Taishō Japan, 1912–1926

The Taishō era began after the death of Emperor Meiji in July 1912 and ended with Emperor Taishō’s death in December 1926. Japan remained an empire governed under the Meiji Constitution, but party cabinets, the Diet, mass newspapers and organised political movements gained greater visibility than they had possessed in the preceding period.

Industrial expansion, urban consumer culture, education and new professional classes altered social life while the peerage, court households and former samurai elites retained influence. Japan’s participation in the First World War strengthened its economy and overseas position, although post-war inflation, labour conflict and the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake exposed severe social tensions.

Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow opens in 1912 and uses a conflict between an old court family and a wealthy newly ennobled household to dramatise this transition. Its proposed imperial marriage, Westernised manners and doomed private affair make Taishō society essential to the novel rather than merely decorative background.