Russia (1904–5) increased the number to 912, namely, 15 princes, 39 marquises, 100 counts, 376 viscounts and 382 barons.
Household Department.—The Imperial household department is completely differentiated from the administration of state affairs. It includes bureaux of treasury, forests, peerage and hunting, as well as boards of ceremonies and chamberlains, officials of the empress’s household and officials of the crown prince’s household. The annual allowance made to the throne is £300,000, and the Imperial estate comprises some 12,000 acres of building land, 3,850,000 acres of forests, and 300,000 acres of miscellaneous lands, the whole valued at some 19 millions sterling, but probably not yielding an income of more than £200,000 yearly. Further, the household owns about 3 millions sterling (face value) of bonds and shares, from which a revenue of some £250,000 is derived, so that the whole income amounts to three-quarters of a million sterling, approximately. Out of this the households of the crown prince and all the Imperial princes are supported; allowances are granted at the time of conferring titles of nobility; a long list of charities receive liberal contributions, and considerable sums are paid to encourage art and education. The emperor himself is probably one of the most frugal sovereigns that ever occupied a throne.
Departments of State.—There are nine departments of state presided over by ministers—foreign affairs, home affairs, finance, war, navy, justice, education, agriculture and commerce, communications. These ministers form the cabinet, which is presided over by the minister president of state, so that its members number ten in all. Ministers of state are appointed by the emperor and are responsible to him alone. But between the cabinet and the crown stand a small body of men, the survivors of those by whose genius modern Japan was raised to her present high position among the nations. They are known as “elder statesmen” (genrō). Their proved ability constitutes an invaluable asset, and in the solution of serious problems their voice may be said to be final. At the end of 1909 four of these renowned statesmen remained—Prince Yamagata, Marquises Inouye and Matsukata and Count Okuma. There is also a privy council, which consists of a variable number of distinguished men—in 1909 there were 29, the president being Field-Marshal Prince Yamagata. Their duty is to debate and advise upon all matters referred to them by the emperor, who sometimes attends their meetings in person.
Civil Officials.—The total number of civil officials was 137,819 in 1906. It had been only 68,876 in 1898, from which time it grew regularly year by year. The salaries and allowances paid out of the treasury every year on account of the civil service are 4 millions sterling, approximately, and the annual emoluments of the principal officials are as follow:—Prime minister, £960; minister of a department, £600; ambassador, £500, with allowances varying from £2200 to £3000; president of privy council, £500; resident-general in Seoul, £600; governor-general of Formosa, £600; vice-minister, £400; minister plenipotentiary, £400, with allowances from £1000 to £1700; governor of prefecture, £300 to £360; judge of the court of cassation, £200 to £500; other judges, £60 to £400; professor of imperial university, from £80 to £160, with allowances from £40 to £120; privy councillor, £400; director of a bureau, £300; &c.
Legislature.—The first Japanese Diet was convoked the 29th of November, 1890. There are two chambers, a house of peers (kizoku-in) and a house of representatives (shugi-in). Each is invested with the same legislative power.
The upper chamber consists of four classes of members. They are, first, hereditary members, namely, princes and marquises, who are entitled to sit when they reach the age of 25; secondly, counts, viscounts and barons, elected—after they have attained their 25th year—by their respective orders in the maximum ratio of one member to every five peers; thirdly, men of education or distinguished service who are nominated by the emperor; and, fourthly, representatives of the highest tax-payers, elected, one for each prefecture, by their own class. The minimum age limit for non-titled members is 30, and it is provided that their total number must not exceed that of the titled members. The house was composed in 1909 of 14 princes of the blood, 15 princes, 39 marquises, 17 counts, 69 viscounts, 56 barons, 124 Imperial nominees, and 45 representatives of the highest tax-payers—that is to say, 210 titled members and 169 non-titled.
The lower house consists of elected members only. Originally the property qualification was fixed at a minimum annual payment of 30s. in direct taxes (i.e. taxes imposed by the central government), but in 1900 the law of election was amended, and the property qualification for electors is now a payment of £1 in direct taxes, while for candidates no qualification is required either as to property or as to locality. Members are of two kinds, namely, those returned by incorporated cities and those returned by prefectures. In each case the ratio is one member for every 130,000 electors, and the electoral district is the city or prefecture.
Voting is by ballot, one man one vote, and a general election must take place once in 4 years for the house of representatives, and once in 7 years for the house of peers. The house of representatives, however, is liable to be dissolved by order of the sovereign as a disciplinary measure, in which event a general election must be held within 5 months from the date of dissolution, whereas the house of peers is not liable to any such treatment. Otherwise the two houses enjoy equal rights and privileges, except that the budget must first be submitted to the representatives. Each member receives a salary of £200; the president receives £500, and the vice-president £300. The presidents are nominated by the sovereign from three names submitted by each house, but the appointment of a vice-president is within the independent right of each chamber. The lower house consists of 379 members, of whom 75 are returned by the urban population and 304 by the rural. Under the original property qualification the number of franchise-holders was only 453,474, or 11.5 to every 1000 of the nation, but it is now 1,676,007, or 15.77 to every 1000. By the constitution which created the diet freedom of conscience, of speech and of public meeting, inviolability of domicile and correspondence, security from arrest or punishment except by due process of law, permanence of judicial appointments and all the other essential elements of civil liberty were granted. In the diet full legislative authority is vested: without its consent no tax can be imposed, increased or remitted; nor can any public money be paid out except the salaries of officials, which the sovereign reserves the right to fix at will. In the emperor are vested the prerogatives of declaring war and making peace, of concluding treaties, of appointing and dismissing officials, of approving and promulgating laws, of issuing urgent ordinances to take the temporary place of laws, and of conferring titles of nobility.
Procedure of the Diet.—It could scarcely have been expected that neither tumult nor intemperance would disfigure the proceedings of a diet whose members were entirely without parliamentary experience, but not without grievances to ventilate, wrongs (real or fancied) to avenge, and abuses to redress. On the whole, however, there has been a remarkable absence of anything like disgraceful licence. The politeness, the good temper, and the sense of dignity which characterize the Japanese, generally saved the situation when it threatened to degenerate into a “scene.” Foreigners entering the house of representatives in Tōkyō for the first time might easily misinterpret some of its habits. A number distinguishes each member. It is painted in white on a wooden indicator, the latter being fastened by a hinge to the face of the member’s desk. When present he sets the indicator standing upright, and lowers it when leaving the house. Permission to speak is not obtained by catching the president’s eye, but by calling out the aspirant’s number, and as members often emphasize their calls by hammering their desks with the indicators, there are moments of decided din. But, for the rest, orderliness and decorum habitually prevail. Speeches have to be made from a rostrum. There are few displays of oratory or eloquence. The Japanese formulates his views with remarkable facility. He is absolutely free from gaucherie or self-consciousness when speaking in public: he can think on his feet. But his mind does not usually busy itself with abstract ideas and subtleties of philosophical or religious thought. Flights of fancy, impassioned bursts of sentiment, appeals to the heart rather than to the reason of an audience, are devices strange to his mental habit. He can be rhetorical, but not eloquent. Among all the speeches hitherto delivered in the Japanese diet it would be difficult to find a passage deserving the latter epithet.
From the first the debates were recorded verbatim. Years before the date fixed for the promulgation of the constitution, a little band of students elaborated a system of stenography and adapted it to the Japanese syllabary. Their labours remained almost without recognition or remuneration until the diet was on the eve of meeting, when it was discovered that a competent staff of shorthand reporters could be organized at an hour’s notice. Japan can thus boast that, alone among the countries of the world, she possesses an exact record of the proceedings of her Diet from the moment when the first word was spoken within its walls.
