JAPANESE CRISIS .

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 32, 7 February 1913, Page 7

JAPANESE CRISIS .

PRINCE KATSURA ATTACKED UNFIT TO HOLD PREMIERSHIP OPPOSITION SECEDERS HANDLED BY THE CROWD. / . By sTelegrapb.— PreM Astoolation.— Copyright. TOKIO, 6th February. •When M. Wakaauki Reijiro, Minister for Finance in the Japanese Cabinet presented his Budget, the Opposition violently attacked the Premier, Prince Kateura, as unfit to hold a constitutional Premiership. Prince Katsura replied amid uproar, and read an Imperial Edict adjourning the Diet. Crowds outside cheered the Opposition and threw out the seceders to Prince Katsura'u party from a rickshaw and attempted to duck them in the canal. "A SECOND POLITICAL REVOLUTION." The Japan Weekly Chronicle of 26th December states:— "The Nippon de? scribes the_ present political crisis as the second political Revolution of Japan, and violently denounces Prince Katsura. The Tokyo journal writes that the 'stupid Prince Yamagata,' who was instrumental in destroying the Saionji Cabinet, has been played with by the 'ambitious Prince Kateura' when the formation of a new Cabinet came to be considered. Prince Yamagata first approached Mar» guis Matsukata with the request to form a Cabinet; then AHmiral Count Yamamoto, and then Baron Hirata. ' In the meantime Prince Katsura has been laying obstacles in the way of Prince Yamagata, who has been thus deprived of a chance of bringing forward Count Terauchi, whom ho had chosen in his own mind as successor to Marquis Saionji. Prince Yamagata may claim to be the leader of the Choehu statesmen, but in reality he is now nothing more than an old soldier. The Japaneso people will now try to drive him off the Board of the Supreme Command of the Army and Navy (Geneui-fu) and from the Chair of President of the Privy Council. "What Prince Katsura has done is more detestable than the action of Prince Yamagata, says the Nippon. He has induced Prince Yamagata to break up the Saionji Cabinet, privately assisting him in the task by pulling the wires in the Imperial Court. When the plan proved successful, he made the conference of Elder Statesmen end in nothing, and at last has compelled the office of Premier to fall into his own hands. The artifice resorted to by Prince Katsura is detestable. What the public should not forget, says the Nippon^ is the fact that in carrying out sucn artifices Prince Katsura has abused the offices of Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and Grand Chamberlain, whkh he holds. The Elder Statesmen are no longer worthy of troubling about; their ability ia of no value. Prince Katsura' s action opens up the evil sytem of involving the Imperial Court in politics, and the responsibility of the Elder Statesmen in so carelessly recommending a man of such character to responsible offices in the Inv perial Court must bo questioned. A few months after his appointment to the offices in the Court he has been allowed to take the Government in his hands. The Nippon asks the 50,000,000 people of Japan now they regard this preseat state of things."