I. Insanity

Tokyo, May 15, 1932, about 6pm. Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, by now 76, preferred talk to action, which is why, as five uniformed military officers burst into his apartment, guns drawn, he asked them to sit and discuss their concerns. Taken aback, they holstered their weapons and followed the elder statesman to a nearby room, where Inukai invited them to sit on tatami mats and inquired why they were here. To kill him, the leader of the group stated flatly. Inukai chuckled and replied that of course he knew that, but why? Exasperated, the officer insisted that Inukai was ruining Japan by restraining the military from invading China and attacking the United States. Inukai, unsurprised at the young man’s hot-headedness, took a deep breath and began to explain that Japan was in no position to- he paused at the sound of someone running and turned his head to glimpse another uniformed officer rushing into the room, knife in hand, shouting, “No use talking. Fire!” (H, 24-28)

[gunshots]

Months earlier, elsewhere in Tokyo, on February 9th and March 5th two close friends, Onuma Sho and Hishinuma Goto, stood waiting: Onuma outside Komamoto Elementary School and Hishinuma outside Mitsui Bank. Each held a revolver in his pocket, but Hishinuma also possessed two other items: a picture of a man, the business magnate Dan Takuma, and a fragment of paper on which was scrawled the phrase, ‘Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō.’ They are the words of a Buddhist chant known all too well by Onuma, who spent all day prior to his arrival at the school repeating it in meditation. They learned it together from an obscure, unlicensed priest who taught them, along with a dozen other devoted cultists, that Japan was being consumed by an evil which had to be destroyed. And so, at 8pm on February 9th, when Inoue Junnosuke, Japan’s former finance minister, stepped out of his car outside Komamoto Elementary School, and when, a month later, Dan Takuma approached Mitsui Bank, the two young men strode forward, raised their pistols, and (D, 553)

[gunshots]

A year later, the cultists, now known across Japan as the "League of Blood," stood trial alongside their priest. It was perhaps the highest-profile trial up to that point in Japanese history, and when the terrorists explained their motives, the nation listened. They insisted they were acting on behalf of the emperor against a corrupt elite which was robbing the country blind and subjugating his Imperial Majesty. All they sought was a restoration of the Emperor’s power and the glory of Japan. But, as the public sympathized with this romanticism, Judge Sakamaki couldn’t care less. They had violated the law and murdered fellow citizens. Their motives were irrelevant.

Instantly, Sakamaki was blindsided by public outrage, threats, and legal complaints alleging Communist sympathies. He delayed the trial, but the deluge continued. So, he finally resigned. His substitute took a different tact, lauding the “pure motives” of the defendants and sentencing them to life in prison rather than death. In concluding the trial, he remarked that he hoped their sentences would soon be commuted with Imperial amnesty. (A, 146-147)

Yet the subsequent trials of Inukai’s killers were even worse. Held across Navy, Army, and civilian courts to try the various conspirators, the most important proceedings were the military courts martial. After all, these concerned the leaders of the plot and offered a crucial chance to chasten a growing fever of rebellion throughout the armed forces.

In the Navy trial, the prosecutor made his position plain, stating,

“No matter what the motive, unlawful action always retains its unlawful character. If, for the sake of argument, we approved the notion that purity of motive purifies action, then…we would give rise to grave dangers and evils which would threaten the future of the state.” (I, 31)

The defense disagreed, averring that the murder of the Prime Minister was

“the act of a truly profound and sublime divine providence…The dying man toppled and those who brought his death were destined to pull the trigger. Rather than them pulling the trigger, it was nature that made them pull it.” (I, 37)

In other words, it was destiny: a natural manifestation of a pure spirit devoted to the Emperor, a sentiment echoed by a top general who declared these officers had not acted

“for fame or personal gain, nor are they traitorous. They were performed in the sincere belief that they were for the benefit of Imperial Japan." (D, 560)

Eventually, the judge more or less concurred, concluding,

“Although their criminal culpability is truly significant, the depth of their patriotism must be acknowledged.” (I, 38)

In turn, for the murder of the Prime Minister and a broader botched coup attempt, the six Navy Officers were sentenced not to death, nor to life in prison, but to a mere 15 years. Their Army accomplices were let off even easier. This was the signal to every ambitious young officer, “Plot your coups. Carry them out. We will protect you.” (A, 149-151)

In truth, civilian government in Japan died in 1932 with Inukai Tsuyoshi. This was just the nail in the coffin. But why were so many military officers so hell-bent on destroying the civilian government, and how did they escape serious punishment? The answers lie in the origin story of modern Japan, a story of how Japan’s military got away with terrorizing the country, brazenly murdering elected officials, and in the end how they seized power and plunged the nation into a massive, devastating war.

II. Restoration

It’s a story which begins in the 1850s, a time when Japan was in a weak position relative to America and Europe, possessing an undeveloped economy and an archaic, feudal military. The ruling Shogunate, powerless to resist Western pressure, thus accepted a series of “unequal treaties,” and fear spread that Japan would soon be reduced to a mere vassal of foreign powers.

So began a widespread campaign of terrorism carried out by nationalist revolutionaries who—united under the slogan, sōnno jōi or revere the emperor and expel the barbarians—sought to oust the weak ruling Shogunate and restore the Emperor Meiji to power. By 1868, they succeeded, and their triumph became known as the Meiji Restoration. Yet many of these revolutionaries had by then shed their xenophobia and adopted Western ideas about governance and modernization. Rather than instituting direct imperial rule, they established an oligarchy and embraced the so-called barbarians by pursuing Western-style reforms of law, politics, and industry. (A, 132-134)

By 1889, they even went so far as to import a European-style constitution. Modeled after a German example, it hardly drew any inspiration from Japan's history or tradition. And though it appeared to restore the Emperor to supreme power in Japan, in effect it subjected him to a series of bureaucratic systems and procedures, preventing Imperial rule by decree and entrenching the new oligarchy. Quote-unquote "imperial" decisions, including military commands, were usually made by a small circle of unelected advisors. (A, 136-137)

For many who still believed in the revolutionary slogan of sōnno jōi, this was a bridge too far; this “Meiji Restoration” was a fraud. And so many returned to arms against their former comrades in the government, unleashing a new wave of terrorism which that same year saw an assassin hurl a bomb at the foreign minister. Afterward, the bomber bowed toward the Imperial Palace and killed himself.

The minister, however, survived and—bizarrely—eulogized his would-be-killer, opining,

"He is truly a wonderful person. I am touched by the bravery, even foolhardiness, of throwing a bomb at myself, the foreign minister." (A, 137)

Because this mentality wasn’t foreign to the minister. He too had once been a revolutionary devoted the precepts of sōnno jōi: an ominous signal that Japan’s leaders could tolerate terrorism, as long as it had righteous motives.

Still, there was one Western concept about which the oligarchs agreed with these radicals—they both hated democracy. However, it seemed to those in charge that a small concession to a sliver of the public could be valuable to solidify their legitimacy. So this new constitution also established a national legislature with the barest democracy possible. Its upper house was hereditary, and less than one percent of Japan’s population could vote in the election of the lower house. In turn, this Diet—a German name—introduced a tiny modicum of democracy to Japan.

III. Reform

Yet what began as a mere inkling soon grew far beyond the expectations of the oligarchs, as members of the Diet's lower house immediately pushed their power over the national budget to the limit, challenging the supremacy of the oligarchs and emperor. In turn, its powers slowly grew. In 1918, a commoner was appointed Prime Minister for the first time, and with him soon came two crucial reforms that not only strengthened the Diet’s lower house but made it far more democratic (B, 92).

The first was the precedent set by his own election, because from then on Prime Ministers would largely be drawn from the ranks of the elected members of the Diet or the leaders of elected parties, rather than bureaucrats, aristocrats, and military officers, as was previously the norm. Moreover, government cabinets were also reformed to reflect the Diet’s political parties rather than the old guard (B, 56). These were serious leaps forward in the democratization of Japan which, before being cut tragically short in 1932, saw some further crucial advancement in the form of massive suffrage expansions.

In 1918, just five percent of the adult population of Japan had the right to vote. To join this small club, you had to be a man, and you had to pay at least 10 yen every year in taxes. But in 1920, the Diet reformed the rules, doubling the population with access to the vote. And just five years later in 1925, Japan finally saw universal male suffrage, this time nearly quadrupling the number of enfranchised citizens to nearly 40% (B, 58). Suddenly, the Diet was accountable to a huge swathe of Japanese society, its leadership composed of actual elected representatives.

This sea change was summarized in a single, groundbreaking word, coined by an elder statesman: minponshugi, meaning roughly, “the principle of the people as the base” (B, 92). In other words, where political power in Meiji Japan had once flowed from the top down, it was starting, fitfully, to flow in the other direction: from the bottom up.

Yet this process was fundamentally disadvantaged. Japan was becoming more democratic in spite of the oligarchic Meiji Constitution, not because of it. Imperial advisors, the Privy Council, the Diet’s upper house, and, most importantly, the military were autonomous, outside of any form of popular control (B, 78-81, 82-84). The Emperor and his advisors still got to appoint the Prime Minister and his cabinet—choosing them from the lower house and the political parties was merely a novel convention, not a rule (B, 80-81). Expansion of suffrage meant only so much under these conditions.

So Japan was at a crossroads, with real democratic progress made but a lot left to go. Further democratization was possible, but it would depend on the civilian government and political parties remaining popular, proving themselves capable of solving the nation's problems and confronting those who sought to revoke the people's power.

But as the roaring ‘20s drew to a close, the cracks already began to show.

IV. Failure

Corruption long plagued the unaccountable Meiji oligarchy, but the expansion of the Japanese electorate didn’t seem to change the problem. Elected representatives proved eager to leverage their newfound power into bribes from Japan's massive industrial firms looking for lucrative government contracts. Moreover, competing parties did little to offer competitive policy visions to the public, instead focusing on exposing their rival’s corruption (B, 94, 106-107, 134-135). And finally, every time a party was in power, it used its authority to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor, ensuring that no election held during this period was truly free or fair (B, 54-55).

As one leading Tokyo newspaper put it at the time:

"[The political parties] have almost completely neglected to engage in debate and examination of national policies and instead make frantic efforts to expose scandals and look into the secrets of their enemies…” (B, 108)

It was a cycle of hypocrisy and naked self-interest that generated skepticism among the public and fertile grounds for the rejuvenation of the revolutionary ethos of sōnno jōi—revere the emperor, expel the barbarians—especially among the officer corps of the military.

Yet corruption and incompetence was merely the beginning of Japan's problems. By 1930, the Great Depression had made its way across the Pacific, and Japan was hit hard. Within a year, in rural areas, peasant household income dropped over 50%, while industrial production fell by more than 25% (B, 130-131). In this era of hardship, a rash of tenant and labour disputes broke out, creating a sense of deep social unrest (B, 115-116).

The civilian government in the Diet proved unable to manage the crisis, refusing to pass any relief program for stricken farmers or the urban unemployed (B, 130-131). Yet the most devastating incident for Japanese democracy would happen beyond its borders.

V. Power

Since their victory in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, Japan had maintained an Army garrison here, in the Chinese region of Manchuria, to guard one of their prizes: a critical railroad line. But by 1931, one staff officer was tired of serving as a mere railway guard. Ishiwara Kanji had bigger dreams: for himself and for Japan.

He was convinced his nation had an international, imperial destiny, and that it was locked on a path to conflict with the United States and China (C, 119-120). Yet the timid civilian government in Tokyo thwarted that destiny by refusing to make war with China and humiliated the nation by agreeing to arms-reduction treaties with America and Europe. So Kanji, in the spirit of those who once united under the banner of sōnno jōi, determined he must act.

With the help of a few close confidants, Kanji staged a bombing of the rail line and blamed the attack on Chinese troops (C, 122). Back in Tokyo, the civilian leadership attempted to stop the army from escalating in “response,” but the local command indulged their own instincts without waiting for a signal from the Diet or the Emperor (C, 122-123). Within weeks, the Japanese army had launched a serious invasion. By the end of the year, it was all but conquered (C, 123-124).

Kanji’s actions were a clear violation of Japanese law, but there would be no punishment. It certainly wouldn’t come from within the military chain of command. And thanks to the convoluted and anti-democratic Meiji constitution, the civilian government had almost no leverage over the armed forces. So the governing cabinet simply approved the army’s actions in Manchuria retroactively and then resigned (C, 123, 127). There was a brief attempt to form a unity government between the parties to rein in the military, but the preceding years of corruption and mudslinging had poisoned politics too much (C, 125-126). They couldn’t agree to work together. Instead, Inukai Tsuyoshi was named as the next prime minister in December of 1931 (C, 127). He immediately set to work, attempting to pass relief for the Depression and address the military's growing power, but on both fronts the damage was done.

Japanese democracy was on its last legs. The military was fully free of civilian control, and the emperor himself was too intimidated to do anything about it. Yet even so, the highest officers in the military couldn’t simply step in and publicly dissolve the civilian government; sōnno jōi meant that they couldn’t be seen acting without the Emperor's approval. But they could, as they’d done with Kanji, merely allow the zealots further down the chain of command to do their dirty work for them.

VI. Destruction

Still, there was a civilian who would prove essential: Inoue Nissho. Inoue had spent his youth aimless, existential, and cynical. In 1923 he finally found his calling when he returned to his home village in Japan, penniless from travels in China and visited a Buddhist temple. There, after days of prayer seeking a path forward, Inoue heard a faint voice calling out to him, proclaiming him the future savior of his nation (D, 527-538).

Filled with a sense of purpose, Inoue developed his religious philosophy, a vision for how to save Japan. In short, he revered the emperor as divine and destined to unify the world into a single Japanese empire (D, 538-539). But because the Meiji Restoration had betrayed the Emperor, Japan needed a second Restoration that would bring the country under direct imperial rule and destroy the corrupt ruling elites (D, 544-545).

His worldview was almost apocalyptic. As he put it,

"Destruction is itself construction, and the two are one and inseparable.” (D, 545)

At first, this proved off-putting to potential followers, but as crisis gripped the nation and the politicians fell short, that changed. Inoue found his devotees among a small group of about a dozen young men, all unemployed and hopeless thanks to the great depression of 1930 (D, 542-543).

At around the same time, Inoue first made contact with a small cadre of young naval officers based near the temple where he worked who shared his contempt for the civilian government (D, 546-547).

In 1931, Inoue relocated to Tokyo, where he and his followers earned the affectionate nickname, "The League of Blood" from local arch-nationalists. The league was in Tokyo, because Inoue had begun plotting an act of construction-by-deconstruction with his allies in the Navy (D, 546-547). This was the plan: the league would strike at ten captains of industry and important officials, while their allies in the Navy would work with some civilian and Army accomplices to achieve the same in a second wave (D, 551-552).

But when the time came, eight of the cultists lost their nerve, eliminating only two of their targets, Dan Takuma and Inoue Junnosuke (D, 553). But the plot was far from over. About a month later, the second wave of assassins descended on Tokyo. At about 6pm on May 15, 1932, they broke down a door in the Prime Minister's residence and found their target: a meek old man who invited them to sit and chat.

VII. Analysis

After Prime Minister Inukai’s death, his assassins and more co-conspirators across Tokyo attempted to complete a total coup. Their failure was spectacular, and we cover it in detail in the bonus podcast available on our Patreon. But despite the hack-job, it was clear the premiership was no longer safe for party politicians. There would be more Kanjis, more Inoues, more renegade officers until the military got their way. So the emperor appointed a former admiral, someone his advisors hoped would satisfy the military without emboldening them to take further measures. By this policy of appeasement, and the virtual acquittal of Inukai's killers in court martial, Japan's war-hungry officer corps had succeeded in creating a permission structure within the military and Japanese society more broadly which allowed for terrorism in the nebulous name of sōnno jōi.

But mere terrorism for terrorism's sake was not the end they had in mind. They wanted power, and they wanted war. Over the next four years, the military continued to assert its independence until, following one more junior-officer-coup attempt in 1936, the government finally threw in the towel. Less than a year later, Japan, finally under military dictatorship, provoked a second massive escalation with China, initiating the Second World War in Asia. It would go on to cost nearly 30 million lives and ended with the military government's unconditional surrender.

It can be said, then, that Japan's Rubicon, its final, terrible turn to fascism and war was in 1932. Yet the insanity of this year owed so much the Meiji Restoration of 1868: a revolution from above which explicitly rejected democracy and enshrined the military's independence from the rule of law in a deeply flawed constitution.

Ironically, this constitution also built the very institutions that would challenge the oligarchy’s rule. By 1918, a new crop of politicians who owed their success to Japan’s limited electorate were rising in prominence and prestige, and the imperial court had to accommodate them to maintain stability. Reluctantly, the old guard handed some power to these politicians, who used the opportunity to expand suffrage.

But, hobbled by their own self-interest and the continued existence of unaccountable institutions including the military, the politicians failed to establish the legitimacy of this new semi-democratic regime. Moreover, their incompetence exacerbated the crisis of the Depression, leaving them open to attacks from the forces that had been reluctant to share power in the first place.

Throughout all of this, the military continued to play a prominent role in politics, and it would be the actions and selective inactions of the armed forces that would play the decisive role in destroying Japan’s struggling democracy. Indeed, in the words of the political theorist and former Spectacles guest Francis Fukuyama,

“absent an autonomous military, it would be perfectly possible to posit a counterfactual history where Japan evolved in a more English-style democratic direction.” (E, ch. 23)

The struggles of the civilian government were the necessary precondition for the failure of democracy. But without a military constitutionally insulated from civilian authority and the rule of law and possessed by sōnno jōi—a nationalist ideology that Fukuyama says “celebrated…the honor-bound ethos of the old military aristocracy”—it’s possible that the struggles of Japan's early elected politicians would have been nothing more than a period of trial and error out of which democracy emerged stronger and more legitimate than before. (E, ch. 23)

In the apocryphal words of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi,

"If we create a period when dishonest acts of officials are done away with, and politics are discussed by means of true words, assassinations would disappear." (I, 64)

Though this would sadly not come to pass in his time, the failure of democracy in pre-war Japan was hardly inevitable. It was killed in its infancy by men with guns, who, at the critical moment, decided that it was no use talking anymore.

Sources

A = Danny Orbach, “Pure Spirits: Imperial Japanese Justice and Right-Wing Terrorists, 1878–1936”, Asian Studies, 6.2: 129–56

B = Harukata Takenata, Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan: Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime, (Stanford University Press, 2014)

C = Kitaoka Shinich, From Party Politics to Militarism in Japan, 1924-1941 (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2021)

D = Stephen S. Large, “Nationalist Extremism in Early Shōwa Japan: Inoue Nisshō and the Blood Pledge Corps Incident, 1932,” Modern Asian Studies, 35.3 (July 2005): 533-564

E = Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)

F = Peter Duus, Party Rivalry and Political Change in Taisho Japan (Harvard University Press, 1968)

G = Nicholas End, “Japan during the Interwar Period: From Monetary Restraint to Fiscal Abandon,” in Era Dabla-Norris (ed.) Debt and Entanglements Between the Wars (International Monetary Fund, 2019)

H = Hugh Byas, Government by Assassination, (Pickle Partners Publishing, 2018)

I = David A. Sneider, “Action and Oratory: The Trials of the May 15th Incident of 1932,” Law Japan 23.1 (1990): 1-66.