Petition for the Establishment of a Popularly Elected Assembly - Minsen Giinsetsuri Tsukenpaku

Japanese: 民撰議院設立建白 - みんせんぎいんせつりつけんぱく

A movement to establish a national parliament in the early Meiji period. On January 17, 1874, former councilors Itagaki Taisuke, Goto Shojiro, Eto Shinpei, and Soejima Taneomi, who had resigned after losing the Seikanron (Invasion of Korea) campaign, submitted a petition to the Left House for the establishment of a popularly elected parliament, with the cooperation of Komuro Nobuo, Furusawa Usuro, Yuri Kimimasa, and Okamoto Kenzaburo. According to the petition, the government was monopolized by the bureaucrats, which had led to mismanagement, but the people had no way to complain about their suffering. They called for an end to autocracy, for taxpayers to participate in legislation and administration, and for the establishment of a popularly elected parliament (national parliament). This petition was an anti-government movement within the clan-affiliated bureaucracy, and was also a so-called "upper class civil rights theory," but it stimulated the demands of the people against bureaucratic autocracy, gave birth to political associations in various places, and the argument for the establishment of a national parliament and civil rights gradually became more popular.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia About Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia Information

Japanese:

明治初期の国会開設運動。 1874年1月 17日征韓論が敗れて下野した板垣退助，後藤象二郎，江藤新平，副島種臣の前参議は，小室信夫，古沢迂郎，由利公正，岡本健三郎らの協力で民撰議院設立建白書を左院に提出した。その趣旨によると，政権は有司 (官僚) に専有され，失政を生んでいるが人民は苦しみを訴えるところがない。専制をやめ，納税者の立法，行政への参加を主張し，民撰議院 (国会) の設立を求めている。この建白は藩閥官僚内部の反政府運動の性格をもったものであり，またいわゆる「上流民権論」ではあったが，官僚専制に反対する国民の要求を刺激し，各地に政治結社を生み，国会開設論，民権論が次第に盛んになった。

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