From 1924-1926, Takaaki Kato led an administration which marked the pinnacle of the period of “Taisho Democracy.” Its crowning achievement was the passage of a law granting voting rights to all male Japanese age 25 or older, regardless of economic status.
In early 1924, bureaucrat Keigo Kiyoura reluctantly agreed to become premier, but the frustration of the political parties about once again being passed over created a challenge which Kiyoura was not able to tame.
History is replete with examples in which one side won a war and benefited from doing so, but it also includes examples like the First World War, in which all sides lost far more than they gained. Two years into the Russia-Ukraine War, it is apparent that this conflict will be counted among the latter cases.
From 1923-1924, Admiral Gonnohyoe Yamamoto made a return as prime minister. He was brought in to provide leadership in the wake of the cataclysmic Great Kanto Earthquake. Yamamoto made some progress in providing relief services, but was unable to bring political stability.
North Korea has been clearly signaling an interest in improving relations with Japan, although there remain far more questions than answers.
From 1922-1923, Admiral Tomosaburo Kato led the Japanese government. While in principle it was a clear setback for democracy to have a military man and not an elected politician running the administration, Kato skillfully carried out the sensitive tasks of cutting defense budgets and ending some internationally controversial military deployments.
The Japan Communist Party (JCP) has made another step forward toward becoming the major national political party most committed to gender equity, but it is far from clear this approach will allow it to break into the mainstream.
The United Nations continues to urgently proclaim to the world that the civilian population of the Gaza Strip is being “stalked by hunger, disease, and death.” But these desperate pleas fall on deaf ears in Washington, both its political class and the mainstream media, which continues to be deeply beholden to the Israel Lobby, and to provide money, weapons, and political support to the ongoing mass murder.
Tucker Carlson has been evolving into someone whose foreign policy views now run parallel with some tenets of the anti-imperialist left, even if his conclusions have sprung from a different intellectual and moral path.
From 1921-1922, finance specialist Korekiyo Takahashi served as prime minister of Japan. His brief tenure, however, was mainly notable as a period in which the nation was adrift at its senior levels; those in authority or who had commanded policy in earlier years had disappeared through death and illness.
