ABSTRACT
The American Civil War metaphor of the nation as ‘a house divided’ might not immediately seem appropriate to apply to Japan in the early decades of the twentieth-century. Perhaps it is somewhat of an exaggeration since Japan was not being torn apart by a bloody civil war which many military historians regard as exhibiting characteristics of a total modern war. However, the metaphor is meant to evoke the image of a society being pulled apart by conflicting views of the ideal society or, more specifically, of the nature of the Japanese national polity in the modern world.
