The government forged by the Meiji Constitution struggled to achieve its purposes, because of opposition in the lower house of the Diet. The first cabinets, led by Yamagata, Matsukata, and Itō, tried to maintain the principle that the government, which in their view represented the emperor, should remain outside the influence of parties and that it was the duty of the lower house to acquiesce to government demands. This policy failed, for the parties wished to increase their power and patronage and therefore sought cabinets responsible to the lower house. Party and government leaders ultimately found common cause in a desire to prove to the West that parliamentary institutions could succeed in Japan.

After several struggles which were resolved by the use of money and force on the part of the government, the First Sino-Japanese War had produced the kind of unity the constitution makers had envisaged. In the years that followed, oligarchs formed alliances with the two parties, typically exchanging a cabinet seat or two for support in the lower house. Party leaders soon grew more ambitious, however. In 1898 Itagaki and Ōkuma combined forces to create the Constitutional Party (Kenseitō) and then formed a government. Their alliance was of short duration, as historical rivalries made it possible for opposition forces among the bureaucracy and oligarchy to topple their government within a few months.

There now developed a division in the ranks of the dwindling group of aging Meiji leaders. Yamagata Aritomo, the Chōshū restoration hero, held power over the army and much of the bureaucracy. When Yamagata became prime minister in 1898, he implemented checks against political party influence and secured an imperial decree that service ministers should be active-duty career officers. The army and navy were thus given the power to shatter a cabinet. Partly in reaction to this growth of institutionalized power, the other outstanding member of the oligarchy, Itō Hirobumi, also of Chōshū, formed his own political party in 1900, the Friends of Constitutional Government (Rikken Seiyūkai). Itō enlisted most of the former followers of Itagaki and drew power from the business class. Practical political goals erased much of the animosity that had characterized the relationships between oligarchs and politicians.

After 1901 both Itō and Yamagata withdrew from political life, and until 1913 cabinets were led by their protégés Saionji Kimmochi and Katsura Taro. Basic policy decisions, however, continued to be made by a core group of genrō (elder statesmen). They advised the emperor on all significant decisions and selected prime ministers by alternating between the two principal factions. Saionji was the last leader to be recruited into this extraconstitutional body, although prime ministers in the 1920s and ’30s were often consulted as “senior ministers” (jushīn).

As the first generation of imperial Japan’s leaders succumbed to age, the political dynamic changed. No subsequent group claimed the prestige the Meiji oligarchs had enjoyed. The death of the Meiji emperor in 1912 ended a remarkable reign. He was succeeded by a son who took the reign name Taishō (“Great Righteousness”), but mental illness prevented him from replicating his father’s achievements. The growing influence of the world of business manifested in control of the political parties and resulted in an increasing role for professional party politicians. The genro failed in their final attempt to seat Katsura in 1912, while his successor, Adm. Yamamoto Gonnohyōe, was discredited by a bribery scandal involving Japanese naval officers and foreign arms manufacturers. Ōkuma Shigenobu emerged from retirement to head a cabinet during World War I and was succeeded by a military cabinet under Gen. Terauchi Masatake.

Terauchi’s reactionary policies and his administrative incompetence spurred the ascendant party professionals to bring about the appointment of Hara Takashi as prime minister in 1918. Hara’s appointment marked the creation of the first party cabinet, but his assassination in 1921 cut short his efforts to reduce the power of the military and the bureaucracy and to expand the electorate. After several short-lived cabinets headed by nonparty figures, a highly successful party cabinet was organized in 1924 by Katō Takaaki. Katō introduced universal manhood suffrage, extending the franchise to about 14 million voters. He also reduced the size of the army and enacted moderate social legislation. In these same years Katō’s foreign minister, Shidehara Kijuro, withstood demands for greater intervention in China and pursued closer relations with the Soviet Union.

While the parties scored significant democratic advances in some respects, in other ways they showed themselves thoroughly distrustful of popular freedoms. As the parties grew in power, they tended to look to bureaucrats for leadership; important party figures such as Hara, Katō, Takahashi Korekiyo, and others entered the parties from the bureaucracy. The businessmen who supported the parties and the bureaucrats who led them resisted the social movements that accompanied industrialization. The growth of the labour movement had already been checked by a special police law introduced under Yamagata in 1900, which was strengthened under Katō in 1925. A group of intellectuals organized the Japanese Communist Party in 1922, and the general interest in Marxist thought contributed to fears of subversion among the conservatives. Under the Meiji constitution, party governments had to coexist with the military, the House of Peers, and the conservatives close to the throne. Whatever reforms they wished to initiate therefore had to be worked out with the utmost caution.

Frequently the Diet found itself virtually powerless, and these limitations encouraged an irresponsibility evidenced by frequent corruption and disorders in the chamber. This did little to win popular respect for the machinery of representative government. There were no institutional changes to make it possible for a government to be firmly based on popular support. The Meiji Constitution, which was never changed, was so ambiguous in its provisions for the executive that the party prime ministers could achieve little unless they secured, through compromise, the cooperation of forces which were quite antagonistic to their supposed purpose of democratic government.