This article attempts to examine the Shakai Minshu Party 社会民衆党(hereafter SMP), a right-wing socialist political party active during the early Showa era, from the perspective of how “Taisho Democracy” was connected (or not connected)to the Meiji Constitutional system. The SMP is noteworthy because of its efforts to embody “Taisho Democracy” under the guidance of Yoshino Sakuzo, participation in the coup d’etat staged by the Sakurakai 桜会 group of Army officer radicals in March 1931, and close connections to the Shakai Taishu Party 社会大衆党, a powerful force for “innovation and progress”. Despite its importance, the research to date, which has grasped the issue of the proletarian party reorganization of 1932 as a process of the “fission-then-fusion” or “restoration” of the SMP, has not given due attention to the actual character of the Party. In contrast, based on an intellectual historical analysis of parliamentarianism that formed the core of the SMP’s ideology, the author traces the evolvement of the SMP’s “progressive” agenda and its concrete connection to the political scene in general, in order to depict the path by which the “progressive” forces at the time approached the center of political power. His findings are as follows.
During the era of the Tanaka and Hamaguchi governments(1927-1931), the SMP, whose common ideal was “a small group of wise leaders keeping the rank and file in step”, split into two political currents. The parliamentary reform faction, centered around Yoshino and Abe Isoo, urged control over Diet members by the electorate through the introduction of such institutions as large voting districts and proportional representation, maintaining a strict line advocating further improvements in a yet imperfect parliamentary system, while voices within the Party were raised in pessimism over parliamentarianism, citing the end to rivalry between the Seiyu and Minsei Parties making it difficult to obtain any casting vote. This intra-party division met in a showdown after the March 1931 coup d’etat attempt, resulting in the reorganization of the proletarian parties. The author points to a parliamentarian aufheben involving Akamatsu Katsumaro’s plans for building a new establishment out of the coup, Kamei Kan’ichiro’s alliance with non-elected political forces through Nagata Tetsuzan, and the progressive faction’s slogan of strengthening ties between the Imperial Diet and the “masses”.
The changing face of the SMP regarding parliamentarianism should probably be attributed to the deepening of debate over exactly how to achieve “innovation” than any “renunciation of socialism” by the proletarian parties in the wake of the external shock caused by the Manchurian Incident and Japan’s imperialist advance onto the Continent.

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The research to date on the topic of the aftermath of the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22 and its disarmament treaty has focused mainly on such issues as the independent authority of the supreme commander, the independence of the Naval General Staff and the choice of Naval cabinet ministers, but has yet to fully describe and analyze the Japanese Imperial Navy’s actual response to the provisions of the treaty. The present article takes up the treaty’s influence on naval operations by focusing on the permanent deployment of the Combined Fleet and subsequent changes in its military role and mission.
It has been thought that the organization of the Imperial Navy was characterized by a dual division of labor between the Naval Ministry in military administrative affairs and the General Staff in military command affairs ; however, it would be more accurate to characterize that structure as consisting of high commanders of Naval bureaus---the Naval Minister, the Fleet and naval installation general staffs, and the commanders in chief---all acting under juxtaposing administrative and supreme command authorities, with the Fleet and naval installation commanders in chief assuming leadership over the chain of command in the field.
The Imperial Navy’s response to the disarmament treaty was to adopt policies aiming at maximizing troop excellence, one part of which was to permanently deploy the Combined Fleet, resulting in the major Naval troop forces being merged into the Fleet and the peacetime authority and role of the Fleet commander in chief being clearly defined. It was in this way that the Combined Fleet was transformed from an organization for assuming unified command in emergency situations to a day-to-day organ assuming leadership over naval operations and management of troops in the field.
As the threat of war became more and more imminent, the scale of the Combined Fleet was greatly expanded, resulting in a division between the Fleet command and the admiralty commanding the Fleet’s squadrons=battleship divisions, with the Fleet command situated in the rear taking responsibility for strategic planning. This change in the role of the Fleet command to a general staff function not only posed problems in the Navy’s centralized operations, but also caused a gap in military spirit between the command and its squadron commanders. As a result, Naval leadership on the battlefield would be determined in the rear by Imperial Naval Headquarters, orders sent to the Fleet command, then transmitted to squadron commanders for implementation in the field, forming a centripetal threefold structure, indicative of how the complete change in character and role of the Combined Fleet after the signing of the Washington Treaty greatly influ-enced the operations of the Imperial Navy as a whole.

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