Most of the socialists in the Meiji era were born in the 1860s, at the dawn of a new era, and grew up along with the new regime. Thus they were devoted to and were proud of the Meiji regime. When they later began to perceive social evils, they sought to reform but not to reject the regime.
The early 1890s saw the modern beaureaucracy and higher education system prematurely established, which were followed by the rapid industrialization after the Sino-Japanese war. What resulted was a rigid social differentiation and opportunities to climb the ladders narrowed, at least this seemed so to ambitious young people. Moral sentiments declined. “Social problems” began to be conceptualized and given great weight. Many idealistic young intellectuals, inspired by democratic sentiments but prevented from climbing the ladder to success, approached “social problems” from the viewpoint of Wstern social and socialist theories which were learned mostly from American socialist literature. By introducing socialist reform they tried to dissipate the threat to the Meiji regime, particularly its constitutional aspect. They followed the German social democratic party which was the object of their deep admiration and almost the same with “International Socialism” itself to them. Nevertheless, the Japanese socialists were too deeply rooted in the native soil for them to be swallowed up by Western social and socialist theories. They interpreted and, though unconsciously, modified them, in terms of their own ways of thinking.
Moreover we must remember that each socialist had a different social and cultural background from those of others. This resulted in different interpretations and modifications of western theories. On the one hand there was a “middle class” socialism of political journalists, “middle class” members themselves, who had been immersed in the ethos of the Restoration loyalist warrior (“shishi”) and of the literati (“bunjin”), and they laid much stress on the parliamentary side of an “elite socialism”. On the other hand there was a socialism of a trade union organizer, who tried to rely on the ethos of the “independent peasant” (“tokuno”) and of the skilled craftsman (“shokunin”), working by the sweat of their brows. He sought in his reform activities to improve people's way of life, not only their standard of living but their civic spirit and organizational efforts through their own participation.
The Russo-Japanese war spelled the end of their efforts. Standing firm in their belief in international peace and justice they rejected the war aim of the Meiji government. The result was severe oppression by the government and castigation by public opinion. Faced with these difficulties, the dissension already creeping in became serious. In addition the socialists as a whole began to be isolated from the people. The plot of the “High-Treason Incident” finally put an end to the short life of the “Meiji socialists”.

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The leading motif of the Japanese socialism which was formulated during the third decade of the Meiji Era (1897-1907), and which took for its model the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (S. P. D.), was “parliamentarism”, to be exercised by the “middle class”. In other words, it was expected that socialism would be brought about by an influential political party similar to the S. P. D. In this sense, socialism required the art of “politics” to obtain a parliamentary majority.
During the next decade, however, the major theme of Japanese socialism shifted drastically from “parliamentarism” to “direct action”, because of the influence of the first Russian Revolution and also because of a growing scepticism towards the S. P. D. This shift was symbolized by Shusui Kotoku's well-known article “The Change of My Thought”. According to Kotoku, socialism could be achieved only through the “direct action” of workers.
At the same time, the political party came to be regarded as useless or harmful for the socialist movement, and thus “politics”, as an art of gaining a majority, was rejected. The “rejection of politics”, to use Hitoshi Yamakawa's term, became increasingly strong along with the disappointment which followed the S. P. D.'s decision to support Germany's participation in World War I.
It was the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 which again changed the attitude of Japanese socialists towards “politics”, and divided it into three directions. The first of these was anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism, which was represented by Sakae Osugi's rejection of Bolshevism and adherence to a “rejection of politics”. The second was state socialism, represented by Motoyuki Takabatake, who identified Bolshevism with state socialism and opposed the “rejection of politics”. The third was Marxism, represented by Yamakawa, who evaluated positively the leadership of the Communist Party in the Russian Revolution and changed his position from a “rejection of politics” to “political confrontation”. This “change of direction”, as Yamakawa called it, along with Osugi's death in 1923, meant that “direct action” or the “rejection of politics”, as the legacy of Meiji socialism, ceased to be the leading motif of Japanese socialism in the Taisho Era.

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It is generally known that a country trying to modernize itself in a short space of time is often confronted with the problem of fulfilling two divergent requirements at the same time. On the one hand it must establish a powerful state to exercise effective control over industrialization, and on the other hand it must deal with the popular demands for economic equality which are caused by the profound changes in social life. Just out of such twofold necessities, there are born varied types of national (or state) socialism, which aim in any case at the synthesis of nationalism and socialism.
One of the most early exponents of such ideas in Japan, was perhaps Kazuteru Kita, who in his first work on “National Polity and Genuine Socialism” tried to interpret the new ideals of socialism in terms of traditional values. In this article, we first examine the contents of this book, and show how Kita combined the idea of socialism with that of nationalism. He was a young socialist, but he was an ardent patriot and an admirer of the Emperor Mneiji as well. He believed in the truth of socialism, but he sought some principle which could do justice to his own romantic view of the royal traditions. He found in the doctrine of evolution the very tenet which could satisfy in somewhat mystical way both the demand for socialism and that for patriotic nationalism. In brief, he was a socialist caught in the toils of the evolutionist conception.
Takabatake was another example of a socialist who tried to demonstrate that a true socialist should be of necessity a true nationalist. Unlike Kita, he was a true disciple of Marx, and translated the voluminous “Kapital” into Japanese for the first time in this country. He studied the Marxian theory on state in detail, and found that both Marx and Engels were not right when they thought that the state would disappear or die away after the communist revolution. On the contrary, Takabatake asserted that the state would recover its own genuine function after the abolition of classes, since the existing state is only an instrument in the hand of the capitalist class to exploit the suppressed people, and was thus not a genuine state.
He tried to formulate his own theory of state on the premise that the masses were seeking instinctively both for a powerful government and for socialistic equality, especially in the era after the World War I. He knew more profoundly than any one that the socialization of the state and the nationalization of socialism were inevitable in the middle of 20th century.

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After the Sino-Japanese war, the schism between nationalism and democracy deepened and split into two different directions. The former expanded into Empire-ism, the latter was absorbed into socialism which grew from the beginning of this century. After the Russo-Japanese war, especially, social contradictions became evident, and antagonisms and so-called “social problems” emerged. Under these circumstances, reintegration policies were sought by many leaders. In this period, the main and common concern of political opinion leaders was to build a “strong and rich state” which was not only militarily powerful but strong industrially and commercially. To achieve these ends, they urged the suppression of socialism and the labor movement, and pushed for policies strengthening “constitutionalism (esp. policial parties)”, “social reform (esp. factory legislation)” and “new education”.
To expand markets abroad and enhance international prestige, certain domestic reforms were inevitable. Symbolically speaking, “Empire can exist neither in name nor in reality, if it keeps slums in it”. This was their belief.
And thus gradually “great nation” building and “Empire” formation became their main concern.
Based on certain domestic reforms, arousing the people's loyality to the Tenno-state, they prepared for expansion of Japan's influence abroad, economically. They named their policy “ethical-” and “constitutional-” or “economic-” and “peaceful-” Empire-ism.
Thus the Meiji absolute monarchy was transformed into “Empire-Japan” from the end of the Meiji Era to the beginning of the Taisho Era. Empire-ist Okuma's cabinet and its intervention policy in China symbolized this process.
In this article, I will discuss, at first, “the premature imperialistic practice” and ideology of Meiji state, and then analyse the ideology of “economic-” and “constitutional-” Empire-ism, and then, trace the characteristics of, “the theory of social policy school” and its relation to Empire-ism. Finally I will trace the real process of post-Russo-Japanese war policy, and point out that the ideology of “Empire-ism” became dominant gradually and grew from a ideology to the controlling policy abroad and at home, and at the same time, I will show that this process of reintegration was primarilly against the growth of socialism.

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