Political parties of the Empire of Japan public assembly, the press and on political discussion. The Meiji government had come to power by an elite of "samurai" from certain clans ("hanbatsu") and the "genrō" felt threatened by anything looking ever remotely like republicanism or democracy. During this period, Itagaki Taisuke and Ōkuma Shigenobu were leading figures in the legitimization of political parties. Itagaki created Japan's first political party, the Aikoku Kōtō, in 1873 in Tokyo to petition for an elected assembly, and a similar regional party based in Osaka, the Aikokusha. These groups were the basis of the Jiyutō (Liberal Party), founded in 1881 as Japan’s first
Political parties of the Empire of Japan and the emergence of labor unions in Japan, the Nihon Shakai Shugi Domei (1920), Japan Communist Party (1922), and other left-wing parties emerged. The main threat to representative democracy in Japan proved to be the Japanese military, rather than the left-wing parties. Under the Meiji Constitution, the Minister of the Army (who served as Minister of War) and Minister of the Navy were appointed by their respective services, and not by the Prime Minister. The military was also directly answerable only to the Emperor, and not to the elected government. In 1912, a law restricting the eligibility to Minister of