Defending Japan's civilization and civilizing mission in Asia: The resilience and triumph of illiberalism in the House of Peers, 1919-1934

By studying the deliberations of the Japanese House of Peers from 1919 to 1934, this dissertation establishes the power, resilience, and ultimate triumph of the illiberal peers against the liberal advocates of parliamentary democracy and cooperative diplomacy. It analyzes peer deliberations that few historians have intensively utilized, addresses the role of a modern aristocracy long neglected by historians, and by doing so, challenges conventional historiographical portrayals of the 1920s as a period of triumphant liberalism and rising Lower House power. It retrieves forgotten voices of prominent illiberal and liberal peers, and outlines the content and thematic continuities of interwar illiberalism.; This thesis provides an in-depth picture of the liberal-illiberal struggle which ensued following the breakdown of the prewar conservative consensus. The liberal Taishō Restoration agenda—which included the enactment of the well-known 1925 universal manhood suffrage bill and the cooperative diplomacy most personified by Baron Shidehara Kijūrō—was spearheaded by liberal peers. Yet, even at the height of liberal influence, the illiberal peers continued to denounce the liberal agenda and accused their advocates of undermining the unique qualities of Japanese civilization, of sacrificing Japan's civilizing mission, and of pandering to ideas originating from a defective Western civilization.; Through the late 1920s, illiberals increasingly criticized the phenomena of partisan politics as legally, morally, and spiritually harmful to the health and mission of the Japanese nation. The London Naval Conference would provide the final impetus for an all-out attack on party politics. With the assassination of Inukai Tsuyoshi in 1932, Japan would once again return to the prewar tradition of non-party-led cabinets and to the assertive realpolitik regarding Japan's civilizing mission in China. By late 1932, illiberalism once again dominated the House of Peers.; In subsequent years, illiberal peers continued to demand further rectification of Japan's domestic and foreign policies. At home, they ousted liberal constitutional scholar Minobe Tatsukichi from the House of Peers and banned his works as contrary to the national essence in 1935. Likewise, they called for the resolution of the China Problem and the liberation of the Japanese spirit from the oppressive yoke of the United States.