When Terauchi Masatake of the military was appointed prime minister in the spirit of wartime national unity, it was as if the country had returned to the days before the first Movement to Protect Constitutional Government. But as Terauchi’s cabinet was denounced as “unconstitutional,” he established the Foreign Relations Advisory Council to shore up the government’s political legitimacy. The council allowed party leaders to be directly involved in foreign policy decision-making for the first time. Terauchi’s government lasted until spiraling rice prices sparked the Rice Riots of 1918, mass riots that took place across Japan, and he was replaced by Hara Takashi of the Seiyūkai, the country’s first prime minister of the House of Representatives.
Hara formed what was seen as Japan’s first full “party cabinet,” composed primarily of elected lawmakers from the prime minister’s party, appropriate for a postwar era that seemed to promise new hope for democracy. Saionji Kinmochi and former Foreign Minister thailand email list Makino Nobuaki led the Japanese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Although their proposal to include a racial equality clause in the Covenant of the League of Nations was unsuccessful, Japan joined the new international body and took a permanent seat on its council.
The postwar pacifist mood manifested itself in several ways in Japan. In January 1920, Emperor Taishō issued an "imperial ordinance on the restoration of peace," exhorting citizens to take advantage of the peace and advance in accordance with the progress of the times. Then, from November 1921 to February 1922, Japan, the United States, and Britain reached an agreement on reducing naval strength at the Washington Naval Conference, helping to maintain harmony among the three powers. Supporting party politics and this period of international cooperation were cultured members of the imperial court with the global mindset sought by Hara. Crown Prince Hirohito visited Europe and its battlefields from March to September 1921, and would be advised by Saionji and Makino until the mid-1930s. Hirohito became emperor upon his father's death in 1926, marking the end of the Taishō era; The emperor's new reign was called Shōwa.)
which under Katō Takaaki advocated alternation of power between the ruling and opposition parties and described World War I as "a victory for justice, freedom, and humanitarianism." The party cabinets formed by Hara and his successor Takahashi Korekiyo were followed by a series of cabinets formed by bureaucrats, but the people's aspirations for the norms of constitutional government did not diminish. In January 1924, the appointment of Kiyoura Keigo and the formation of the third consecutive cabinet dominated by members of the House of Peers, the upper house of the Diet, triggered the second Movement to Protect Constitutional Government.