1. Rise of the Parties

Since the Meiji Restoration, civilian bureaucrats and the military had ruled Japan in the name of the soverign emperor. The constitution of 1889 served to confirm the centrality of the monrchy and the bureaucracy, but the the Japanese people were given a tiny window, a limited voice to affect policy decisions through the elected lower house of the Diet. However, Ito Hirobumi, who drafted the constitution, expected that bureaucrats and generals would continue to rule without sigificant accountability to the broader populace. Things turned out differently than anticipated. The Diet actually became a site of contestation in whcih the leadership group's authority was significantly challenged from time to time. A vigorous drive for participatory parliamentary politics emerged first as the Seiyukai was formed and functioned as a party whose leader (Saoinji) alternated the Premiership with a representative of the Oligarchs, Katsura Taro, between 1905-1913, and then, even more so, when a second party emerged.

This came about with the "Taisho" political crisis of 1912, when a second party, the Doshikai, was formed and it evolved into the KENSEIKAI and later the MINSEITO. It turned out to offer a vigorous, liberal challenge to the Seiyukai. So during the years 1918-1932 there was a "Normal" sharing of power between the heads of these 2 political parties so it is sometimes referred to as "the era of normal constitutional government."

2. International Influences--Wilsonianism, Allied Vistory WWI, world made safe for democracy, ideal of national self-determination for all nations, etc.

3. Minobe Tatsukichi's Organ Theory of Constitutional Monarchy

4. Yoshino Sakuzo's liberalism, minponshugi v. minshushugi.

民本主儀　　　　　　　民主主義

A Christian with sympathies towards socialism, Yoshino tried to make the notion of democracy and popular sovereignty compatible with the emperor system by coining Minponshugi phrase.

Yoshino combines liberalism at home with voice for self-determination for colonial subjects, especially Koreans.

Along with Shimada Saburo, he criticized military interventionism and arms build up of Seiyukai.

He advocated universal manhood suffrage, civilian control over the military, the transformation of the House of Peers to a popularly elected body, and an active social welfare program.

In the end, he would come to see the parties as "entrenched" elites who were corrupted and catered only to private, selfish interests of the large economic combines, the Zaibatsu.