_Emperor and Princes._--At the head of the Japanese State stands the
emperor, generally spoken of by foreigners as the _mikado_ (honourable
gate[9]), a title comparable with sublime porte and by his own subjects
as _tenshi_ (son of heaven) or _tenno_ (heavenly king). The emperor
Mutou Hito (q.v.) was the 121st of his line, according to Japanese
history, which reckons from 660 B.C., when Jimmu ascended the throne.
But as written records do not carry us back farther than A.D. 712, the
reigns and periods of the very early monarchs are more or less
apocryphal. Still the fact remains that Japan has been ruled by an
unbroken dynasty ever since the dawn of her history, in which respect
she is unique among all the nations in the world. There are four
families of princes of the blood, from any one of which a successor to
the throne may be taken in default of a direct heir: Princes Arisugawa,
Fushimi, Kanin and Higashi Fushimi. These families are all direct
descendants of emperors, and their heads have the title of _shinno_
(prince of the blood), whereas the other imperial princes, of whom there
are ten, have only the second syllable of _shinno_ (pronounced _wo_ when
separated from _shin_). Second and younger sons of a _shinno_ are all
_wo_, and eldest sons lose the title _shin_ and become _wo_ from the
fifth generation.
_The Peerage._--In former times there were no Japanese titles of
nobility, as the term is understood in the Occident. Nobles there were,
however, namely, _kuge_, or court nobles, descendants of younger sons of
emperors, and _daimyo_ (great name), some of whom could trace their
lineage to mikados; but all owed their exalted position as feudal chiefs
to military prowess. The Meiji restoration of 1867 led to the abolition
of the _daimyos_ as feudal chiefs, and they, together with the kuge,
were merged into one class called _kwazoku_ (flower families), a term
corresponding to aristocracy, all inferior persons being _heimin_
(ordinary folk). In 1884, however, the five Chinese titles of _ki_
(prince), _ko_ (marquis), _haku_ (count), _shi_ (viscount) and _dan_
(baron) were introduced, and patents were not only granted to the
ancient nobility but also conferred on men who had rendered conspicuous
public service. The titles are all hereditary, but they descend to the
firstborn only, younger children having no distinguishing appellation.
The first list in 1884 showed 11 princes, 24 marquises, 76 counts, 324
viscounts and 74 barons. After the war with China (1894-95) the total
grew to 716, and the war with Russia (1904-5) increased the number to
912, namely, 15 princes, 39 marquises, 100 counts, 376 viscounts and 382
barons.
_Household Department._--The Imperial household department is
completely differentiated from the administration of state affairs. It
includes bureaux of treasury, forests, peerage and hunting, as well as
boards of ceremonies and chamberlains, officials of the empress's
household and officials of the crown prince's household. The annual
allowance made to the throne is £300,000, and the Imperial estate
comprises some 12,000 acres of building land, 3,850,000 acres of
forests, and 300,000 acres of miscellaneous lands, the whole valued at
some 19 millions sterling, but probably not yielding an income of more
than £200,000 yearly. Further, the household owns about 3 millions
sterling (face value) of bonds and shares, from which a revenue of
some £250,000 is derived, so that the whole income amounts to
three-quarters of a million sterling, approximately. Out of this the
households of the crown prince and all the Imperial princes are
supported; allowances are granted at the time of conferring titles of
nobility; a long list of charities receive liberal contributions, and
considerable sums are paid to encourage art and education. The emperor
himself is probably one of the most frugal sovereigns that ever
occupied a throne.
_Departments of State._--There are nine departments of state presided
over by ministers--foreign affairs, home affairs, finance, war, navy,
justice, education, agriculture and commerce, communications. These
ministers form the cabinet, which is presided over by the minister
president of state, so that its members number ten in all. Ministers of
state are appointed by the emperor and are responsible to him alone. But
between the cabinet and the crown stand a small body of men, the
survivors of those by whose genius modern Japan was raised to her
present high position among the nations. They are known as "elder
statesmen" (_genro_). Their proved ability constitutes an invaluable
asset, and in the solution of serious problems their voice may be said
to be final. At the end of 1909 four of these renowned statesmen
remained--Prince Yamagata, Marquises Inouye and Matsukata and Count
Okuma. There is also a privy council, which consists of a variable
number of distinguished men--in 1909 there were 29, the president being
Field-Marshal Prince Yamagata. Their duty is to debate and advise upon
all matters referred to them by the emperor, who sometimes attends their
meetings in person.
_Civil Officials._--The total number of civil officials was 137,819 in
1906. It had been only 68,876 in 1898, from which time it grew
regularly year by year. The salaries and allowances paid out of the
treasury every year on account of the civil service are 4 millions
sterling, approximately, and the annual emoluments of the principal
officials are as follow:--Prime minister, £960; minister of a
department, £600; ambassador, £500, with allowances varying from £2200
to £3000; president of privy council, £500; resident-general in Seoul,
£600; governor-general of Formosa, £600; vice-minister, £400; minister
plenipotentiary, £400, with allowances from £1000 to £1700; governor
of prefecture, £300 to £360; judge of the court of cassation, £200 to
£500; other judges, £60 to £400; professor of imperial university,
from £80 to £160, with allowances from £40 to £120; privy councillor,
£400; director of a bureau, £300; &c.
_Legislature._--The first Japanese Diet was convoked the 29th of
November, 1890. There are two chambers, a house of peers (_kizoku-in_)
and a house of representatives (_shugi-in_). Each is invested with the
same legislative power.
The upper chamber consists of four classes of members. They are, first,
hereditary members, namely, princes and marquises, who are entitled to
sit when they reach the age of 25; secondly, counts, viscounts and
barons, elected--after they have attained their 25th year--by their
respective orders in the maximum ratio of one member to every five
peers; thirdly, men of education or distinguished service who are
nominated by the emperor; and, fourthly, representatives of the highest
tax-payers, elected, one for each prefecture, by their own class. The
minimum age limit for non-titled members is 30, and it is provided that
their total number must not exceed that of the titled members. The house
was composed in 1909 of 14 princes of the blood, 15 princes, 39
marquises, 17 counts, 69 viscounts, 56 barons, 124 Imperial nominees,
and 45 representatives of the highest tax-payers--that is to say, 210
titled members and 169 non-titled.
The lower house consists of elected members only. Originally the
property qualification was fixed at a minimum annual payment of 30s. in
direct taxes (i.e. taxes imposed by the central government), but in
1900 the law of election was amended, and the property qualification for
electors is now a payment of £1 in direct taxes, while for candidates no
qualification is required either as to property or as to locality.
Members are of two kinds, namely, those returned by incorporated cities
and those returned by prefectures. In each case the ratio is one member
for every 130,000 electors, and the electoral district is the city or
prefecture.
Voting is by ballot, one man one vote, and a general election must take
place once in 4 years for the house of representatives, and once in 7
years for the house of peers. The house of representatives, however, is
liable to be dissolved by order of the sovereign as a disciplinary
measure, in which event a general election must be held within 5 months
from the date of dissolution, whereas the house of peers is not liable
to any such treatment. Otherwise the two houses enjoy equal rights and
privileges, except that the budget must first be submitted to the
representatives. Each member receives a salary of £200; the president
receives £500, and the vice-president £300. The presidents are nominated
by the sovereign from three names submitted by each house, but the
appointment of a vice-president is within the independent right of each
chamber. The lower house consists of 379 members, of whom 75 are
returned by the urban population and 304 by the rural. Under the
original property qualification the number of franchise-holders was only
453,474, or 11.5 to every 1000 of the nation, but it is now 1,676,007,
or 15.77 to every 1000. By the constitution which created the diet
freedom of conscience, of speech and of public meeting, inviolability of
domicile and correspondence, security from arrest or punishment except
by due process of law, permanence of judicial appointments and all the
other essential elements of civil liberty were granted. In the diet full
legislative authority is vested: without its consent no tax can be
imposed, increased or remitted; nor can any public money be paid out
except the salaries of officials, which the sovereign reserves the right
to fix at will. In the emperor are vested the prerogatives of declaring
war and making peace, of concluding treaties, of appointing and
dismissing officials, of approving and promulgating laws, of issuing
urgent ordinances to take the temporary place of laws, and of conferring
titles of nobility.
_Procedure of the Diet._--It could scarcely have been expected that
neither tumult nor intemperance would disfigure the proceedings of a
diet whose members were entirely without parliamentary experience, but
not without grievances to ventilate, wrongs (real or fancied) to
avenge, and abuses to redress. On the whole, however, there has been a
remarkable absence of anything like disgraceful licence. The
politeness, the good temper, and the sense of dignity which
characterize the Japanese, generally saved the situation when it
threatened to degenerate into a "scene." Foreigners entering the house
of representatives in Tokyo for the first time might easily
misinterpret some of its habits. A number distinguishes each member.
It is painted in white on a wooden indicator, the latter being
fastened by a hinge to the face of the member's desk. When present he
sets the indicator standing upright, and lowers it when leaving the
house. Permission to speak is not obtained by catching the president's
eye, but by calling out the aspirant's number, and as members often
emphasize their calls by hammering their desks with the indicators,
there are moments of decided din. But, for the rest, orderliness and
decorum habitually prevail. Speeches have to be made from a rostrum.
There are few displays of oratory or eloquence. The Japanese
formulates his views with remarkable facility. He is absolutely free
from _gaucherie_ or self-consciousness when speaking in public: he can
think on his feet. But his mind does not usually busy itself with
abstract ideas and subtleties of philosophical or religious thought.
Flights of fancy, impassioned bursts of sentiment, appeals to the
heart rather than to the reason of an audience, are devices strange to
his mental habit. He can be rhetorical, but not eloquent. Among all
the speeches hitherto delivered in the Japanese diet it would be
difficult to find a passage deserving the latter epithet.
From the first the debates were recorded verbatim. Years before the
date fixed for the promulgation of the constitution, a little band of
students elaborated a system of stenography and adapted it to the
Japanese syllabary. Their labours remained almost without recognition
or remuneration until the diet was on the eve of meeting, when it was
discovered that a competent staff of shorthand reporters could be
organized at an hour's notice. Japan can thus boast that, alone among
the countries of the world, she possesses an exact record of the
proceedings of her Diet from the moment when the first word was spoken
within its walls.
A special feature of the Diet's procedure helps to discourage
oratorical displays. Each measure of importance has to be submitted to
a committee, and not until the latter's report has been received does
serious debate take place. But in ninety-nine cases out of every
hundred the committee's report determines the attitude of the house,
and speeches are felt to be more or less superfluous. One result of
this system is that business is done with a degree of celerity
scarcely known in Occidental legislatures. For example, the meetings
of the house of representatives during the session 1896-1897 were 32,
and the number of hours occupied by the sittings aggregated 116. Yet
the result was 55 bills debated and passed, several of them measures
of prime importance, such as the gold standard bill, the budget and a
statutory tariff law. It must be remembered that although actual
sittings of the houses are comparatively few and brief, the committees
remain almost constantly at work from morning to evening throughout
the twelve weeks of the session's duration.
_Divisions of the Empire._--The earliest traditional divisions of
Japan into provinces was made by the emperor Seimu (131-190), in whose
time the sway of the throne did not extend farther north than a line
curving from Sendai Bay, on the north-east coast of the main island,
to the vicinity of Niigata (one of the treaty ports), on the
north-west coast. The region northward of this line was then occupied
by barbarous tribes, of whom the Ainu (still to be found in Yezo) are
probably the remaining descendants. The whole country was then divided
into thirty-two provinces. In the 3rd century the empress Jingo, on
her return from her victorious expedition against Korea, portioned out
the empire into five home provinces and seven circuits, in imitation
of the Korean system. By the emperor Mommu (696-707) some of the
provinces were subdivided so as to increase the whole number to
sixty-six, and the boundaries then fixed by him were re-surveyed in
the reign of the emperor Shomu (723-756). The old division is as
follows[10]:--
I. The _Go-kinai_ or "five home provinces" i.e. those lying
immediately around Kyoto, the capital, viz.:--
_Yamashiro_, also called Joshu | Izumi, also called _Senshu_
_Yamato_ " Washu | _Settsu_ " Sesshu
_Kawachi_ " Kashu |