nial expansion and win for itself the sources of raw materials and the markets needed to make it self-sufficient and invulnerable as a world power. Such reasoning seemed obvious to the reactionary and militaristic groups. Those business men and intellectuals who remained moderate and international in their views were not able to refute these arguments to the satisfaction of the Japanese public.
There was a gradual swing of popular support to the militaristic reactionaries. They did not wait, however, for a victory at the polls, because it would have come slowly and might never have come at all. They simply seized power by direct action, murdering or intimidating their leading political opponents and embroiling the nation in foreign wars of conquest which, by stirring up the nationalistic emotions of the people, won their support for imperialist and military policies.
The manner in which the militaristic reactionaries were able to seize power by direct action is a point of special interest, for it revealed a basic flaw in the Japanese political system, which the business men and bureaucrats had not attempted to mend. Indeed, they had deliberately preserved it until it contributed to their own undoing. This flaw was the mystic position of the emperor as a demi-god who stood above the government and whose personal desires took precedence over all law.
The Meiji leaders, who had come to power by championing the right of the emperor to rule, had created and fostered this tradition, for it gave them, as the men who surrounded the throne and spoke for the emperor, far greater authority over the people than they could