Constitutional Democratic Party (Japan)

Rikken Minseitō (Constitutional Democratic Party) (立憲民政党, Rikken Minseitō) was one of the main political parties in pre-war Japan. It was also known as simply the ‘Minseitō’.

The Minseitō was founded on July 1929,by Prime Minister Hamagushi. The major event leading up to the construction of a more conservative party in Japan (in relation of the Seiyukai Party) was the New York stock market crash of 1929. The two major policies implimented at this time was to revive the stagnant economy. First, the domestic prices would be forced down and exports encouraged by tightening the money supply and cuttying government spending( i.e., retrenchment). Second international Trade and investment would be stablized by returning to a fixed exchange rate. Information found in, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Persent by Andrew Gordon. Anything following these sentences have no source.

In the 1928 election, the Minseitō won 216 of the 464 seats in the lower house of Diet of Japan, thus becoming the a single most important party. Hamaguchi became Prime Minister of Japan in 1929, and in the 1930 election, the party expanded its lead to 273 seats, thus obtaining an absolute majority. During its tenure, it advocated fiscal restraint, a conciliatory foreign policy, and ratified the London Naval Agreement of 1930. Hamaguchi fell victim to an assassination attempt on 14 November 1930 when he was shot in Tokyo Station by Tomeo Sagoya, a member of the Aikoku-sha ultranationalist secret society. The wounds kept Hamaguchi hospitalized for several months, but he struggled through physical weakness to win the February 1931 election. He returned to his post in March 1931 but resigned a month later (and died in August 1931) to be replaced by Wakatsuki Reijirō. After Hamaguchi was assassinated, second party president Kijūrō Shidehara was unable to maintain the party momentum.

Hamaguchi's successor, Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō was unable to control the military or to prevent the Manchurian Incident, and his government collapsed in 1931.

The Minseitō lost its majority in Diet in the 1932 elections. It was able to recover its majority in the 1936 and 1937 elections only by adopting a more pro-military stance.

On 15 August 1940 the Minseitō voted to dissolve itself into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association as part of Fumimaro Konoe's efforts to create a single-party state, and thereafter ceased to exist.