Eight Signatories Petition for an Elected Assembly

After leaving government in the 1873 Korea-policy dispute, Itagaki Taisuke, Gotō Shōjirō, Soejima Taneomi and Etō Shinpei joined Furusawa Shigeru in establishing the Aikoku Kōtō. On January 17, 1874, they and three further signatories—Yuri Kimimasa, Okamoto Kenzaburō and Komuro Nobuo—submitted a petition to the Left Chamber.

The petition criticized the concentration of power in officials, arguing that it belonged neither to the imperial house nor to the people. Its proposed remedy was an elected assembly. People obliged to pay taxes, it maintained, also had a right to examine and approve government affairs. Against the objection that the population lacked sufficient education, it argued that participation itself would encourage learning and public responsibility.

John Reddie Black’s Nisshin Shinjishi printed the petition on January 18, taking the demand beyond the government office that received it. The Aikoku Kōtō disappeared within months, and the petition created neither an assembly nor an electoral law. It nevertheless supplied a public argument around which the subsequent movement for representative government could organize.