As a corollary of this fundamental principle, the Emperor is "sacred and inviolable."
Ito says: The Emperor is Heaven-descended, divine and sacred; He is preeminent above all His subjects. He must be reverenced and is inviolable. . . . Not only shall there be no irreverence for the Emperor's person, but also shall He not be made a topic of derogatory comment nor one of discussion.[1]
It is really unthinkable that any Japanese Emperor could ever suffer the fate of Charles I of England. It was this idea of imperial sanctity that made the people discredit, at first, the report of the anarchist conspiracy of 1910. It must however be acknowledged, that even the Emperor is not always exempt from being the subject of discussion. And yet on the whole he is generally considered sacred, so that attempts to drag him into politics are resented. An apparent attempt to utilize for partisan purposes an imperial rescript by the new young Emperor is believed to have ruined Katsura's last ministry in 1913. And the failure of Saionji at that time to make the Seiyukai yield to what was said to be the imperial desire in that case is thought to have compelled him to give up the leadership of that party and retire to private life.
Dr. McLaren, in a lecture before the Asiatic Society of Japan, spoke as follows on this point:
The tremendous prestige of the Imperial name had been used continually for the defense of the Government. . . . The divine descent of the Monarch had been made to bear the whole burden of the oligarchical form of government. . . . The oligarchy and the monarchy had been merged into a single governing power, which continued to exist through the reverence of the people for the Throne."[2]
This idea of the sacredness of the imperial name has given rise to some ridiculous instances of so-called lèse majesté. For instance, the Ministry was censured in 1893 "for its carelessness in maintaining the dignity of the crown." It happened
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