ABSTRACT
The decade or two following the promulgation of the constitution and the convocation of the Diet was a period of trial and error in Japanese politics. Both sides, the oligarchy and the opposition parties, endeavored to learn how to fit the Diet into the political framework of the country. Factionalism and personal rivalries could have been expected to divide the oligarchs too, but the Meiji leaders, faced with the threat that the political parties might usurp their power, managed to subordinate their personal and factional interests. The collective exercise of power and the emergence of the Privy Council and the council made up of the genro, which operated outside the confines of the constitution, as political bodies of primary importance tended to obscure the real locus of power. In order to split the opposition, the Meiji leaders frequently resorted to more persuasive techniques, such as the employment of thugs to exert physical force against Diet members.
