Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/179

men's party"; another is composed of politicians of the Northeast; and another tries to maintain the old clan alliances; so in 1913 Prince Katsura assumed leadership of a new progressive party.^[1]

But it is, nevertheless, true that "Japan is at length passing out of the epoch of persons and entering the era of principles," when, of course, will speedily come the development of parties. It is not, perhaps, strange that the personality of the great statesmen who made New Japan possible has been felt for so long a time, nor that the able men of the rising generation have begun to chafe a little under the prolonged control of those older statesmen. But, as the "Japan Times" says, "the conflict between the old and the new elements of political power, the so-called clan statesmen and the party politicians, has been so far removed that the time is already in sight when the country will see them working harmoniously under the same banner and with the same platform." Such was apparently the case in the Seiyukwai, Marquis Itō's new party, organized in 1900, the closing year of the first decade of Japanese constitutionalism. And this problem of political parties is the great one to be solved in the second period of constitutional government in Japan.

We may, therefore, conclude that the working of the new system of government has, on the whole, been satisfactory. We must acknowledge, with the "Japan Mail," that "it would be altogether extrava-