CHAPTER XIII

POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL-IMPERIAL PARTY

§ 78. The Constitutional-Imperial Party appeared in the early spring of 1881, the year in which the ProgressiveConservative Party was inaugurated. Its initial proclamation reads as follows:

I. We shall not ask any alteration in the date of the inauguration of a constitutional government which is settled for the year 1890 by the Imperial Rescript of 1880.

II. We shall abide by the said Rescript which declares that a constitution shall be granted by the Emperor, and we shall not claim any share in framing the constitution.

III.

We believe in the sovereignty of the Emperor, the wielding of which will be regulated in the constitution.

IV. We believe in the bicameral system of legislative organization.

v.

VI.

We believe in the absolute veto power of the Emperor.

We insist that military officers shall not interfere with political affairs.

VII. We recognize the necessity of promoting the independence of the judicial power in proportion to

the perfection of the institutions and laws necessary for the said independence.

VIII. We insist that the liberty of speech, writing, publication, public meetings, and associations shall be allowed within the limits of the law and without prejudice to peace and order.

It need hardly be explained that this Party was organized to support the cause of the government against the two Parties we have just noted. The real leader of the Party was Count Ito (now Marquis Ito), then an influential member of the Cabinet, although he did not openly profess to be its leader. It has been said that the above platform was drafted under the direction of Count Ito.

Like the English Royalists under the leadership of Lord Clarendon in the period of the Convention Parliament and the Cavalier Parliament, the Constitutional-Imperial Party of Japan undoubtedly advocated the divine right of the King, and endeavored to weaken, and if possible to checkmate, the democratic movement. Lord Clarendon, one day in the Parliament, declared: "It is the privilege, if you please, the prerogative—and it is a great one-of the common people of England to be represented by the greatest and learnedest, the wealthiest and wisest, persons that can be chosen out of the nation, and the confounding the Commons of England with the common people of England was the first ingredient in that accursed dose which intoxicated the brains of men with the imagination of a Commonwealth, a government as impossible for the spirit, temper, and genius of the English nation to submit to as it is to persuade men to give their cattle and their corn to other men and to live upon roots and herbs themselves. That monster, Commonwealth, cost this nation more in her few years, than the monarchy in six hundred years."1

The two ministers, Lord Clarendon and Count Ito, have similar instincts in one respect, namely, they were both the advocates of the divine right of the King. They both believe in a constitutional government, but at the same time insist that the constitution is simply a manifestation of absolute sovereignty which is the King.

Guizot, in his History of Civilization, names the English Royalists the legal party and judiciously criticises it. We can

1G. B. Smith, History of the English Parliament, Vol. I., pp. 502–516.

not refrain from quoting the criticism at length, as it sounds very much like the criticisms of the Constitutional-Imperial Party of Japan. The following is the passage:

"This party highly blamed and earnestly desired to put a stop......to all acts, indeed, contrary to the known law and usages of the country. But under these ideas, there lay hid, as it were, a belief in the divine right of the King, and in his absolute power. A secret instinct seemed to warn it that there was something false and dangerous in this notion; and on this account it appeared always desirous to avoid the subject. Forced, however, at last to speak out it acknowledged the divine right of kings, and admitted that they possessed a power superior to all human origin, to all human control; and as such they defended it in time of need. Still, however, they believed that this sovereignty, though absolute in principle, was bound to exercise its authority according to certain rules and forms; that it could not go beyond certain limits.....

We feel that we can hardly add anything to this passage in criticising our Constitutional-Imperial Party, except that the Party was bolder than the English Royalists in that it did not hesitate to declare the divine right of the Emperor. It magnified the splendor of the unique throne transmitted through an unbroken line of one and the same dynasty; it asserted that the Emperor is heaven-descended, divine, and sacred, and is preeminent above all his subjects; it insisted that "all the different legislative, as well as executive, powers of State, by means of which the Emperor reigns over the country and governs the people, are united in this most exalted Personage, who thus holds in His hands, as it were, all the ramifying threads of the political life of the country, just as the brain, in the human body, is the primitive source of all mental activity manifested through the four limbs and the different parts of the body.""

'Guizot, History of Civilization, Lect. XIII.

2 Ito, Commentaries on Japanese Constitution, p. 7.

$79. The promoters and leading members of the party were not ignorant of western political theories, but its rank and file were chiefly composed of those who were disciplined by Confucian and Shinto doctrines, and who maintained oldfashioned Mikadoism. The Constitutional-Imperial Party resembles the paternalistic school of an earlier period in that it recognizes the absolute power of sovereignty; but it deviates from the latter in that it locates the sacred sovereignty in the person of the Emperor. The paternalistic school was far from advocating the sovereignty, not to say the divine right, of the Emperor. In certain respects, the ConstitutionalImperial Party may be regarded as a reaction against radical democracy as propagated by the Liberals.

To conceal their manifestly conservative ideas under the cloak of occidental political ideas, the leaders of the party appealed to the political theory prevailing among German jurists. Nowadays many German jurists "identify sovereignty with force, and ascribe it to the monarch, considering the houses which share the legislative power with him not as assemblies to which the people have granted the task of controlling the government, but as councils which the prince has deemed wise to join to himself to aid him in the exercise of his prerogative." Such was the theoretical ground, to which the Imperialists appealed whenever their notion in regard to the divine right of the King seemed to be attacked.

The Party was not as influential among the people in general as were the other two Parties; but it was more influential among the nobles, in the court, and in official circles, because its platform was aristocratic and Imperialistic, and consequently in harmony with their interests. Its real leader, Count Ito, was an actual leader of the then existing ministry. Hence the constitution of Japan was drafted in accordance with the ideals of the Constitutional-Imperial Party, to the dissatisfaction of the Liberal and the Progressive-Conservative Parties.

1 Cf. supra, ch. IX.

Borgeaud, Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions, pt. II.. bk. I.,

ch. I.

CHAPTER XIV

THE INAUGURATION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF JAPAN

$ 80. We have seen that the Emperor promised to grant a constitution not later than 1890. It is now important to note by whom the constitution was drafted, because the characteristics and policy of the framers are unmistakably stamped upon it. Why does the constitution of Japan savor so much of German absolutism in spite of the fact that the Liberal Party and the Progressive Party were inspired by French, American, and English political ideas? Why does the principle of the divine right of the Emperor, which seemed to have given way before the increasing influence of democratic ideas, still find expression in the constitution of Japan? These questions we shall presently answer.

Soon after the Imperial Rescript promising the inauguration of a constitutional government was promulgated, Marquis Ito was appointed the framer of the constitution by the Emperor. Meanwhile, there was a warm discussion among the people and among the political parties as to the manner in which the constitution should be drafted. The Imperial Rescript unmistakably says that a constitution shall be granted by virtue of the Emperor's sovereignty. The ConstitutionalImperial Party zealously defended the cause of the Emperor, proclaiming in its platform, that "we shall not claim any share in framing the constitution." But the Liberals were not satisfied with this method of constitution-making, being conscious of the possible danger to freedom of entrusting an arbitrary government with the authority of drafting a constitution. Sovereignty, they contended, resides in the people; therefore a constitution should be framed by the representatives elected by the people. Not a few insisted that the constitution should be submitted to the people for ratification, although it might well be