Lesley Connors - The Emperors Adviser: Saionji Kinmochi and Pre-War Japanese Politics

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: JAPAN

THE EMPERORS ADVISER

Saionji Kinmochi and pre-war Japanese politics

LESLEY CONNORS

Volume 66

First published in 1987

This edition first published in 2011
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

1987 Lesley Connors

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-203-84165-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 13:978-0-415-56498-4 (Set)

eISBN 13:978-0-203-84317-8 (Set)

ISBN 13:978-0-415-59474-5 (Volume 66)

eISBN 13:978-0-203-84165-5 (Volume 66)

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

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SAIONJI KINMOCHI and pre-war Japanese politics

LESLEY CONNORS

1987 Lesley Connors

Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row,
Beckenham, Kent, BR3 1AT

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Connors, Lesley
The Emperors adviser: Saionji Kinmochi
and pre-war Japanese politics.
1. Saionji, Kinmochi, Prince
2. StatesmenJapanBiography
I.Title
952.03'092'4 DS884.S3
ISBN 0709934491

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Connors, Lesley.
The emperors adviser.
(The Nissan Institute/Croom Helm Japanese studies
series)
1. JapanPolitics and government19121945.
2. Saionji, Kinmochi, 18491940. I. Title. II. Series.
DS885.C66 1987 952.03 8629325
ISBN 0-7099-3449-1

Few countries in the world today can be unaware of the increasing international impact of Japan. From the ashes of defeat in 1945, Japan has risen to become one of the most dynamic and successful economic powers in the world today. The broad outlines of how this has been achieved are reasonably well known. There are, however, many little-documented aspects of contemporary Japan, and many thinly understood facets to the Japanese experience of modern development. Japan is neither unique (as sometimes asserted), nor merely a copy of the outside world, but rather a fascinating source of human experience which deserves to be tapped and disseminated far more widely than it now is.

The Nissan Institute of Japanese studies at the University of Oxford, in conjunction with Messrs Croom Helm, has decided to launch a series of books designed to make the Japanese experience more accessible. Some of the books will be relatively specialised, scholarly monographs. Others will be of a more general kind, with the aim of introducing the reader to some broader aspect of Japan.

We are very happy to publish as the second in the series Lesley Connors work on the prewar statesman Saionji, the last surviving Genro or elder statesman, who played a key role in advising the Emperor and appointing prime ministers until his death in 1940 on the eve of the Pacific War. Dr. Connors presents a fresh interpretation of Saionjis role and achievements, assessing these in a more favourable light than some previous historians. In writing the biography of Saionji, she also relates what happened at the centre of Japanese government over a period of great drama and far-reaching change.

J.A.A.Stockwin,
Director, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies,
University of Oxford.
January 1986

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the scholars, friends and family members who gave their help and encouragement during the preparation of this book and the doctoral thesis from which it grew. Many institutions and their staff gave unstintingly of their help. I would particularly like to thank the staff of Hosei University, Tokyo University and the National Diet Library in Japan, and of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield and St. Antonys College, Oxford. Mr. Saionji Kinkazu, Mr. Kido Takasumi and Mr. Harada Kei shared their memories of the men with whom they grew up. Prof. Akio Yasuoka of Hosei University spent long hours teaching me to read Saionjis attractive but illegible writing whilst Prof. Yamamoto Shiro inspired me with the belief that such struggles were worthwhile. Prof. Banno Junji, Dr. Gordon Berger, Dr. Thomas Burkman, Prof. Alvin Coox, Dr. Gordon Daniels, Dr. Ian Gow, Prof. Hata Ikuhiko, Mr. Graham Healey, Dr. Janet Hunter, the late Prof. Richard Storry and Prof. David Anson Titus generously read and criticised sections of the manuscript. Prof. Arthur Stockwin was the impetus behind the present work and contributed greatly to its completion. I would finally like to thank my mother who gave me the time to write, my husband whose humour sustained me and Jessica, Eleanor, Hannah and Jojo who distracted me.

It is rare to find a man of such significance in the political development of a country so neglected by its historians as Saionji Kinmochi. There are, even in the National Diet Library in Tokyo, no collected papers of the man whose political activities began before the opening of Japan to the West and ended only months before her momentous attack on Pearl Harbor. Much of this neglect has been the result of the nature of his involvement in politics. As adviser to three Emperors, his influence, though at the highest levels, was un-publicised and largely unchronicled. Some of the blame however must fall on the urbane public image cultivated by Saionji himself and passed into history by his protege Hara Kei, whose acid descriptions of Saionjis ineffectuality have distorted descriptions of Japans last Genro.

This biography is an attempt to substitute for the bland and passive public persona attributed to Saionji a picture of a determined political leader with clearly defined objectives, a coherent political philosophy and the political sense to know when both needed to be abandoned. Saionjis Genro years, from 1913 to his death in November 1940, were a period of rapid political development for Japan both domestically and in terms of international standing and outlook. Saionjis biography during these years shows the massive extent of his own contribution to Japanese politics, but also illustrates with great clarity both the rise of the liberals and the total erosion of their power in the period leading to the Pacific War.