From 1927-1929, Imperial Army-officer-turned-politician Giichi Tanaka attempted to guide Japan with a firm hand, aiming to crush radicalism at home and to use the iron fist in China. This hardline turn was resisted on many fronts, but the biggest problem emerged from the Army itself, which was slipping away from political control.
From 1926-1927, Reijiro Wakatsuki led Japan’s ruling party, but his tendency to shy away from confrontations helped put him in a weaker position than his predecessor. As the new Emperor Hirohito began his reign, a careless comment by the finance minister triggered a run on banks.
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.
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 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.
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.
From 1918-1921, Takashi Hara skillfully led Japan’s first modern government which was truly commanded by elected politicians, a major step forward for democracy.
In a tacit admission that US influence in the Islamic world is in freefall, the Biden administration is openly seeking the People’s Republic of China’s help in extricating itself from its self-inflicted fiascos in Gaza and Yemen.
The notion that non-Western powers might band together to resist the depredations of Europe and the United States has been around since the late 19th century, but only now has the power balance shifted to a sufficient degree that the era of Western global dominance is actually coming to an end.
From 1914-1916, Shigenobu Okuma made an unlikely return as prime minister, this time establishing a more stable administration in cooperation with the conservative oligarchs. Okuma and his dynamic Foreign Minister Takaaki Kato led the nation into the First World War, which for Japan was a relatively profitable opportunity.
