JAPAN'S GOAL

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 34, 10 February 1933, Page 7

JAPAN'S GOAL

NEW SOCIAL ORDER

INFLUENCE FOR CHANGE

PECULIAR POLITICS

Jerkily but consistently the Japanese nation, moves forward to a new political and social order. Admiral Viscount Saito, the aged and highly respected administrator who, at the suggestion of the yet more aged Princo Saionji, formed a compromise Cabinet taking into account the supprpatriots and politicans, the financiers and ' generals, the rival parties, Seiyukai and Minseito, •is described by the Japanese -Press as "the last bulwark of party government," writes Upton Close in the "New York Times." For seven years Japan has sought to follow the British practice of basing its Cabinet upon the foremost political faction. That attempt has been abandoned. Though it be called a "National Cabinet" Saito's Ministrydepends on entirely different sanctions from that of Eamsay Mac Donald. It •was created by imperial sanction with which the politicians had nothing to do save negatively, and rests, upon no semblance of mandate from the bajlot box. Japan has gone back to the system followed up to 1925, which antedates by thirty-five years the formal Constitution, promulgated in ISB9. Under this Constitution, political factions grew to the dignity of parties. Actual power, however, remained in the hands of the Elder Statesmen. PARTIES TURN. As the ranks of these old oligarchs ivere thinned by death—Saionji is the only one left—the leaders of the major, parties who, one after another, dominated Parliament assumed a largo role in "advising" the Emperor regarding the policies and personnel of governments. But recently, after the chiefs of both major parties lad been assassinated and the Army General Staff lad served notice that it would not permit the-new leader of the majority party to head the Cabinet, the last surviving Elder Statesman came down from his mountain villa to appoint a , ( non-party man as Premier. Viscount Baito, it is said, was compelled to give the generals guarantees in writing xthat neither political nor financial interests Would be allowed to interfere with their programme for the nation's development; -..-■■ This constitutes a fairly complete revolution against the old order, but few people in Japan, expect it to end here. Japan has become a recruit to the movement among nations which will, in. history, distinguish this age: the reaction against that scarcely established and never perfectly functioning system of government by popular representation (and of its accompanying social and economic individualism) which we have loosely called "democracy." Communism, fascism, Hilterism, Chinese Nationalism, and now Japanese "military socialism," all are parts of this movement. HAIfD TO LABEL. An adequate name for the now political and social order in its distinctive Japanese form is difficult to find. At present the most fitting name to give the men who are forcing the new order in Japan is the "Modern Samurai." Itevival of the blind fealty, delight in martyrdom and martial spirit which characterised this feudal warrior class is demanded; yet the use of the word would imply a nostalgia for conditions existing in feudal Japan to which there is no notion of returning in 1932..' Until the newspapers establish a nomenclature we can. best call what is coming "military socialism." This term, however, may easily be misleading, as may the fact that the military have appeared to the outside ■world as the prime movers in recent events. _ They are the men who, because of their constitutional independence, traditional prestige, nearness to the common people and possession of means to force action, seem to be spearheads of the movement. But we call the movement military socialism, not because it is controlled by soldiers but because it is possessed of the military spirit. ' SAMUKAI SPIEIT. This. Samurai spirit is deeply rooted among the Japanese. I have heard toothless grandfathers who had no thought of swinging a bayonet express its feeling perfectly: "Modernism is sending Japan to the dogs," they have said. "Japan was always and must always be a nation subsisting on the discipline and fibre of her people, not on wealth of natural resources. Westernism has_ been good in its place and time, but it has gone far enough now and must not sweep Japan off her fundamental basis in the philosophy of Confucius and Oyomei (stoic interpreter of Buddhism) and the Samurai tradition of unquestioning willingness of man woman and child to put Emperor and State above personal interests or even life." I have found the same spirit in shop girls and conductorettes, who, in their S1^ Pf<w ayieontlemn the extravagances and "Western apings" of nobo and moga—contractions of "modern boy" and "modern girl," which have become Japanese words with meaning equivalent to our "flaming .youth." i\ ave heard it implied in the objections of Japanese literary men to the tremendous anflux of badly corrupted English words into the Japanese language. I have encountered it in thoughtful Japanese business men who. object to the "dog-eat-dog" spirit of individualism which Jias entered Japanese business and to the reckless changes of directorship in the great concerns which the State controls and which lately have been at the mercy of politicians. CHRISTIAN COMMUNISTS. It exists in the asceticism of the Christian Communist movement, which numbers 70,000 adherents. The influence of tins group is surprisingly greater than ata numbers. It is led by some of. the most able, hard-working ana respected men in Japan, ono of whom js Toyohiko Kagawa, social reformer, peasant and labour organiser, lecturer novelist, economist and saint, who dresses himself m a cheap suit which he lias taught workmen to make in their own co-operative factories. Kagawa is head of a co-operative movement in Japan that operates thousands of workshops, stores and peasant marketing unions. He heads a subsidiary organisation of youths built on religious discipline which takes the historian back to the time of Francis of, Assisi. The Samurai spirit exists also in the general revolt of the intelligentsia against political corruption, of commoners against the few who enjoy great wealth, of a few thinking high officers in the army and navy against politicans and plutocrats, and of the mass of junior officers against the majority of smug older officers who are resting^ on their careers.