+ Bibliography
+ About the Speakers

RELATED TOPIC:
THE PRIME MINISTER

RELATED TOPIC:
THE JAPANESE BUREAUCRACY

RELATED TOPIC:
THE JAPANESE DIET (PARLIAMENT)

RELATED TOPIC:
INTEREST GROUPS IN JAPANESE POLITICS

RELATED TOPIC:
ELECTION LAWS

RELATED TOPIC:
THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

 
THE GOVERNMENT OF MODERN JAPAN:
THE EMPEROR

The Emperor before the Second World War

Gerald L. Curtis :: Under the Japanese political system before the Second World War, the emperor was in theory all-powerful. The emperor was sovereign, and everyone who worked for the government in effect worked for the emperor. That meant, in effect, that power was divided among several different groups within the Japanese political system — most importantly the military, the civilian bureaucracy, and to some extent the Diet, the Japanese parliament.

In the pre-war period, before the Second World War, the fact that the emperor was theoretically all-powerful meant in effect that those groups who could claim to speak for the emperor were the ones who were in fact all-powerful. So that we know in the 1930s, it was the Japanese military, which claimed to speak on behalf of the emperor, that managed to secure virtually all political power unto itself.