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Show 182 accepted matter-of-factly on the grounds that it was a means of correcting social ills. For example, in 1935 a Japanese government study of "The Causes of Violent Crimes" concluded that defects in the parliamentary system were a basic cause of the rise of the violent right-wing and left-wing movements in Japan at that time. By the same token, the study declared, a safety valve would be found in a smoothly operating parliamentary system which reflected the political con- sciousness of the peeple. Such findings are in line with Max Lernervs assertion that the incidence of assassination could be considered "an index of the gap between the driving political impulses of men and the limits of their attainment set by existing political forms.ul7 In a similar vein, one Japanese official, Inuki Tsuyoshi, has said that "The act of assassination occurs when the people get into a melancholy mood. When the dark shadow falls across a political situation, assassination comes with regularity. If we create a period when dis- honest acts of officials are done away with, and politics are discussed by means of true words, assassinations will disappear."18 l7Max Lerner,uAssassination,n EncyclOpedia of the Social Sciences. Kn0pf, 18Nobutaka Ike, Japanese Politics (New York: 1957), p. 253. A. A. |
