Brinkley.

It must not be supposed for a moment that the Progressists were
conservative. There was no such thing as real conservatism in Japan
at that time. The whole nation exhaled the breath of progress.
Okuma's secession was followed quickly by an edict promising the
convention of a national assembly in ten years. Confronted by this
engagement, the political parties might have been expected to lay
down their arms. But a great majority of them aimed at ousting the
clan-statesmen rather than at setting up a national assembly. Thus,
having obtained a promise of a parliament, they applied themselves to
exciting anti-official sentiments in the future electorates; and as
the Government made no attempt to controvert the prejudices thus
excited, it was evident that when the promised parliament came into
existence, it would become an arena for vehement attacks upon the
Cabinet.

Of course, as might have been expected, the ten years of agitated
waiting, between 1881 and 1891, were often disfigured by recourse to
violence. Plots to assassinate ministers; attempts to employ
dynamite; schemes to bring about an insurrection in Korea--such
things were not infrequent. There were also repeated dispersions of
political meetings by order of police inspectors, as well as
suspensions or suppressions of newspapers by the fiat of the Home
minister. Ultimately it became necessary to enact a law empowering
the police to banish persons of doubtful character from Tokyo without
legal trial, and even to arrest and detain such persons on suspicion.
In 1887, the Progressist leader, Okuma, rejoined the Cabinet for a
time as minister of Foreign Affairs, but after a few months of office
his leg was shattered by a bomb and he retired into private life and
founded the Waseda University in Tokyo.

It may indeed be asserted that during the decade immediately prior to
the opening of the national assembly, "an anti-Government propaganda
was incessantly preached from the platform and in the press." The
Tokyo statesmen, however, were not at all discouraged. They proceeded
with their reforms unflinchingly. In 1885, the ministry was recast,
Ito Hirobumi--the same Prince Ito who afterwards fell in Manchuria
under the pistol of an assassin--being appointed premier and the
departments of State being reorganized on European lines. Then a
nobility was created, with five orders, prince, marquis, count,
viscount, and baron. The civil and penal laws were codified