New Books from Japan #4: "Hara Takashi: Pioneer of Japanese Party Politics"

New Books from Japan #4

『原敬　-「平民宰相」の虚像と実像』

Hara Takashi: Pioneer of Japanese Party Politics　

Presenter: 清水唯一朗 (Shimizu Yuichiro, Keio University)

Discussant: Paul Dunscomb (University of Alaska-Anchorage)

As the first "commoner" prime minister, Hara Takashi led the first full-fledged political party cabinet. Born in the Morioka domain, which had been defeated in the Boshin War, Hara studied hard and worked as a newspaper reporter before joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and rising to the rank of Vice Minister. Thereafter, he joined Ito Hirobumi's Seiyukai party and became a party politician. Amidst the Taisho Political Crisis and the 1918 Rice Riots, he served as a cabinet minister, and then as party leader, implementing reforms that sometimes antagonized and sometimes compromised with the various factions based on pre-Meiji feudal domains. After becoming the first elected politician to become prime minister of Japan, he was assassinated in the midst of attempting to bring about far-sighted reforms. Although Hara has sometimes been described as autocratic and dictatorial, this book examines his original intentions and argues that Hara was a realist politician who was willing to forge difficult compromises with his political opponents in order to achieve his aims.

初の「平民」首相として、本格的政党内閣を率いた原敬。戊辰戦争で敗れた盛岡藩出身の原は苦学を重ね、新聞記者を経て外務省入省、次官まで栄進する。その後、伊藤博文の政友会に参加、政治家の道を歩む。大正政変、米騒動など民意高揚の中、閣僚を経て党の看板として藩閥と時に敵対、時に妥協し改革を主導。首相就任後、未来を見据えた改革途上で凶刃に倒れた。独裁的、権威的と評されるリアリスト原の軌跡とその真意を描く。