ABSTRACT
TANAKA’S last Diet session, in 1929, had been distinguished by almost continual disorder. In the House of Representatives it was one long series of loud denunciations of everything done by a government which was both unpopular and corrupt. The House, it is true, was disorderly by habit, but, though the tradition was strong that it was patriotic to be a bad and predacious neighbour and glorious to have the army in the field, these considerations did nothing to mollify it; and the promises of conquest in the future did not bring oblivion to the ineptitudes of the present. The House of Peers was more orderly but even more hostile, and many of its members were neither disinclined nor afraid to say exactly what they thought of the military idea of politics. The time was to come when even the House of Peers would be intimidated, but for the present liberalism was still vocal.
