A New Cabinet in Japan

After a long crisis a new government has finally been formed in Japan. Until now landowner-conservatives had ruled in Japan almost without exception; in agreement with the famous Genro (the all-powerful personal council of the Mikado), they kept the people in an iron grip by police terror.

The great earthquake and the latest elections dealt a terrible blow to this age-old dictatorship. Power has now passed not to the landowners but to the industrialists — the Liberal Constitutionalists, who won the latest elections, obtaining about 150 seats (out of a total of 460).

The leader of this party, Viscount Kato, received from the Mikado the commission to form a government. Not having an absolute majority in parliament, he formed a coalition of three bourgeois opposition parties, while keeping a decisive preponderance in the cabinet for his own group.

As we see, there is still no talk of the people's participation in power, and this is because Japan still has no universal suffrage. Representatives of the working masses are entirely absent from the Japanese parliament. But it was with this slogan of universal suffrage that the Liberal party came forward during the elections, and it was precisely this that gave it victory.

So the main point of the new government's programme is the drafting of a new electoral law. Mr. Kato's government has a majority of 280 votes in parliament, not counting non-party deputies, who have likewise promised to support the government's liberal reforms. Foreign affairs have been entrusted to the former ambassador to America, and from this it is evident that the conflict with America will be settled peacefully.

As we once prophesied, the earthquake has turned out not to be without benefit for Japan…