-
13. Zaikai and Taishō Demokurashii, 1900–1930
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
288 13 Zaikai and Taishò Demokurashii, 1900–1930 LONNY E. CARLILE Various chapters in this volume demonstrate that during the Taishò years “modernity” permeated all classes of Japanese society in a variety of economic and political guises. Indeed, one of the themes to emerge strongly from many of the contributions to this volume is the stunningly populist quality of much of Taishò modernity. Clearly, modernity in Taishò had a mass dimension of a greater magnitude than had been realized in past scholarship. Despite this, it remains the case that there were clear and profound limits on the degree to which the “massification” of Taishò demokurashii could unfold. Nowhere were these limits more conspicuous and significant than at the “commanding heights” of the Japanese political economy. There, despite concessions to populist pressures, a small nexus of elites, whose roots were traceable to the immediate post-Restoration period, maintained a firm grip on key levers of political economic power. This essay deals with the arrival of modernity in the arena of elite-level business-state relations. It focuses on the evolution of zaikai during the Greater Taishò period of 1900–1930.1 Zaikai refers to that small group of individuals who as a rule served in executive positions in Japan’s leading business associations and who, collectively, were recognized to be the representative spokespersons for the big business community. This definition corresponds to current usage more than to the usage of the term at the time. It is a somewhat “fuzzy” term in that who qualifies as a member of zaikai is a matter of subjective attribution and therefore prone to varying interpretations . In practice, however, the term generates a surprisingly solid consensus about who the core members of zaikai are at any given time. By focusing on the 1900–1930 period, we are observing zaikai as it evolved from a loose, informally organized set of individuals with personal connections to individual Meiji government officials (traditionally referred to as seishò, or political merchant) into a formalized structure of interest representation built around national business associations that were the forerunners of the zaikai associations that speak for Japanese business today. Using one or more formally organized zaikai associations to anchor the discussion, the sections that follow relate zaikai’s evolving structural features to the changing social, political, and economic contexts of Taishò demokurashii and through these attempt to assess the character and impact of zaikai on the evolution of the prewar Japanese polity. The picture that unfolds is one of increasing zaikai autonomy and policymaking influence and growing formalization and “rationalization” of the institutional mechanisms for exercising that influence. The essential argument that emerges is that, despite being fraught with contradictions and far from perfect from zaikai’s standpoint, the authoritarian Meiji constitutional order simply provided too many opportunities for organized business to advance its interests through direct interaction with the state bureaucracy and too few incentives for it to act as a liberal, proparliamentary force in the evolving political economic order. These circumstances, in turn, suggest at least a partial explanation of why the populism of Taishò demokurashii could progress only so far and why the period would eventually set the stage for the explosion of social, political, and economic tensions of the 1930s. FINANCE AND MEIJI PARTY POLITICS In setting the stage for the discussion of Taishò zaikai, it is useful to point out that in the classic formulation, industrialization and the emergence of modern capitalism give rise in the sociopolitical arena to an era of political and economic liberalism. Whether and to what extent this formulation constitutes a valid universal principle applicable beyond the early industrialization of England remains an open question and is not an issue that will be dealt with here (see, among others, Bendix 1974). It is noteworthy, nonetheless, that early industrialization in Japan in fact produced political forces and tendencies of the sort described by the classic formulation. The “popular” parties in the years immediately following the opening of the Diet in 1890 battled the entrenched hanbatsu oligarchs over “freedom and popular rights” in the political arena and lower taxes and greater scope for private activities in the economic arena. Backing them, as is consistent with the classic formula, was a movement of merchants and industrialists aligned, in the Japanese case, with a nonaristocratic landlord elite (Najita 1967; Mitani 1988; Masumi 1988, 4–5). The nonelected hanbatsu governments contributed significantly albeit unintentionally to the mobilizational capacity of the 289 Zaikai and Taishò Demokurashii [18.209.209...