SNA (Tokyo) — In 1912-1913, Taro Katsura returned for a third and final term as prime minister, but rather than cool the embers of the Taisho Political Crisis, he unexpectedly pours fuel on the fire.

Transcript

When Taro Katsura began his third term as prime minister on December 21, 1912, he inherited a smoldering political crisis that many believed only he could deal with. Most were surprised, however, when it turned out that Katsura poured fuel on the fire.

The Saionji Cabinet had resigned rather than submit to the budget increase demands of the Imperial Japanese Army. In doing so, they knowingly put the Army on a collision course with the overwhelming majority of public opinion, and they probably expected the most likely outcome would be that the Army would back down and the Saionji administration restored.

Katsura, however, had different ideas. Even though he had been appointed an official advisor of the new Emperor—and therefore was supposed to be above ordinary politics—he was the only conservative senior leader that wanted the top office at this time.

One of Katsura’s first moves stunned everybody. When the Imperial Japanese Navy refused to select a Navy Minister, like the Army now demanding that its budget be protected, Katsura exploited his position to have the Taisho Emperor directly command the Navy to provide a minister to the Cabinet.

This action, which put the Emperor’s prestige directly in the partisan political firing line, appalled even many conservatives, including Katsura’s old patron, the leading Genro Aritomo Yamagata.

Meanwhile, popular protests and antagonism toward the Katsura regime and oligarchic government more generally were spreading rapidly across the nation. Elected political party leaders, too, were calling for a showdown.

Another fissure opened within the new Katsura regime when leaders of the Satsuma faction, with their main power base in the Imperial Navy, started walking away from defense of the administration, making it clear that they saw this as a crisis created by the Choshu leaders and its Imperial Army, and was not their mess to deal with.

Katsura then stunned everyone a second time by creating a new pro-government political party, the Constitutional Association of Like Minds, by means of which he hoped to seize power from the majority party led by Kinmochi Saionji, the Constitutional Association of Political Friends.

But this move, too, only intensified the crisis. It was a declaration of political war against the majority party, but Katsura’s new party was too small and weak to decisively change the balance of power in the House of Representatives.

Saionji’s majority party responded to the threat by moving toward a vote of “no confidence” against the Katsura administration.

Katsura then made a third stunning move—but this time went way too far. He arranged to have the Emperor personally ask Saionji to withdraw the “no confidence” motion, again using the Imperial institution for partisan purposes, destabilizing the entire Japanese political system.

Infighting even within the conservative establishment had become severe. One of those who had had enough was Admiral Gonnohyoe Yamamoto, who personally confronted Katsura on February 10, 1913, and demanded that he resign, which Katsura said he would be willing to do. Yamamoto then went to a meeting of the majority political party and reported what had been said.

But popular opinion had already been antagonized past the breaking point. The same day, tens of thousands rioted outside the Diet Building, and then set fire to police stations and vandalized pro-Katsura newspaper offices.

Thoroughly discredited and nearly out of political friends, Taro Katsura resigned the next day, February 11, 1913, after a tumultuous third term of only 62 days.

Moreover, Katsura, who had been a political giant of early 20th century Japan, never had a chance to recover. Before that year had ended he died of stomach cancer, ending a high-flying career in ignominious failure.

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