ABSTRACT
Saionji Kinmochi was the last appointed and longest surviving member of the Genro and it is in this, his best remembered, role that he made his greatest contribution to the political development of Japan. He was a Genro for half a lifetime and yet when he received the Imperial message of appointment in 1912, the Genro period of Japanese politics was almost finished. ‘Genro’, ‘Genro period’, ‘Genro politics’ are words which have meant different things at different stages in Japanese political history. The role and influence of the Genro changed, sometimes slowly and subtly, sometimes suddenly and dramatically. It changed as Japanese politics developed through the various stages of modernisation, spawning elites which then competed in the balance of power. It changed also as the members of the group itself changed. The Genro as an institution was more affected by the personalities which constituted it than any other institution in modern Japanese politics. The nature of the office was not defined either in law or in the constitution and the criteria by which individuals were chosen to serve as Genro can be given only ex post facto definition. Essentially, they were a self-generated and self-limiting body of elder statesmen who chose to justify their power from their position vis-a-vis the Court. The group was not created at one time. In a sense it was not created at all, but evolved gradually, gathering members which it was necessary or useful to include and jealously excluding all others. It is difficult to point to any particular stage at which the evolution was complete. When the group had reached completion in terms of members, that is to say, the time after which no new Genro were created, the group in terms of function had already moved through a number of phases, none of which was to be its final stage of development. Despite these
ambiguities, within a year or so of the Sino-Japanese War, the group had become recognised as a body with certain members and certain functions. By 1898, the term ‘Genro’ had passed into common usage and there was public recognition of their involvement in politics if no clear definition of the scope of their powers.1
