Showa Period (“Bright Peace” in Japanese)
The Showa period corresponds to the point in Japanese history in which Emperor Showa, Hirohito took command of the government after his father’s death. The name of this period, Showa, translates to mean the “period of enlightened peace.” He promised people when he took the throne that he would work his hardest to achieve peace because he understood its blessing and also knew the need for agreement among nations. Eventually Hirohito would see this promise of peace in Japan, but not before the country descended first into political and economic chaos, war, and eventually atomic bombings. The period is generally divided into three separate parts, the military period, the foreign occupation, and the post-occupation.
The beginning of the military period was set up to take effect by the preceding emperor’s rule. At the end of the Taisho period in 1926 the government was not as stable as it had been at the end of the preceding Meiji period despite the 1925 bill that allowed all property owning men over twenty five the right to vote. The weakness of Emperor Taisho combined with the relatively new emergence of the Diet and the political party system had worked to make the entrance of the military regime a lot more reasonable than it might have been at another time period.
One of the ways this was accomplished was through the passage of the Peace Preservation Law of 1925, which had been put through only ten days before the law that allowed men to vote. This act limited the amount of freedoms granted to individual Japanese citizens by outlawing groups who disagreed with the current system of government. The politicians in charge during this time saw what the communist movement was doing in other countries and were concerned that their government could also be in danger from outside revolutionary forces which sought to change the state of their government.
Since there was no legislature or documentation which clearly defined the difference between public and private matters the government declared absolute loyalty in every single aspect of the society. It became that any suggestion or question posed to the government or the political state was seen as an outright attack on Japan itself. This belief was known as Kokutai, or national body, and to question it was to question the absolute rule of the emperor. They even established a special police force that would investigate any groups like socialists, communists, and capitalists, who might threaten this supreme ruling of the centralized government.
This upwelling of ultra conservative national pride in Japan was the result of victory in foreign conflicts and the status garnered by the success in World War I. The nation was quickly industrialized and as more and more people moved into the cities and out of the rural areas the power of the feudal lords decreased as the emphasis was moved to the emperor and loyalty for him was tied directly to the state of Japan as a whole. This served to facilitate a feeling of Japan against the other major western powers like the United States, Chinese, British, and the Dutch. The country began to see that the only way to be on par with these other countries was a path to war and ultimately to conquest.
Japan was about to experience an economic collapse as the great depression hit the country and forced silk and rice prices to sink and the number of exports were suddenly cut in half as the demand from around the world dropped off because of the other country’s economic hardships. This caused the unemployment rates around the country to go up and as people grew restless and agitated the social problems in the country were greatly increased. This combined with a perceived lack of respect for Japan on the part of the other foreign leaders resulted in the conservative groups rising to power.
When, in 1930, Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi went to the London Naval Conference and was denied the increase in Japanese Naval ship ratios in the Pacific he was assassinated by one of these ultranationalists for his inability to get more done for the state. This prompted news organizations like the New York Times to refer to Japan as being a “government by assassination.” This military based government would then take its stand when it invaded Manchuria in 1931, setting up the events that would eventually led to the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The parliament was mainly compromised of military officials and when Japan received criticism for its actions against China it withdrew from the League of Nations. Officials in small towns and cities across Japan were urged by military leaders to indoctrinate people about the need for strong nationalist ideals. This increasing need by extremists to build a strong national identity would lead to the Lead of Blood Incident. The incident was actually an assassination plot by the extremists to try and eliminate a list of twenty individuals that they perceived as a threat to the ultimate survival of the state.
Of the twenty people on this list, the extremists only succeeded in killing two. However, the social anxiety that was sparked by these attempted assassination attempts. The group behind the League of Blood Incident was led by a Buddhist priest, Inoue, who envisioned himself as the leader of a movement that would be like a rebirth to Japan. As such, he wrote out the list of the twenty individuals targeted for assassination, hoping that their deaths would fully restore the empirical power within the Japanese government. The trial of Inoue did more than just serve as a tool to convict them, it gave them a way that they could tell public all of their plans and concerns. Despite the deathly intent of their message, many people came to sympathize and even agree with their ideals, contributing to the downfall of the established Japanese ruling system that spread through the Showa reign in the 1930s.
In the mid 1930’s Japan was placed under the rule of admirals. The rise of fundamental ultra-nationalist beliefs made it nearly impossible for the country to remain under the rule of many of the moderate policies of the government. In 1936 over fifteen hundred members of the conservative belief system marched on Tokyo and began assassinating government officials in an attempt to restore what they considered the true government of Japan. Hirohito (Showa) stepped forward and demanded an end to the killing, but not before many had already died.
Since Japan was the only Asian country to effectively industrialize their country and become large enough to compete on a world-wide level with many of the western powers, they believed that it was their mission to unite Asia against the western world. It was this belief that ultimately led Japan into the conflict in China and the Second World War.
However deeply the people of Japan may have believed in their country’s supreme right to rule over much of Asia, it was not enough to win the Second World War. After the defeat Japan found itself being occupied by foreign powers for the first time in its long history. The United States, led by General Douglas MacArthur, was in charge of the occupation of Japan. Under the terms of the surrender, Japan was forced to be disarmed, its emperor was also forced to resign from politics completely and given only a figurehead status. A trial was arranged and those accused of war crimes were sentenced to death and executed, but the members of the royal family were immune to these trials. In 1952 Japan signed the Treaty of San Francisco with the United States, making them once again a completely independent nation.
After the war Japan worked to make its name known in a completely different way by turning to industrialization and establishing the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The system set up different economic policies and overturned many of its anti-monopoly laws and made the Japanese market be available only to companies within the country. They turned to their economic powers to earn them the respect and influence that they had originally sought through battle. Today Japan is second to the United States in the economy despite the recession of the 1990’s.
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