5. Japan under Showa was officially a constitutional monarchy
Although Hirohito reigned as an emperor and demigod, the Japanese government was one of a constitutional monarchy, with the emperor as head of state. The government itself was run by a prime minister. Though universal suffrage was granted to men (above the age of 25) during the Showa period, in practice the power in Japan was in the hands of the nobility and the wealthiest families of the zaibatsu. During the early Showa period, labor groups and others arguing for social and political reforms were quashed by corrupt governments of both the left and right, fed by the financial rewards offered by the true ruling class. By the late 1920s the Japanese parliament, called the Diet, was controlled by supporters of the Japanese military.
By the early 1930s, the government was in the control of moderates and other political organizations which supported views which denied the traditional concept of the emperor’s godlike status, and other myths which the military supported. In Japan’s centers of higher learning, liberals and social critics questioned the view and the traditional religious significance of the emperor. The military and the industrialists who supported them moved to get rid of the rising tide of liberalism before it permeated Japanese society. One of the means of doing so was through the expansion of Japanese presence in China, and the creation in the minds of the people of the fear of Soviet hostility towards Japan.