THE RISE AND FALL OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE (CHAPTER XX) JAPAN’S EMPIRE DISASTER At the end of the 1800s, the internal fight for political and economic power in Japan took an ugly turn, including riots and tax revolts, and even plots to assassinate high government officials. 1 From 1881 to 1888, corporate moguls quarreled among themselves, jockeyed for personal gain, and maneuvered to achieve their political and moral goals. On February 11, 1889, at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Emperor Meiji proclaimed the new Constitution called the Meiji constitution. It was a despotic charter that vested absolute power in the emperor. 2 The people’s right to vote was limited to property owners, approximately 500,000 men, thus only slightly more than 1 percent of the population at the time. The legislature limited personal freedom by voting special laws. For example, the courts considered a man guilty if arrested, unless he could prove his innocence. 3 From the adoption of the Meiji constitution in 1889 and the first period of the Shōwa era (1927– 1945), the military controlled the new Japanese constitutional government. The result was years of political instability, more internal conflicts, violence, murders, assassinations, overseas aggression, and war crimes in occupied territories. In 1900, in one of those internal quarrels with Prince Itō Hirobumi, Gen. Aritomo Yamagata persuaded the emperor to order that only generals and admirals on active duty could hold office in Japan as ministers of war and navy. 4 By this ruling, the army and navy obtained more and more power to decide on the future of the nation. In October 1903, Admiral Seiichi Itō, chief of the Naval General Staff, informed Vice-Adm. Tōgō Heihachirō that he would command the Imperial Navy Fleet as soon as war would break out between Japan and Russia. 5 Four months later, on February 8, 1904, the Japanese launched a sudden, surprise attack on the Russian naval base of Port Arthur, on the coast of Manchuria, without the formality of declaring war. They fired their torpedoes and hit two Russian battleships, The Tsarevich and The Retvizan, and the cruiser Pallada. On the same day, the Japanese army took control of Seoul, the capital of Korea, and on the 10th, Japan officially declared war against Russia. Port Arthur surrendered in January 1905. Not till February 1905, Japanese and Russian’s troops fought the war. Finally, Tōgō defeated the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima Straits on 27–28 May 1905. Under Field Marshall Iwao Oyama, the Japanese destroyed Gen. Aleksey Kuropatkin’s forces, inflicting 70,000 casualties including 20,000 killed or missing at a cost of 16,000 Japanese killed and 60,000 wounded. 6 A peace treaty was signed on September 5, 1905, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. 7 Despite Japan’s victory over Russia, the “Treaty of Portsmouth” was so unpopular that it immediately set off violent anti-American reactions among Japanese who wanted more generous terms from Russia. The Hibiya Incendiary Incident in Tokyo (September 5–7, 1905) was one of the protests against the treaty. 8 Many Japanese believed that Japan’s gains were far less than what public opinion had expected. 9 The rioting killed seventeen people. The police arrested more than two