ABSTRACT
With the stroke of a pen, the 1925 passage of the Universal Manhood Suffrage Law instantly expanded the Japanese electorate nearly fourfold. Just ten days earlier, the Diet had laid the groundwork for this ‘leap in the dark’ (Premier Kato Komei, quoted in Duus, 1976: 170) by enacting the Peace Preservation Law, which strictly limited the public’s right to engage in free and open political discourse. The nearly simultaneous passage of these two landmark bills encapsulated the contradictions inherent in the Meiji reforms, now over 50 years old, and set the tone for the decade to come. By the end of the 1920s, the government’s dilemma, left over from the Meiji erä, of engaging public commitment to the common cause while at the same time limiting the opportunities for public expression, would be resolved in favor of repression. As the nation neared the end of the 1920s, the intersection of crises both foreign and domestic made democracy seem just too dangerous, too serious a threat to Japan ’s Security in a changing world.
