Tokyo, Oct, 13.
What is regarded as proving the intention of Japanese Tabour to become a force for power and a political influence.in the development of Japanese parliamentary government is thought to underlie the elections just concluded in the Hokkaido.
These elections were for the municipal council of Hokkaido, the northern-most island of Japan, and were conducted in accordance with the universal manhood suffrage Taw.
hitherto, the elections were scon-ducted by the propertied classes, and the recent elections in the Hokkaido, when no less than 12 Labour eandidates were returned points to another change in Japan's domestic policies, a change that.was only possible because of universal manhood suffrage.
The election of eight Labour mem= bers to the Hokkaido municipality, which is a self-governing body, may be interpreted as proof of the determination of the working class to use their political rights for the safeguarding of their interests. 'That the so-called lower classes have decided to contest the seats and. to have themselves represented may lhe be talien as an indication that Japanese labour is not necessarily radical, but that it rather prefers to adhere' to parliamentarianism order to promote its welfare, The Coming Crisis, Nothing is so much talked about in Japan to-day as the forthcoming political crisis, the fall or resigns tion of the Cabinet and the resultant general election, which will be con-dueted in accordance with the universal suffrage law. The labour ing classes are preparing to organize Parliamentary Labour Party, on the lines of the British Labour Party, while the Labour-Farmer Party is also preparing to enter the contest, The Diet to-day is exclusively represented' by members who have been elected by the well-to-do: classes and the capitalists, but the indica tions are that the situation will be fundamentally changed after the next elections. Political observers here think that the Hokkaido-muncipal elections are the handwriting en the wall and declare that no surprise would be felt should a Labour Party, of respectable strength, vault' into the Lower House in the near future, Labour's Advantage What is believed to give the still nascent Labour Party a great advantage is that the existing political parties have no commendable policies et all. The recent schisms in the political parties, the constant bickerings, the lack of a platform that will suit the masses rather than the classes—those, students of polities here declare, are actually acquisitions for the Labourites. It is, there fore, quite possible that, in the face of a threat from a new Party, the present political parties which Present the classes, will for their own self-protection, forget their past differences and unite, Such of the papers as are able to take an independent stand—and they are not many, for newspaperdom and the propertied classes are synonymous in Japan—hail the pos sible advent of.a Labour Party. They believe that the corruption now rife in Japanese domestic politics would receive its quietus when. thind party, affiliated with the me terests of the people, comes into being and point to the clean manner which the Labour candidates conducted their election campaigns for the Hokkaido municipal seats as Proof that the new candidates, although unpropertied and little known, are honest and sincere.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.