to 3,000,000; and in 1925, a universal manhood suffrage bill was passed, making a total electorate of 14,000,000 voters. Now the whole adult male population of Japan, peasants and city workers along with the middle and upper classes, could vote.
Since the lower classes, however, were politically untutored, they took little interest in politics. The peasantry seemed almost untouched by the strong democratic trends in the cities, and only a small element in the city proletariat, largely under the leadership of middle class intellectuals, expressed itself in political action. With the backing of white collar workers and some laborers, intellectuals founded liberal and left wing parties, such as the Social Democratic and the Farmer Labor, and later the Social Mass Party, born of a union of the two earlier parties. Even a Communist Party was organized, embracing a few radical thinkers and very small groups of laborers and peasants, but it was early liquidated by the thorough and ruthless Japanese police. Of the other parties, only the Social Mass made any impression in the Diet, and that was not until the 1930’s, after the Diet had relapsed into relative insignificance.
Although the new parties were not too influential in practical politics, they were significant. During the 1920’s, the city intellectuals and white collar workers became a strongly liberal group, not unlike the liberals in the United States who stood slightly left of center. In the 1930’s, when the rest of Japan was disowning democracy and liberalism, and the business men were weakly surrendering leadership to the militarists, the intellectuals and white collar workers in the middle