Hara Kei in the Politics of Compromise, 1905-1915

Just for the Record: Ōkuma Shigenobu and the Mediatisation of 1910s Japanese Politic(ian)S

“…But the oligarchs and he had one common enemy: the majority party in the House of Commons, the Seiyūkai, and its deeply entrenched pork-barrel politics in the regions. 32 Ōkuma at the age of 77 years took it on to dissolve the National Diet and crush the Seiyūkai in a national election that was scheduled for March 25, 1915. An advantage for him was that shortly after his cabinet was inaugurated in April 1914 he presided as Prime Minister over Japan's entry into the First World War as part of the Entente, and therefore his political agenda, which also included a costly enlargement of the army and navy, was now a matter of wartime national defence.…”

“…46 He would later be accused of not only having used his new position excessively against Ōkuma's political enemies, above all the Seiyūkai, in the weeks leading up to the election but also of the direct buying of votes and even of inducing Seiyūkai parliamentarians to betray their party and change affiliations. 47 This would later deal a significant blow to Ōkuma's long-nurtured popularity because it turned out that he and his cabinet in the end had used the same methods to manipulate the elections that they had criticised. 48 But what was much more visible in public during the campaigning season was the aggressive and innovative campaign speech events organised by the Count Ōkuma Support Association.…”