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
Japan Labour-Farmer Party followers in the Japan Peasant Union and leftwing socialist intellectuals such as Asō Hisashi, Kono Mitsu, Suzuki Mosaburō, Tanahashi Kotora and Kato Kanju. Asō Hisashi became chairman of the party, whilst Miwa Jusō became its general secretary. In terms of its programme, the party differed little from the Labour-Farmer Party (which, although having non-Communists amongst the ranks, was essentially controlled by the Japanese Communist Party). In fact several members of the Japan Labour-Farmer Party were former communists themselves (such as Kondo Eizo, the founder of the Enlightened People's Communist Party). However, in practice there was a clear political demarcation between