And ever since those days, that is for twenty-seven
consecutive years, successive Diets in Japan have been fighting a
forlorn fight for the power which can never be theirs save by
revolution, it being only natural that Socialism should come to be
looked upon by the governing class as Nihilism, whilst the mob-
threat has been very acute ever since the Tokio peace riots of
1905.
Now it is characteristic of the ceremonial respect which all
Japanese have for the Throne that all through this long contest
the main issue should have been purposely obscured. The
traditional feelings of veneration which a loyal and obedient
people feel for a line of monarchs, whose origin is lost in the
mists of antiquity, are such that they have turned what is in
effect an evergrowing struggle against the archaic principle of
divine right into a contest with clan-leaders whom they assert are
acting "unconstitutionally" whenever they choose to assert the
undeniable principles of the Constitution. Thus to-day we have
this paradoxical situation: that although Japanese Liberalism must
from its very essence be revolutionary, i.e., destructive before
it can hope to be constructive, it feigns blindness, hoping that
by suasion rather than by force the principle of parliamentary
government will somehow be grafted on to the body politic and the
emperors, being left outside the controversy, become content to
accept a greatly modified rule.
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