The domination of “Taisho Democracy” by political parties, focusing on the “parliamentarianism” of the Shakai Minshu Party

This article attempts to examine the Shakai Minshu Party 社会民衆党(hereafter SMP), a right-wing socialist political party active during the early Showa era, from the perspective of how “Taisho Democracy” was connected (or not connected)to the Meiji Constitutional system. The SMP is noteworthy because of its efforts to embody “Taisho Democracy” under the guidance of Yoshino Sakuzo, participation in the coup d’etat staged by the Sakurakai 桜会 group of Army officer radicals in March 1931, and close connections to the Shakai Taishu Party 社会大衆党, a powerful force for “innovation and progress”. Despite its importance, the research to date, which has grasped the issue of the proletarian party reorganization of 1932 as a process of the “fission-then-fusion” or “restoration” of the SMP, has not given due attention to the actual character of the Party. In contrast, based on an intellectual historical analysis of parliamentarianism that formed the core of the SMP’s ideology, the author traces the evolvement of the SMP’s “progressive” agenda and its concrete connection to the political scene in general, in order to depict the path by which the “progressive” forces at the time approached the center of political power. His findings are as follows.<br> During the era of the Tanaka and Hamaguchi governments(1927-1931), the SMP, whose common ideal was “a small group of wise leaders keeping the rank and file in step”, split into two political currents. The parliamentary reform faction, centered around Yoshino and Abe Isoo, urged control over Diet members by the electorate through the introduction of such institutions as large voting districts and proportional representation, maintaining a strict line advocating further improvements in a yet imperfect parliamentary system, while voices within the Party were raised in pessimism over parliamentarianism, citing the end to rivalry between the Seiyu and Minsei Parties making it difficult to obtain any casting vote. This intra-party division met in a showdown after the March 1931 coup d’etat attempt, resulting in the reorganization of the proletarian parties. The author points to a parliamentarian aufheben involving Akamatsu Katsumaro’s plans for building a new establishment out of the coup, Kamei Kan’ichiro’s alliance with non-elected political forces through Nagata Tetsuzan, and the progressive faction’s slogan of strengthening ties between the Imperial Diet and the “masses”.<br> The changing face of the SMP regarding parliamentarianism should probably be attributed to the deepening of debate over exactly how to achieve “innovation” than any “renunciation of socialism” by the proletarian parties in the wake of the external shock caused by the Manchurian Incident and Japan’s imperialist advance onto the Continent.