Chapter XVII: Parties and Politics. 1893-19061 (2)

Inasmuch as this proposition had arisen from the second _post-bellum_ measure of naval extension, it becomes necessary to say a few words concerning the status of the Japanese navy. The first programme as planned by the second Itō cabinet in 1895, and agreed to by the diet, contemplated an increase of Japan's naval force, in ten years, from 33 war vessels and 26 torpedo boats, aggregating the 63,000 tons' displacement of the fleet before the China war, to 67 vessels, besides 11 torpedo-boat destroyers and 115 torpedo boats, with a total displacement of 258,000 tons, at the end of 1905. Of this tonnage at the end of 1902 there was 252,180 tons, representing 72 vessels of all kinds. Formidable as these figures would seem, it had long been plain to the statesmen of the empire that deductions must be made for vessels built more than twenty years before and for others whose terms of usefulness must shortly expire one after another. Even if the present force were maintained, each of the six great naval powers of the world,--Great Britain, France, Russia, the United States, Germany, and Italy,--would have completely outrun Japan by the end of 1908; while the Japanese, after deducting vessels older than twenty years, would hardly possess more than 145,000 tons. Japan's naval ambition was animated, not so much by an inordinate elation as a civilized power as by the necessity of maintaining her position in East Asia and guaranteeing her own independence. When these matters are considered, the new programme of naval expansion, as at last set forth by the Katsura cabinet, rather surprises one with its modesty. It, in short, contemplated the construction, in the course of eleven years, of three battleships each of 15,000 tons' displacement, three armored cruisers each of 10,000 tons, and two second-class cruisers each of 5000 tons, totaling 85,000 tons' displacement, besides fifteen torpedo-boat destroyers and fifty torpedo boats. No one could have seriously opposed this programme had it not been for its financial side. The source of the estimated annual outlay of 11.5 million _yen_ which the proposed plan entailed upon the government could, according to its opinion, be found nowhere but in the retention of the increased rate of the land tax, augmented by other slight items of revenue. To the seventy or eighty per cent., however, of the members of the lower house, who had pledged their word to their constituencies to restore by all means the old rate of the tax, it was no argument to say that the landowners had been inequitably lightly taxed by the side of the urban population, nor to prove the impossibility of raising the necessary expenditure by any other safe means than the retention of the increased rate. Into their hands no sharper weapon against the government could have fallen than the one which the helpless cabinet gratuitously furnished them under the pressure of an apparent necessity. Upon this juncture, what was the attitude of Marquis Itō and his party, which controlled an absolute majority in the lower house?

To answer this question is again to describe another turning point in the remarkable career of this statesman. It was made known early in the season, and no partisan view could well refute, that the marquis was in sympathy with the cabinet so far as its naval programme was concerned, which he was reported to have deemed even too moderate. As regarded the land tax question, however, which he had once in the past years considered it wise to increase even to four per cent., he now, either from conviction or from policy, assumed an attitude of unusual deliberation. Nothing could have been more disastrous to the cabinet, and more decisive for the termination of his career as a party leader, than his studied reticence about this important problem. The "whips" of his party deliberately overrode him, and ordered its long expectant local branches, soon after the general election, to forward to the headquarters resolutions against both the naval extension and the retention of the increased land tax. Resolutions accordingly poured in thick and fast. At the same time, the marquis was flooded with personal appeals to him to come out squarely against the unpopular government. It is plain that the action of his subordinates was calculated to intimidate him more than the cabinet. His authority as the president of the Constitutional Political Association had been ignored, and he yielded, perhaps in order to save others' and his own dignity. Shortly before the opening of the diet, on November 26, the marquis, after a deliberation lasting four weeks, conveyed to Premier Katsura his opinion, reiterating that the naval expansion was necessary, that the burden of the increased land tax was not particularly onerous, but that he did not think it politic at present to prolong the term of the increase, and, finally, that the naval expenditure might be met by postponing or suspending some of the less urgent public works. After further conferences, the premier, on December 3, personally assured the marquis of his sense of gratitude for his counsel, but firmly announced that, inasmuch as the budget had been sanctioned by his majesty, and as it would be unwise for the cabinet to resign on the eve of the meeting of the diet, it remained for him to make an effort to carry through his proposed plan. After this friendly ultimatum was pronounced the outcome of the measure could hardly be doubted, for the presence of the common enemy speedily brought about a temporary alliance of the Associationists and the Progressives. The irresistible coalition found its first opportunity to assail the cabinet when the latter made an imprudent but sincere move to connect three things--the budget, the navy bill, and the land tax measure--declaring the absolute necessity of upholding them together and the impossibility of an alternative course of action. The allied parties in the lower house found herein a justification for modifying Marquis Itō's suggestion to carefully study the budget with a view to discovering adequate means to balance the naval expenditure without resorting to the increased land tax. The committee on finance straightway negatived the land tax bill, and in the afternoon of the same day, December 16, when it came before the house, the chair read an imperial mandate suspending the diet for five days. This was followed by another suspension, and during this interval Prince Konoye, president of the peers, and Baron Kodama, military governor of Formosa, sought in vain to effect a compromise between the truculent lower house and the cabinet. The latter, however, having expressed willingness to make reasonable concessions, two representatives of each of the opposition parties met the premier and the ministers of finance and navy, on December 25, to discuss the compromise measure proposed by the latter. This compromise reduced the tax rate to three per cent. and agreed to make up the balance by postponing some public works and retrenching general administrative expenses. When this new plan was submitted to the parties at large, the latter roundly rejected it, Count Ōkuma, the Progressive leader, going so far as to intimate that his party was fundamentally opposed to the cabinet, which it considered unconstitutional. Under these circumstances it was no longer possible for the government to coöperate with the house, which was accordingly dissolved on December 28.

When the year 1903 dawned upon Japan it found her political conditions extremely unstable. The alliance of the Associationists and Progressives seemed unnatural, and the discipline of Marquis Itō over the former appeared no longer tenable. The coalition had been based on no positive political principle, nor could the bulk of the Association be successfully controlled by one, however personally respected, whose double capacity as trusted Elder Statesman and an opposition leader was ever liable to lead him into positions highly repugnant to those who preferred an open and relentless warfare with the cabinet. The two parties had already parted hands when the eighteenth diet was convened for an extra session in May. As to the impossible situation of Marquis Itō, to which reference has just been made, it was not long before it was demonstrated anew and with a decisive effect. The occasion was again in connection with the naval extension measure, the urgent character of which was freshly brought home to the thoughtful people by the partial failure of Russia to effect the second evacuation of Manchuria and her simultaneous pressure upon the Peking court and the Korean frontier. The cabinet presented to the house some supplementary estimates to the budget for the fiscal year of 1903, together with eight bills, two of which related to the navy and the new three per cent. land tax. The manifest hostility of the house again called forth on May 21 a suspension of the diet. On the 23d, at a general meeting of the Association, Marquis Itō made an earnest appeal to his party to accept the compromise measure which he, as an Elder Statesman, and under the entreaties of his non-partisan friends, had agreed with the cabinet to support. Under the terms of this agreement the government was understood to reintroduce the land tax bill for show, but to consent finally to raise the required annual naval expenditure of eleven and a half millions by a yearly flotation of public bonds for six millions, retrenchment in administrative expenses to the extent of one million, and deflection from the outlay for railroads and other works to the sum of four and a half millions. The appeal of the marquis was not accepted by his party without a powerful opposition and a great sacrifice, which we shall presently see. The painful compromise measure was further mangled when the house cut the supplementary budget estimates by five millions, covering the cost of a few important undertakings, and, in return for the passage of the naval programme, exacted from the government pledges to effect a drastic reorganization of finance and administration, and to place the railroad accounts under the "extraordinary" class of national expenditures. The climax was reached when the defeat of an address to the throne proposed by the Progressive members, censuring the cabinet, was quickly followed by the passage of a resolution of similar censure which was proposed by the Associationists themselves. It is unnecessary to say that the last act was no less a blow to Marquis Itō than to the Katsura cabinet. The latter had, moreover, to endure the displeasure of its best friends, the peers, who passed a petition to the government to desist from the highly unwise policy of resorting to a national loan, and a minority of whom even had contemplated proposing an address to the throne deprecating the same policy.

The eighteenth diet, which was prorogued on June 5, left the politics of Japan in an even more confused state than before its opening. The humiliation of the cabinet was only matched by the internal injuries which the parties had suffered for their conduct. The former, whose diplomatic duties in Korea and Manchuria were threatening to rise to a hitherto unknown degree of difficulty, had been forced by the merciless diet not only to retreat from the stand it originally took in regard to the most important problem of the nation, but also to bear the burden of the imposed responsibility of reorganizing the financial and administrative machinery on an almost impossible basis. The Progressives could scarcely conceal the inharmony of their leaders in regard to the immediate policy the party should pursue. Far more demoralized was the Association, which had been born under too favorable auspices, and possessed too absorbing a desire for power, to maintain its mental poise when it found itself as an opposition party. It had then appeared to lack the tried perseverance of the Progressives, while its irritation had been greatly intensified by the double position of Marquis Itō, who would on the one hand come to an agreement with the cabinet in his independent capacity as an Elder Statesman, and on the other maintain his disciplinarian leadership of the opposition party. Nor can it be concealed that the marquis, dignified statesman and brilliant counselor as he is, hardly possesses attributes which appeal to the hearts of the people and inspire the enthusiastic loyalty of his followers. It seemed evident that the majority of the party from the beginning respected his prestige and influence, which was considered as a political asset, more than either his constitutional ideals or his personality. Since they saw that the shortest road to power would lie in the direction of unequivocally upholding the proprietary interest of the country, nothing could have seemed more galling to some of them than a compromise which would deprive their parliamentary warfare of these essential tactics. Around this sentiment as a center there seem to have clustered various other motives for disloyalty. Some Associationists resented the autocratic rule of the president, and advocated a more republican form of party organization, and others denounced the marquis for sacrificing the dignity of the party for his position as an Elder. Desertion of several members, including the late lamented president of the lower house, Kataoka, and the present mayor of Tōkyō, Ozaki, was followed by the dissolution of a few local branches. The culmination, however, was the resignation of the president himself, which occurred on July 13. The marquis had at length yielded to the arguments of his fellow-Elders, which had long been becoming more and more solicitous, that his proper mission was rather that of a trusted councilor to the throne than one of party leadership. The Manchurian question was assuming a more serious character than before, and the resumption by the marquis of the presidency of the privy council appeared to the Elders, and perhaps also to the emperor, as the most natural course of events. The appointment was finally made on July 13, after Itō had given the matter his characteristically careful consideration. His severance from the party naturally followed, as no privy councilor might entertain partisan connections. In the leadership of the Association he was succeeded, at his own suggestion, by Marquis Saionji, his friend and also one of the most promising statesmen of the day. Thus after a wandering of nearly three years the prodigal son, with perhaps a valuable experience but scarcely an added prestige, returned to the fold of the council and the court. In accepting the post of the chief councilor, he said to the emperor that it was his desire of seeing the perfect operation of the Constitution, which he had had the honor of framing, that had induced him to descend to a political party and lead it; but that, as he was now, even before his work with the party had barely begun, graciously called by his majesty to resume the chair of the council, he convinced himself that it would be as much a contribution toward the realization of the constitutional régime to "stand near the throne and reverently answer imperial questions regarding important affairs of the state," as to "move among the people as a party leader." No student of the Japanese politics of to-day can fail to observe the large place Marquis Itō occupies therein as the pilot of the state, and also his full consciousness of the fact. His apparent failure as a partisan seems to have brought him back to his normal position. It will soon be seen that he returned thither in an opportune season. Her foreign affairs were just drifting Japan toward an ocean of unknown difficulties.

In the meanwhile, Premier Katsura had tendered his resignation on the just plea that an adequate conduct of the government was incompatible with the slender means in which the diet had left the exchequer. Neither this argument nor the somewhat reduced physical condition of the viscount would, however, induce the throne to relinquish its confidence in him. Thereupon the premier reminded the emperor, and it was agreed to by his majesty, that his retention of the portfolio could mean nothing else than a drastic retrenchment of the administrative and financial expenditures of the state. This colossal task the cabinet set about with characteristically quiet determination.

The arduous and cheerless life of the cabinet was somewhat brightened when it received into its community, in July, General Baron Kodama, military governor of Formosa, and latterly the able chief of Field Marshal Oyama's staff, and, in September, three other able young men. Nothing, however, could have been more gratifying to the cabinet than the fact that, while its hold upon the lower house of the diet was next to nothing, its apparent patriotism and sincerity, as well as its fair degree of ability, had begun to be appreciated by the throne, the Elders, and the peers, and perhaps somewhat by the people at large. The confidence with which its general purpose was regarded by the nation was best demonstrated in 1903-1904, during its protracted and otherwise exasperating negotiations with Russia regarding Manchuria and Korea. It was remarkable that, in spite of the increasing irritation which one report after another of the Russian aggression in these territories caused in the national mind, the Katsura cabinet appeared so little inclined to stray from its policy of a firm but fair treatment of the question, as did the people to force its hands to a rash action. If this remarkable phenomenon was, in part, due to the deeper and more mature feeling which was now inspiring the nation than had been experienced before, it none the less redounded to the honest purpose of the cabinet. Nor were its care and precision in all lines of its policy less remarkable than its general sincerity.

The crisis in Korea and Manchuria was, in the meanwhile, advancing with tragic certainty, until the apparently insignificant cabinet was called upon to lead the nation through the greatest trial of its life. The war with Russia, as we shall see in a later chapter, broke out in February, 1904, followed by nineteen months of the vast campaign and the brilliant victories of the Japanese army and navy. The existence of the war, of course, again united the entire nation, and completely changed the conditions of Japan's domestic politics, which might otherwise have made a prolonged life unendurable to the cabinet. Its financial measures were supported by the diet, not without amendments, but on the whole with practical unanimity. The 156 million _yen_ of the extraordinary war expenditures disbursed under an imperial ordinance of December 28, 1903, were willingly sanctioned by the twentieth session of the diet in March, 1904. It also passed the new tobacco manufacture monopoly law elaborately drafted by the government, and approved the extraordinary war expenditures for the fiscal year 1904-1905, amounting to 420 million _yen_. This last act not only involved the raising of the public and temporary loans and exchequer bonds to the amount of 131 millions, but also an increase in tax rates and the imposition of new consumption taxes on woolen textiles and kerosene oil. The next session of the diet also met the requisitions of the government by further increasing the tax rates and creating newer taxes, and approving 571 millions of new national loans and 63 millions to be transferred from funds under the so-called special accounts, making the total war expenditures of the second period 780 million _yen_. The grand total of the war cost approved by the diet in the two sessions thus aggregated 1356 millions. This amount became inadequate, as the army in the field, especially after the battle of Mukden, in February-March, 1905, was increased to an unprecedented magnitude. A new foreign loan for 30 million pounds floated, in July, in London, New York, and Berlin, brought the figure up to 1656 million _yen_. Fortunately, the rice crop for 1904 was unusually good; an early control of the sea held open the highways of Japan's Eastern trade; the reduction of local impositions and expenditures counterbalanced the rise in national taxes; and the savings and general financial endurance of the people at large proved unexpectedly great. The unforeseen successes of Japan's arms also contributed to the temporary prestige of the cabinet.

The spell was broken the moment peace was restored. The broad concessions made through the peace envoys at Portsmouth for the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese treaty of September 5 brought upon the cabinet (and the privy council) the greatest popular resentment ever experienced by any constitutional government of Japan. Various motives and circumstances combined to make the sentiment for a time almost unanimous among the nation. The conclusion, on August 12, of the agreement of a renewed and much extended alliance with Great Britain, which was published on September 27, somewhat relieved the strained situation, and the Constitutional Political Association, under the leadership of Marquis Saionji, showed an inclination for a moderate policy toward the treaty and the government. The relative position of the different parties was again rendered uncertain, so that their conduct in the coming session of the diet could hardly be forecast. As to the cabinet, it must either succumb to an attack from the majority in the lower house, or survive it only to be confronted by colossal financial difficulties.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The editor has been greatly helped in preparing this chapter by I. Tokutomi's admirable pamphlet on the recent political life of Japan.

[2] Brinkley's "Oriental Series," vol. V. p. 16-17.