even nominate a successor for Uehara, and under the conditions of the Meiji Constitution, only active-duty generals could occupy the Ministry. The Imperial Army’s intransigence meant that Saionji was unable to form a cabinet, and as such the Prince was forced to resign, along with the rest of his cabinet, on December 21st.
Thus reentered the scene general Katsura Tarō, who had already served as Prime Minister between 1901 and 1906, and between 1908 and 1911, and was asked to form a new government. But the return of the problematic army man only served to worsen the crisis. Seen as the choice of the Genrō and the army clique, the return of Katsura proved wildly unpopular with the public, which believed he defended only for the interests of the Imperial Army rather than the people or even the country at large. His role as Yamagata Aritomo’s protégé and heir only heightened the suspicions that he was appointed once more to the premiership as a ploy to weaken the constitutional government and maintain the privileges of the army and the oligarchy.(3)
Faced with a Seiyūkai majority in the Diet (4), growing discontent amidst the general public and opposition from the Imperial Navy, it was clear from the beginning that the Katsura Cabinet would be forced to fight an uphill battle to get any sort of program implemented, and what had a first seemed like a great victory for the militarists had in fact left them in a dangerous position. But unlike the moderate Saionji, Katsura proved more forceful and direct in his approach to the problems at hand: thus, when the Navy, incensed by the army’s unruly behavior and their inter-service rivalry, refused to provide Katsura with a Navy Minister, the former army General did not hesitate and immediately turned to the Emperor himself for an edict forcing the Navy’s hand, a move that Saionji had refused to consider. The solution, a proverbial cutting of the Gordian Knot, nevertheless did little more than further escalating the crisis, as it prompted the opposition parties into action: led by the majority party, the Rikken Seiyūkai, and the two great parliamentarians Ozaki Yukio and Inukai Tsuyoshi, the constitutional parties joined in the Kensei Yōgo-kai, the “Movement to Protect the Constitutional Government”.
Aided by the press, businessmen and public opinion, the alliance of the Constitutional Parties denounced Katsura’s greed and opportunism –having abandoned the Emperor’s service as Lord Chamberlain to grab the political spotlight- and his lack of commitment to the Constitution, having used the Emperor himself to salvage his position. Katsura responded by following the example of the late Itō Hirobumi, who 12 years before had done the unthinkable for a member of the Genrō and founded a political party, the Rikken Seiyūkai. Unable to face the opposition parties without a structure of his own, the Prime Minister gathered a clique of talents not involved in the Constitutional Movement against him: with the Count Gotō Shinpei, a seasoned bureaucrat and politician, as his right-hand man, he used a faction of the Rikken Kokumintō (Constitutional Nationalist Party) along with the Chūō Club (Central Club) as foundation of the new party, termed the Rikken Dōshikai (Constitutional Fellow Thinkers’ Association) on February of 1913.
The situation, nevertheless, soon moved beyond Katsura’s control: popular anger spread and the people took to the streets. Just as the Prime Minister conspired behind the scenes in a vain attempt to rein in the Diet, thousands of protesters rioted in the streets of Tokyo, surrounding the building of the National Diet and attacking police stations, as well as the offices of pro-government newspapers. Similar protests and rallies had been common in the past days and weeks, but the violence reached on February 10th was unprecedented.
In the Diet, where Katsura’s new party was still very much a minority, an alliance of the two biggest parties in the lower house -the Seiyūkai and the Kokumintō-, prepared a motion of no confidence. His position now untenable, the Prime Minister tried one last gamble: an appeal to the Emperor himself. Through his own rival, the Prince Saionji, Katsura let the opposition parties know that the Emperor himself requested that the non-confidence vote be put to rest. This, nevertheless, proved to be the last straw for the Constitutional Parties and the political opposition in the Diet. To use the Emperor in such a self-serving, selfish manner, and put personal interests over the well-being of the nation, was too much for the party leaders to tolerate, and thus they refused to comply with the Emperor’s order.
On February 20th, Katsura Taro was forced to resign, after barely two months in office. The crisis was for the most part over, the winter of discontent had largely passed and Japan entered into a new phase of its history.
Notes:
1. These being the first four Prime Ministers of Japan and members of the Genrō: Ito Hirobumi, Kuroda Kiyotaka, Yamagata Aritomo and Matsukata Masayoshi. The only Genrō not to serve as Prime Ministers were Inoue Kaoru, Saigō Tsugumichi and Ōyama Iwao.
2. By 1912, Only Inoue, Ōyama, Yamagata and Matsukata were alive. Katsura was added in 1911, year in which he left government for a second time, being made a Prince in the peerage and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. Saionji would be appointed a member of Genrō in 1913.
3. By 1913, though, Katsura had already broken with Yamagata and allied with party politicians instead, which the Genrō saw as a threat and a cancer for the national body of Japan.
4. In the elections held on May 15th of 1912, the Seiyūkai won 211 seats in the House of Representatives; the Rikken Kokumintō (Constitutional Nationalist Party) won 95, the Chūō Club (Central Club) 31 and political independent held 44 seats.
