The Study Of Shinnpei Gotou’s Political Ideals

Shinnpei Gotou is a famous bureaucrat and politician in the modern history of Japan.In his early years,he used to be the colonial governor of Taiwan and then of the Northeast China.In 1918,he returned to Japan and made an important impact on modern Japanese politics.The main focus of this paper is on Gotous’ s participation in domestic politics and his political ideals.His political career was in the era when feudal politics declined and political parties grew up.But he admired the regime in which the so-called “neutral bureaucrats” of non-feudal clans and non-political parties play the reading roles.He disliked politician politics and its arrogance.He also rejected the political interference of political parties,who he thought fueled the corruption of the golden power.He believed that the most appropriate person in charge of the regime is a professional bureaucrats with noble virtue,and also independent from the feudal clans or political parties.Since the beginning of the 20 th century,Japanese political parties had become more pragmatic in order to gain power.On one hand,Shinnpei Gotou also adopted pragmatism to win over the leaders of various political blocs,and proposed the concept of “straight-up national unity” and “Great investigation agency”.On the other hand,basing on moral ethics,he criticized the pragmatism of political parties and initiated the “Ethicization of Politics Movement”.During the cabinet period of Takashi HARA,he put forward the idea of “Great investigative agency”,trying to attract the upper leaders,change the political system,marginalize political parties,and put the “neutral” professional bureaucrats in the center of the government.During the time of “the regular procedures of constitutional government”,he launched the “Ethicization of Politics Movement”,trying to mobilize the people from the lower classes,transform the political situation,and destroy the mass foundation of the party politics.But all these ideals were not implemented during his lifetime.Gotou held the ideal that the people would obey the emperor ’s authority and support the “autocracy of bureaucrats” under the constitutional system.This ideal required that politics conforms to both the “legal principles” and the “ethical principles”.This ideal provided a reasonable basis for him to criticize the reality of governors--political parties.In essence,his so-called “Ethicization of Politics” mainly borrowed western modern ethics to camouflage the political ethics of Japanese traditional “loyalty to patriotism”.Thereby it relativized political parties and absolutized the country(royal).According to the standard of the so-called “Ethicization of Politics”,the “neutral” professional bureaucrats possess both rationality(qualification of administration)and morality(qualification of representation).And because of that,bureaucrats are the most ideal governors.This political ideal,emphasizing the interests of all the people at the theoretical level,is in line with the spirit of constitutionalism.However,once it acts on the realistic policy,it must manifest as the exclusion of “elected forces”,the encroachment of civil rights with state power,and the tendency to the “autocracy of bureaucrats” under the premise of constitutional government.Due to the lack of a deep background of the clans and the conflict with the mainstream of party politics,Gotou’s political ideals were hard to cause widespread repercussions during the development of party politics.But shortly after his death,by the 1930 s,as the party ’s deviation from public opinion was magnified,the New bureaucrats joint with the military,launched a rejection of party politics.They inherited Gotou’s concept of “Great investigation agency” and developed it into the Cabinet Council and the Research Bureau of Cabinet.They also inherited the “Ethicization of Politics Movement” and developed it into the "Senkyo Shukusei Movement".Gotou’s political ideals promoted the construction of a "constitutional dictatorship" system from both the upper-level system reform and lower-level national construction.His political ideals served as an ideological pioneer of the Japanese fascist system to some extent.