Word: yamagata
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Genro is a political institution without Western precedent. Possessing no constitutional authority but politically active until 1922, it then consisted of the four patriarchs who helped frame the Constitution of 1889?Marshal Prince Yamagata, Prince Saonji, Prince Matsukata, Marquis Okuma. No political move of any importance was made by the Emperor without consulting the Elder Statesmen. When their great age made traveling to the Palace difficult, Imperial messengers were sent to ask their advice. Prince Kimmochi Saonji, now 80 (he was born in the year of the California Gold Rush) is the last survivor. So great is his influence still...
Hitherto, it was not comme il faut (in fact it was considered "indecent") for a royal prince to marry for love. The Crown Prince, breaker of precedents, loved his Princess, but he had to battle for her with Prince Yamagata, the most formidable of the Elder Statesmen-a fact which increased his popularity with the people...
Events are making it increasingly evident to the world that Japan has reached an acute phase of one of the most momentous crises she has faced since the restoration of the Imperial House. The deaths within the month of two of her ablest statesmen of the old school,--Prince Yamagata and Marquis Okuma; the nationwide tenseness over the trial of the late Premier Hara's assassin in Tokio, have thrown into sharp relief the vast struggle going on beneath the surface in Japan...
...have brought about this transformation,--the makers of modern Japan,--have been the Genre, the "Elder Statesmen". Few if any of them are new left, and the gap left by the death of the Empire's two greatest is almost beyond repair. General Tanaka, the logical successor to Prince Yamagata as military leader, cannot represent the Choshn clan, which has traditionally supplied leaders of the military party. Viscount Kiyoura has succeeded the late Prince as President of the Privy Council, but he can never succeed to his hold on the destinies of the nation...
...death of Prince Yamagata is generally considered an indicator of the end of an era, the decline of the Genro, and with it that deep-rooted reverence for elders and superiors which has been a characteristic of the Japanese race...