History is still moving in the direction it is heading, but the changes in China are beyond the expectations of the Japanese.

Compared with the Chinese leaders, whether it is Zhang Zuolin of the older generation and Zhang Hanqing, who has become a rising star and has an obvious successor, and has no suspense and is young and promising, many high-ranking Japanese leaders are sighing for their masters, because it is the "Taisho" emperor who is now nominally ruling Japan in a somewhat unjust manner.

In 1868, Choshu, Satsuma, Hizen, and Tosa joined forces to defeat the Tokugawa shogunate, and held high the banner of "royal government retro", and proclaimed Emperor Meiji to usher in the Meiji Restoration. Japan became a constitutional monarchy, and the emperor became the "supreme head" confirmed by the country's constitution. So how much power does the emperor actually have? Who is the real dominant force in Japanese society?

It should be said that the same system, the same law, different emperors have different degrees of power! Power is never fully granted by law, nor is it fully guaranteed by the system, and power is the result of a fierce game of interests of all parties.

Since the seizure of power by the four feudatories, the core of political power of the "Meiji oligarchs" has gradually formed, and its representative figure is the "Meiji Nine Elders". Behind them is the dual support of the warlord forces and the chaebol forces. They enshrined the emperor as a god and then "borrowed" the emperor's name to influence the country's major policies. The will of the emperor must and can only be carried out through them.

Emperor Meiji, with his unique charisma and political power, effectively integrated his will to imperial power with the interests of the "Meiji oligarchs", thus gaining the support of all parties, consolidating imperial power, and demonstrating the emperor's market authority.

However, when Emperor Meiji died and his son, Emperor Taisho, ascended the throne, the situation changed significantly.

Emperor Taisho was arrogant and arrogant since childhood, had a violent personality, and was easily excited, and when he was unhappy, he would whip his servants to beat him. He was also a Western admirer, with Kaiser Wilhelm's horned mustache covered with petroleum jelly; He dressed like a German cavalryman, often riding a tall horse on a rampage through the palace. It can be said that this is his personal weakness, but he is the emperor, the god of Japan! Every move will affect the national character and national policy!

He has neither Meiji's personal charm, nor Meiji's political strategy, and his aging, political achievements, and prestige are far inferior to his father's. As the saying goes, people can usually tolerate when a person's talent is greater than his temper, but if his temper is greater than his talent, it often leads to a backlash. In a word, Taisho belongs to the typical weak emperor.

That's what Taisho is all about, and his tragedy is that he doesn't know it.

Before and after the Xinhai Revolution in China, Xiyuan Temple Gongwang formed a cabinet for the second time, and Taisho's sense of imperial power was so strong that all parties were obviously disgusted, and he did not have the power strategy of Taoguang and obscurity, let alone the political skills to use his strength. He feels like a super cowman, a cowman who is blessed by both God and the Constitution, to the extent that all parties will immediately and unconditionally obey an order.

At the beginning of the Taisho era, the political problem was how to reconcile the drastic increase in armaments pursued by the military with the serious financial difficulties. After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan made Korea and the southern part of northeastern China its sphere of influence, which caused the demand for armaments to swell rapidly. As soon as Taisho came to power, he began to expand the army and strengthen national defense, including increasing the number and equipment of the army (the War Department requested the expansion of two divisions) and the navy, and prepared to be able to catch up with or even surpass his father Emperor Meiji in terms of territorial expansion and military conquest. His heart is so high and his determination is so strong that he simply ignores that his power base is not enough to support his ambitions.

The patriarchs didn't buy it in the first place. Xiyuan Temple Gongwang is the obvious opposition, and behind him is the power of the big bankers and industrial capitalists.

During the Meiji Emperor's era, the emperor and the wealthy ministers jointly developed monopolies and colonizations overseas, and received a share of the dividends. Relying on the emperor's support, the zaibatsu took control of Japan's pillar industries such as the Bank of Japan, heavy industry, transportation, and trade, and in return, the zaibatsu became loyal to the emperor and adjusted their industrial and commercial plans according to the emperor's long-term national policies, becoming a veritable "political and businessman". By the end of the Meiji era, the wealth accumulated by the imperial family had increased from a mere few tens of thousands of dollars during the Meiji period to 40 million dollars.

In this layout, the Mitsui chaebol performed the best. The New York Times described Mitsui in 1922 as follows: "There has never been such an organization in Western civilization, and the Rothschilds, who are only engaged in the financial industry, are very ordinary compared to the Mitsui chaebol. Mitsui was a wealthy chaebol who controlled mines, banks, railways, shipping, factories, and trading companies. "Rich as Mitsui" means infinite wealth to the Japanese, just as Americans dream of "being as rich as Rockefeller."

The big chaebols not only control the country's economic lifeline, but also collude with the elders, bureaucrats, and warlords to manipulate the political party and control the political power. At that time, Japan's major political parties all had their own "God of Wealth" behind them. The patriarch of the Seifukai Kai, Inoue Shin, was known as the "Great Treasurer of Mitsui", and the core figures of Jotaro Yamamoto and Mori Ke had close ties with the Mitsui zaibatsu, while Shigenobu Okuma, president of the Kaizen Party, and Takaaki Kato, president of the Constitutionalism Party, had close ties with the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, who became the son-in-law of Iwasaki, the mother of the three whips. From the end of the 19th century, these people have been the most active political figures in Japan, becoming agents of the zaibatsu and serving the interests of the zaibatsu.

With the beginning of the Taisho era, the chaebols grew to the point of controlling the country's economic lifeline, and like the big bankers in Western countries, they increasingly put their own interests first and tried to rise above the emperor. They frequently interfered in the policies of the Empire. In the Daisho Imperial Program, which centered on the "improvement of national defense," and a large-scale replenishment of the armed forces, the veterans, who represented the interests of the zaibatsu led by Konozo Saionji, repeatedly rejected the emperor's carefully conceived military expansion plan on the grounds that the whole country was still cutting back on food and clothing to balance the fiscal deficit left over from the Russo-Japanese War.

Saionji Kotomi relied on his political friends to make up the majority of the Diet, and his cabinet policy was completely different from the emperor's will. He worked hard to reduce Japan's massive debt of 1.5 billion yen as a result of the Russo-Japanese War and resolutely controlled the budget, resulting in a stalemate with Emperor Taisho.

Of course, the policy of expanding armaments and warfare was in the interests of the military, so Taisho formed an alliance with the military. In December 1912, the Minister of War of the Saionji Konozo Cabinet resigned in order to force the Saionji Konozo Cabinet to make concessions, which led to the dissolution of the Saionji Konobu Cabinet.

How did the resignation of the War Secretary lead to the Cabinet's coming to power? Originally, Japanese law stipulated that in the cabinet, the Minister of Army and Navy must be active military personnel, and if one of the two sides was determined not to cooperate with the prime minister, he could refuse to send a representative to the Cabinet of Kashin, thus making the Cabinet impossible to exist.

After the fall of the Saionji Konozo cabinet, Taisho instructed the warlord magnate Katsura Taro of the army to form a cabinet. Saionji Gongwang immediately refused to hold the post of minister with the color and unity of all the civil officials, and as a result, the cabinet went bankrupt. In the end, Taisho had to use the supreme power allowed by the constitution to force Katsura Taro to the prime minister's throne.

Taisho's method was rather blunt, sending himself directly to the center of the storm, completely losing the maneuver room that the emperor should have.

Sure enough, Emperor Taisho's actions set off a storm of protests in the Diet. Ostensibly accusing Katsura of being "a guy hiding behind a dragon's sleeve," the lawmakers were actually complaining about the emperor's abuse of imperial power. Emperor Taisho was furious and directly issued an edict ordering the Diet to adjourn for three days and reflect on it. But these civil rights politicians in Gongtang County, Xiyuan Temple, were "spoiled" and still openly criticized the cabinet after the resumption of the session. In the Meiji era, such a thing could have been calmed down by just a frown and a burp from the emperor, but now the emperor himself has issued an edict and can't do it!

The enraged Taisho Emperor summoned Saionji Gongwang and ordered him to return to unify his thoughts and stop resisting the decree. The public hope of Xiyuan Temple went back to Zhaoben Xuanke to convey the holy will. The Diet discussed it for two more days, and even vetoed the emperor's proposal!

Now all of Japan is stupid! Never before in the history of Japan has the will of the emperor been so ruthlessly denied! Xiyuan Temple Gongwang couldn't hold back his face, after all, he was a member of the imperial family, and he should stand on the side of the emperor, otherwise how would the people of the world think of him who betrayed the emperor? As a result, Xiyuan Temple Gongwang resigned as the president of the Political Friendship Association. However, his insistence that the emperor was a man, not a god, and that imperial power must be controlled by the constitution did not change at all.

Katsura Taro's rise to power caused a wave of widespread protests, and the first constitutional movement broke out in Tokyo. The slogan "Down with the Lords, Preserve the Constitution" was put forward by the Constitutional Party and the Constitutional Friends Association, and the backers of this movement were industrial capitalists and bankers who sought to seize power from the warlords and bureaucrats. Buyers and sellers are first concerned about the return on investment, and no one wants to pay for the loss of money. Wouldn't the over-expansion of armaments, and the failure of military adventures, not the investors who invested huge sums of money lose all their money? No one will do a loss-making deal.

In 1913, the opposition proposed a bill to impeach the Cabinet, forcing the parliament to adjourn. Angry people surrounded the Diet, attacked police stations and police stations, and the turmoil spread to major cities such as Osaka and Kobe, and demonstrations and riots against the cabinet broke out in Tokyo, Osaka, and other places.

Emperor Taisho was immediately in an embarrassing position of extreme isolation, and with the exception of the army with the Choshu domain as the core, which had directly benefited from the expansion policy, it was still on the emperor's side, and various other forces were on the side of Saionji Kobo.

When the situation deteriorated, Emperor Taisho intervened and expressed his desire to maintain political stability, and the Katsura Taro cabinet was resigned. At this time, Emperor Taisho was exhausted, his majesty was lost, and he even threatened to abdicate under impulse, showing the fragile side of his character.

In the end, whether it was a mood or a threat to abdicate, Emperor Taisho had to make a series of arrangements and concessions in terms of national policy and personnel arrangements: revoke most of the planned expansion of the army; Temporarily abandon the plan to conquer the South Seas by force; In the event of a world war, Japan synchronized with Britain, France, and the United States, which controlled the Pacific region; The emperor's oldest adviser was replaced by an official of civilian origin; Crown Prince Hirohito left the special school for the royal children and went to a Spartan school to be educated.

In this battle, the bourgeois cooking movement defeated the conservative forces, and the history is known as the "Taisho Coup". Its impact on China is that the chaebols who hold power believe that Japan is not ready for an all-out war with China at this stage, and they are not willing to cede the power that they have won so hard to to the military---- and in the event of a full-scale war, the military power will inevitably rise sharply.

This is an opportunity for China.