Constitutional Party
| Constitutional Party | |||
| Kenseitō | |||
| Constitutional Party | |||
| Party presidency ( sōsai) | Ōkuma Shigenobu | ||
| founding | June 22, 1898 | ||
| Place of foundation | Tokyo | ||
| resolution | September 13, 1900 | ||
| Headquarters | Tokyo | ||
The Constitutional Party ( 憲政 党 , Kenseitō , English Constitutional Party ) was a Japanese nationalist political party in the Japanese Empire .
history
The Constitutional Party was founded in June 1898 as a merger of the Progressive Party under the leadership of Ōkuma Shigenobu and the Liberal Party (Jiyūtō) under the leadership of Itagaki Taisuke with Ōkuma as party chairman. The merger brought the new party an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives of the Japanese Parliament . In the 1898 elections, the two parties had won 208 seats. After the collapse of the Itō government , Ōkuma became Prime Minister of Japan , despite concerns from Yamagata Aritomo and other members of the Meiji oligarchy and Genrō that doing so would dilute their authority. One of Ōkuma's first acts as Prime Minister was to pass much-needed tax cut legislation and reduce the number of bureaucrats on the government's payroll. However, he could not limit the spending on the military expansion program after the First Sino-Japanese War , which he inherited from the Ito government.
In the parliamentary elections in September 1898, the Constitutional Party won 260 out of 300 seats in parliament. Even so, the party collapsed soon after. Former Jiyūtō members felt that Ōkuma did not distribute cabinet seats in proportion to their party and partnered with Yamagata Aritomo and other Conservative MPs in parliament to criticize Education Minister Ozaki Yukio for a speech they believed the republicanism promotes. After Ozaki's resignation, the former Jiyūtō faction continued to attack the government until Ōkuma's cabinet fell apart.
The former Jiyūtō faction reorganized in November 1898 into the New Constitutional Party with Itagaki as president, while the former members of Shimpotō, however, founded the Kensei Hontō. The reformed party allied itself with the new government under Yamagata and pushed for property tax reform and the extension of the right to vote. 1900 joined the New Constitutional Party of the Rikken Seiyūkai led by Itō Hirobumi .
literature
- Junji Banno: The Establishment of The Japanese Constitutional System . Routledge , 1995, ISBN 0-415-13475-7 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard Sims: Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868-2000 . Palgrave Macmillan , New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-312-23914-5 , pp. 81 .