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TAISHŌ DEMOKURASHII
大正デモクラシー
The Taishō Democracy
The reign of Emperor Taishō (1912-1926) is often called “the Taishō Democracy.” It was not a period of revolutionary change. The government was still largely controlled by the same elite bureaucrats and Imperial advisors who had controlled the country during the Meiji Era. Nevertheless, the Taishō Era was a time of comparative liberalization; and the issues that affected the common people reached the highest levels of government.
Only about two percent of Japanese citizens had been eligible to vote during the Meiji Era (1868-1912). In 1925, all Japanese men over the age of twenty-five were given the right to vote. Just a few years before, in 1918, Hara Takashi became the first prime minister chosen from the ranks of the common people.
The era also saw a new consciousness regarding workers’ rights. Japan’s first legislation aimed at protecting workers, the Factory Act, was passed during the last full year of the Meiji Era, 1911. Additional labor reforms followed throughout the Taishō Era.
Japan also underwent a minor feminist revolution. Women writers like Hiratsuka Raichō (1886–1971) and Takamure Itsue (1894-1964) openly called for legislation to protect women from unfair treatment. Many Japanese women imitated Western styles of dress and behavior in the 1910s and 1920s.
Japan and World War I
World War I (1914-1918) was the single most significant global event to occur during the reign of Emperor Taishō. Japan’s combat role in the conflict was minor. Japanese troops fought briefly on the side of the Allies, and occupied German possessions in Shantung, China, as well as the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands in the Pacific. Japan was the only Asian nation among the victors at Versailles. While negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, Japan succeeded in securing for itself permanent possession over the captured Pacific islands, and a “special status” in Shantung.
If World War I brought Japan prestige and territory, it also wreaked havoc on the Japanese economy. The war triggered first a boom, and then a bust. The wartime economic chaos was followed by a string of disasters which plagued Japan for more than a decade.
Japan’s economy initially prospered when hostilities broke out in 1914. European supply chains were disrupted, and Japan proved a viable alternative source for many manufactured items. As European armies clashed, Japanese factories ran at full tilt.
Wages rose, but the wage hikes could not keep up with the increase in prices. The price of rice soared almost 200% during the war years. In 1918, a series of poor harvests led to rice shortages. The shortages triggered violent riots throughout the country.
In 1920, the war boom came to a screeching halt, bringing bank failures, mass unemployment, and social unrest. The price of silk—Japan’s main wartime export—plummeted by forty percent. In 1923 Tokyo was all but destroyed by a devastating earthquake. Then a national banking crisis followed in 1927. In 1929, the Wall Street crash disrupted the world economy, causing the price of silk to fall again by forty percent.
Political Turmoil and Crackdowns
To make matters worse, there was a new threat imported from abroad. Russia—Japan’s primary rival during the early twentieth century—was now Soviet Russia. Inoculating Japan against “the Russian disease” of Bolshevism became one of the government’s top priorities.
Sundry socialist and anarchist groups had been active in Japan since the late 1800s. By 1922 there was also a Soviet-sponsored, Soviet-inspired Communist Party of Japan. The communists found a receptive audience among Japan’s disenfranchised workers in the cities. (In 1921, Prime Minister Hara was assassinated in Tokyo Station by a disgruntled railroad worker.) The communist message also struck a chord in the countryside, where tenant farmers eked out meager existences tilling the soil of hereditary land owners.
One of the government’s responses to the internal communist threat was the “Peace Restoration Law” of 1925. This law gave the police special intrusive powers to stifle free speech and arrest dissidents. Over 1,500 hundred communists were arrested prior to the elections of 1928. Thousands more would be arrested in the years just prior to World War II.
Emperor Taishō
Emperor Taishō himself was a minor character in the historical period that bears his name. He suffered from meningitis as a child, and there were rumors that Taishō suffered from a hereditary mental disease.
Whether mentally ill or not, it was soon apparent that Emperor Taishō would be unable to effectively fulfill his role as sovereign. Crown Prince Hirohito (later to become Japan’s wartime emperor) was named regent in 1921. Emperor Taishō died on December 25th, 1926. Hirohito took the throne as Emperor Shōwa the same day.