Conservative and liberal antimilitarists could, for instance, point to a number of “democratic” precedents in the prewar period: the “Charter Oath” of 1868, in which the new government pledged to overthrow the “evil practices” of the feudal past; the Western-inspired ideals of “civilization and enlightenment” and “liberty and people’s rights” that had flourished in the 1870s and 1880s; the practice of parliamentary government under a constitutional monarchy initiated as early as 1890; and the emergence of greater political pluralism in the 1910s and 1920s (a promising development known as
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