contingents from the political parties and the armed forces balancing each other.
This compromise government became typical of the rest of the 1930’s. The military element in succeeding cabinets tended to grow and party representatives slowly dwindled in number, but the professional bureaucrats retained the central and, theoretically, the dominant position throughout the decade. However, the militarists definitely took the lead in creating new policies of government. With the success of their Manchurian venture assured and supported by sporadic acts of terrorism committed by individual extremists, they forced as much of their program as they could on the compromise governments.
By simply refusing to recognize the authority of the Diet over the Cabinet, the militarists robbed the Diet of one power after another, and by the end of the decade they had reduced it to little more than an impotent and very timorous debating society. They did not dare to do away with the Diet entirely, because in theory it had been a gift from the Meiji emperor, but they made it meaningless as a parliament.
The militarists also increased the already strong imperialistic and militaristic indoctrination of the people, and they did their best to whip the masses up to a frenzy of nationalistic fervor. General Araki and his colleagues invented an undefined state of “national crisis,” with the strong implication that war was imminent. There was open encouragement of anti-foreign prejudices, and the people were taught to look upon all foreigners as possible spies.
The Japanese had for long hated Russia. Now bit-