ENLIGHTENED GOVERNMENT
part of the Japanese polity. Laws might be redrafted, institutions remodelled, systems recast, but amid all changes and mutations one steady point must be carefully preserved, the Throne. The makers of new Japan understood that so long as the sanctity and inviolability of the Imperial Prerogatives could be preserved, the nation would be held by a strong anchor from drifting into dangerous waters. They laboured under no misapprehension about the inevitable issue of their work in framing the Constitution. They knew very well that party cabinets are an essential outcome of representative institutions, and that to some kind of party cabinets Japan must come. But they regarded the Imperial mandate as a conservative safeguard, pending the organisation and education of parties competent to form cabinets. Such parties did not yet exist, and until they came into unequivocal existence, the Restoration statesmen, who had so successfully managed the affairs of the nation during a quarter of a century, resolved that the steady point furnished by the Throne must be maintained, and that their own duty was to refrain from identifying themselves with any political association. With much sagacity they had framed the Constitution so as to serve the purposes of a period of probation. For the document neither admitted nor denied the principle of parliamentary mandates; and since the sovereign, being the source of all power, must be supposed to retain every prerogative of
243
