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Japan's Enigmatic Election of 1928

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Thomas R. H. Havens
Affiliation:
Connecticut College

Extract

When universal manhood suffrage was promulgated, with much eclat, on 5 May 1925, its friends and its enemies both agreed that this act was a new high-water mark in the thirty-five year history of Japanese parliamentarianism. Of a national population of nearly 40 million in 1890, the first electorate had been carefully confined to 400,000 adult males who met a stiff property test. By the early 1920s inflation, population growth, and eased voting requirements had gradually spread the franchise to some 3 million persons, still a mere fraction of the populace. Then, at a stroke, the universal suffrage law of 1925 gave the vote to males aged twenty-five and older, swelling the pool of electors four-fold to more than 13 million.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

Research for this article was supported by grants from the United States Educational Commission/Japan (Fuibright Commission) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. For helpful comments on the topic, I am grateful to members of the University Seminar on Modern Japan, Columbia University, and the Fascism Seminar, Institute of Social Sciences, Waseda University.

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