Meiji Constitution

Japan’s 1889 constitution established a constitutional monarchy and vested sovereignty in the emperor. It remained in force until the postwar constitution took effect in 1947.

Emperor of Japan: Japan’s hereditary monarch, whose constitutional authority under the Meiji system was the source of state sovereignty. The constitution vested sovereignty in the emperor and assigned him supreme command and formal state powers.
Meiji Restoration: The 1868 political transformation that ended the Tokugawa shogunate and restored imperial rule in Japan. Its new government created the centralized state that later adopted the constitution.
Taishō Democracy: A period of expanded party politics and political participation in Japan, especially from the 1910s through the early 1930s. Party leaders used the constitutional system to expand parliamentary influence without displacing imperial sovereignty.
British parliamentary system: A system of government in which the executive depends on the confidence of the elected legislature. Unlike this model, Meiji ministers were not constitutionally responsible to the elected chamber.
Imperial Diet: Japan’s national legislature under the Meiji Constitution, composed of an elected House of Representatives and an appointed House of Peers. It legislated and approved budgets, but the emperor convened and dissolved it.
Freedom and People's Rights Movement: A Japanese political movement that demanded civil liberties, representative government, and a national assembly in the late nineteenth century. Its pressure helped make constitutional government a central issue in Meiji politics.
Meiji Constitution Article 11: A provision declaring that the emperor had supreme command of the army and navy. Its wording helped support claims that military command stood apart from ordinary cabinet control.
Absolute monarchy: A form of government in which a monarch exercises supreme political authority with few or no constitutional limits. The Meiji system granted the emperor extensive powers but also specified institutions and legal procedures.
Genrō: Senior Japanese statesmen who advised the emperor and influenced cabinet appointments without holding a formal constitutional office. Their extra-constitutional influence shaped governments alongside the institutions specified in the constitution.
Itō Hirobumi: A Japanese statesman who led the drafting of the Meiji Constitution and served as its first prime minister. He studied European constitutional systems and directed the constitution’s drafting.

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