Word: seiyukai
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Emperor an Organ? Of the total of 466 Diet seats nearly all were contested by machine candidates of the two large and wealthy Japanese parties, the Seiyukai and the Minseito. Many of these candidates neither knew nor cared what the issues, if any, were. This astounding state of affairs existed despite the fact that there had been no Japanese election since 1932. In theory the poll last week should have settled the paramount issue of Eastern Asia, whether Japanese expansion is to rage on through China at staggering cost or whether the Japanese people disapprove the extravagant and risky militarism...
This was decidedly a red herring. The Seiyukai Party, knowing the militarist-dominated Cabinet to be against them, insinuated in their speeches that the Government had not sufficiently rejected, outlawed and blasted the teaching of famed Dr. Tatsukichi Minobe. As a professor of the Imperial University at Tokyo, this legal savant some 30 years ago produced three books on the Japanese Imperial Constitution and the status of the Emperor. That status, in one word, is divine. Dr. Minobe made the mistake of adorning it with other words and blaspheming His Majesty to the extent of writing that...
After this great inspirational speech Japan's Parliament was dissolved by Imperial Order and a general election set for Feb. 20. The Home Ministry, commonly said in Japan to "make the election," estimated cheerily that the two great civilian parties, the Seiyukai and the Minseito, will each win approximately the same number of seats, and that the balance of power will be held by the militarists' small and comparatively new Showakai Party. Although not exactly translatable, Showakai is a Japanese word strongly implying that it is the Party's divinely appointed duty to usher...
Last week Japan's impotent pacifist politicos timidly tried to use this as an opening against the dominant minority of Japanese jingoes. Asked Toshio Shimada, a Seiyukai (majority party) leader: "How does the Government reconcile the declaration of the Foreign Minister that there will be no war while he is in office with our present invasion of Inner Mongolia...
Normally the leader of the Seiyukai Party, which has a huge majority in Japan's Parliament, should have been asked to form a cabinet last week, but Japanese politics have been decidedly abnormal ever since naval petty officers assassinated her last civilian premier, the Hon. Ki ("Old Fox") Inukai two years ago (TIME, May 23, 1932). This crime and other "purifying assassinations," all supposedly performed by patriots, are considered to have put corrupt politicians "on probation"?with no prospect of getting the Government out of the hands of the military for the present. Thus last week Premier Saionji...