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Unlock This CourseWhen the Constitution began in 1889, only about 450,000 men could vote. A voter had to be a man aged 25 or over who paid 15 yen a year in tax. They elected the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Diet. The upper house, the House of Peers, was not elected by the people. It was made up of nobles and members chosen by the emperor.
By the 1910s many people thought this was unfair. Factory workers, shopkeepers and teachers paid taxes and did their duty, yet had no say. Scholars such as Yoshino Sakuzo, a professor at Tokyo University, argued that government should serve the people. After the rice riots of 1918, workers, students and newspapers joined the call for universal manhood suffrage. In 1919 and 1920 large crowds marched in Tokyo and other cities.
Key terms:
The government moved slowly. In 1919 Prime Minister Hara Kei cut the tax qualification from 10 yen to 3 yen, which roughly doubled the electorate to about 3 million. But he thought votes for all men were too soon, and in 1920 he dissolved the Diet rather than agree to the idea. Many politicians and conservatives in the House of Peers feared that poor voters would back radical ideas.
The turning point came in 1924. A government made up mostly of peers took office, and the main parties in the House of Representatives, the Kenseikai, the Seiyukai and the Kakushin Club, joined forces to protest against it. They won the election, and Kato Takaaki, the Kenseikai leader, became prime minister at the head of a coalition of parties. In March 1925 his government passed the law that gave the vote to all men aged 25 or over, with no tax test. The electorate jumped from about 3 million to about 12 million.
The change was big, but it had limits. Women still could not vote or join political parties. The House of Peers still had to agree to every law. The emperor's powers under the Constitution were untouched.
The war boom brought many new factory workers, but rising prices cut what their wages could buy. In 1912 Suzuki Bunji founded the Yuaikai (Friendly Society), which grew into the Sodomei (General Federation of Labour) in 1921. Japan's first May Day march was held in 1920. Big strikes followed, such as the dispute at the Kawasaki and Mitsubishi shipyards in Kobe in 1921.
Remember that tenants often paid about half their crop in rent. When rice prices were low and rents stayed high, many tenants refused to pay. In 1922 the Japan Farmers' Union was founded, and tenant farmer disputes with landlords reached well over a thousand a year in the mid-1920s.
Most workers still had no union, and employers and the police were hostile to strikes. Some union leaders were socialists, and a few were communists. The Japanese Communist Party was founded in secret in 1922, inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917. Most workers wanted better pay and shorter hours, not revolution, but the government did not always see the difference.
In the same year that it gave the vote to millions of men, the government also passed the Public Security Preservation Law (April 1925). It made it a crime to form or join any group whose aim was to change the kokutai or to end private property. The punishment could be up to ten years in prison.
The law was passed for several reasons:
Many historians see the law as a safeguard that conservatives wanted in return for the vote. The wording was vague, so it could be used against more than communists. In 1928 the government raised the maximum penalty to death. (The campaign that pressed arrested communists to give up their beliefs is covered in the lesson called "Tenko: Rejecting Communism".)
Change: By 1925 about 12 million men could vote, compared with about 450,000 in 1890. Unions, strikes and tenant farmer movements were a new force in politics and society.
Continuity: Women had no vote, the House of Peers could still block laws, the emperor's powers were unchanged, and the state was ready to punish anyone who challenged the kokutai.
Explain TWO ways in which the right to vote in Japan in 1925 was similar to the right to vote in Japan in 1890. [6 marks]
Remember: each way must say something about both years. One way on its own cannot score more than half marks.
One similarity is that only men could vote. In 1890 the vote was limited to men aged 25 or over who paid 15 yen in tax, about 450,000 people. In 1925 the tax test was dropped and about 12 million men could vote, but the age of 25 stayed and women were still shut out, as they had been in 1890.
Another similarity is what voters could choose. In both years they elected only the House of Representatives. In 1890 the House of Peers was made up of nobles and men chosen by the emperor, and in 1925 it was still not elected by the people and could block laws that the elected house passed, so the voters had limited power in both years.
What lifts this to the top level: each paragraph names a similarity and backs it with precise facts about both 1890 and 1925.
For a "similar" question, do not describe change. Use the pattern "In 1890 ... and in 1925 ... as well".