eleven Taishō Democracy, 1918–27

Takahashi returned to the finance portfolio at a major turning point in Japanese history. The wartime expansion of the Japanese economy raised national income dramatically. The concomitant rise in standards of living and in levels of education, literacy, and cosmopolitanism stimulated widespread demand for greater popular participation in the political process. ’s enlistment on the Allied side in the war brought Japan new territories and recognition as one of the powers, and in the minds of many Japanese at least, as the power in East Asia. The head of the Seiyūkai, Hara Takashi, who became Japan’s first party prime minister in , exploited these trends brilliantly to bring his party into office. Japan in 1918 began the most democratic epoch of its pre–World War II modern history. The rise of Hara to power seemed to mark the dawn of a new Japan. But with sunrise emerged dangers, some of which prefigured de- mocracy’s sunset fewer than fifteen years later. Rapid wartime eco- nomic growth produced dangerous inflation. Wartime success gave rise to a new and widespread nationalism and national self-confidence: the same era in which Japan democratized was also marked by the success- ful transition of a nation of parochial peasants into one of Japanese citizens. The military, emboldened by its new territories, its increasingly predominant position in northeast China, and the swift development in Europe and North America of new, technologically advanced weapons, demanded ever-increasing sums of money. It also used the opportunity of Allied intervention in Siberia in 1917 to embark on an expensive and Taishō Democracy 215 dangerous five-year adventure there. Civilian as well as military leaders saw the absence of the Europeans and Americans from East Asia dur- ing the war as a chance to increase Japan’s influence over a fragmented China. Japanese policy toward China, as symbolized by the Twenty- One Demands and the Nishihara loans, triggered alarm bells in Lon- don, New York, and Washington. While Japan’s recognition as a power stimulated a solipsistic, nationalistic pride among Japan’s leaders and populace, the Westerners, and especially the United States, significantly tempered such recognition. They limited, and later in the case of the United States, prohibited Japanese immigration into their countries, re- fused to approve a racial equality clause in the Treaty of Versailles that established the , forced Japan, but not the British, to relinquish its naval base in China, limited the size of the Japanese navy to three-fifths of either the American or British one, and finally dis- solved the symbol of Japan’s international status, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Within this milieu, Hara’s party came to power not only be- cause of the growth of a mass society, but also because he made com- promises with less liberal genrō and military leaders, compromises that limited his freedom of democratic action once in power. In fact, one of Hara’s major tasks as prime minister was preventing his more liberal, but less politically savvy, subordinates such as Takahashi from rocking the Seiyūkai’s precariously balanced boat. Between September 1918 and June 1927, Takahashi served as prime minister, finance minister three times, and agriculture and commerce minister. This decade encompasses both the high and low points in Takahashi’s career at the top levels of government. On the one hand, the policies Takahashi advocated in this period demonstrate that he was one of the most progressive major politicians in prewar Japan. He advocated a shift in the focus of Japan’s foreign policy away from mili- tary expansion and toward trade competition within a framework of international economic cooperation. He argued for the abolition of the general staff system in 1920 and headed the Japanese government that enlisted in the Washington Treaty system in 1921–22. He succeeded Hara as head of Seiyūkai, and together with his own desired successor, Yokota Sennosuke, proposed the most progressive party platform in pre–World War II history: peaceful diplomacy, abrogation of Japan’s unequal treaty rights in China, establishment of trade relations with the