Imperial Democracy

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Japan spent a long time trying to figure out its government even before the concept of imperial democracy had been introduced to the discussion. The power of the government originally laid with the emperor of Japan, and was passed down the bloodline to the next male of the family, usually the emperor’s son. However, this system didn’t do much to protect the populous of the island so the public had to find a way to protect from threats, whether foreign or domestic. As a result, many of the wealthier class who could afford to hired samurai to guard and protect their land. Soon the power of the samurai developed to a higher standard than that of the actual government. This lead to the formation of another unit of governing called the Shogunate; …show more content…

Well, the power of a country is highly dependent on the support of its public. If a nation wants to industrialize it depends on its citizens to work, if a nation wants to pay for something it depends on public taxes, or if a nation is going to war it depends on its citizens to become soldiers. The point is, by unifying the nation and gaining the support of the public for the government through the means of democratic systems, Japan set itself up to become a world power. Yes, the nation already beat Russia in the Russo-Japanese war and should be seen as a world power by this point, but other nations didn’t take Japan seriously; this is seen in the results of the Portsmouth Treaty which returned minimum value for Japan’s victory. The element Japan had been missing was nationalism among the Japanese so that they would not only be able to compete on the global scale technologically and militaristically, but also with an extreme sense of competition as to not let one’s country get the short end of the stick. It is this nationalism that helps to eventually turn Japan into a world …show more content…

Then imperial democracy finally made its showcase officially with the Hibiya Riot. The difference between imperial democracy and all the other systems before it was the role of the public. The earlier forms of government all had a very harsh separation between government and commoners. The people of Japan had very little to do with the system which governed them. As a result, they had very little interest or involvement with politics or national affairs. However, with imperial democracy the public had a connection to the government. There were representatives in the diet, cases could be brought up directly to the government, and citizens had to ensure that their tax money was being put to good use. This gave each citizen a personal investment in the nation from this point on, and because citizens now have a personal investment if something is going wrong, someone must be held accountable so that it doesn’t happen again. This is where we start to observe rallies and riots; the proof that the citizens care what is happening to the country, because if the citizens didn’t care about the empire succeeding they would have no qualms against the poorly designed treaty for the Russo-Japanese War. Yet, these citizens are disturbed by it and riot as a result. In addition to this we see specific targeting

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