ABSTRACT
DURING the era when the tide of democracy was flowing strongly and when nations without representative political systems were regarded as poor and disreputable relations by the rest of the world, Japan strove to cast her institutions in a form which bore at any rate a superficial resemblance to those of the great Western Powers. These new institutions were not, however, securely based upon popular sentiment, and political democracy was scarcely in accord with her traditions. Still, in the more generous and impressionable minds, liberalism found a ready response, and during the first post-War decade it seemed probable that industrial development would strengthen forces hostile to the older governing cliques and that Japan would ultimately come to possess a kind of government comparable to that found among the Western democracies. There was reason for hoping, also, that with the decline in the power of the military cliques, she might come to adopt whole-heartedly a more pacific foreign policy and might be counted on as a loyal adherent of the League of Nations. But in the general return to primitive methods of government and to international anarchy during the last eight years, Japan has led the way. She has cast off completely the garments of liberalism which she was just beginning to wear without discomfort, and she has assumed, almost with relief, her native armour, adorned though it may be with a plume borrowed from the Western dictators. Since 1931, fanaticism has steadily grown in strength, and, as elsewhere, rational humanitarianism has been forced into an ever-narrowing circle within her national life.
