ferences at the conference table Japan could possibly regain enough
goodwill of other powers to enlarge its foreign trade. No one would
have dreamed of this happening to a nation which had opened its door
to the West only two generations earlier. Baron Tomosaburo Kato
was bestowed the honor of premiership a few months after he returned
from Washington as the country's chief naval delegate to the Confer-
ence.

In 1925 party politicians also succeeded in reducing the size of the
Army. Finance Minister Yuko Hamaguchi refused an increase in the
budget for the Army to finance the modernization plan advocated by
War Minister Kazushige Ugaki. The nation had not recovered from the
shock of the great Tokyo earthquake of 1923, reasoned Hamaguchi,
and the Army should learn to live within its budget. General Ugaki ac-
cordingly slashed the Army's combat strength by four divisions in order
to make room for modernization. Disbanding ceremonies were held
throughout the country. "It was an ignominious event," General
Ugaki later related. "I wept for my comrades-in-arms."

Hamaguchi became Prime Minister in 1929 and adopted a policy
of retrenchment and return to the gold standard, thus severely curtail-
ing the export of goods. He also staked his political life on the success
of the London Naval Conference. The Navy was unwilling to sign a
treaty unless its minimum demand of a ratio of 10:10:7 in heavy cruis-
ers and auxiliary ships were met, but the Cabinet was willing to com-
promise. The treaty finally approved granted Japan a 10:10:6 ratio in
heavy cruisers and a 10:10:7 ratio in light cruisers and all other
auxiliary craft. This compromise met violent opposition from the na-
val staff which was then headed by Admiral Kanji Kato. When Lieu-
tenant Commander Kusanagi, one of the naval aides at the Conference,
committed suicide to "apologize for the sins of the Conference," sym-
pathetic young naval officers rallied behind the slogan, "Kusanagi is
dead. Blood for blood!" A few months later Premier Hamaguchi was
shot at the Tokyo station, and died the following year.

Hamaguchi's death coincided with the period when the forces of
totalitarianism became strong enough to challenge effectively the civil
authority. On September 18, 1931, the Army independently em-
barked upon the seizure of Manchuria. The Minseito government,
headed by the irresolute Wakatsuki, had neither the will nor the power
to resist the Army's new adventure. The failure of the party govern-
ment to assert its authority largely lay in its inability to cope with the
socio-economic problems that the country faced and in its incapacity
to gain popular support.

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