Following the rigged election of 1917, the liberal opposition were in no position to dictate terms. But Hara Takashi’s huge conservative Seiyukai majority exercised its own form of restraint. Hara was unshakeable in his conviction that ‘the future of Japan depends on the close relationship with the US’.13 And his position was all the stronger for the fact that it was shared by the liberal elder statesman Prince Saionji and Baron Makino.
