The Kōyū Club ( ja, 公友倶楽部, "Friendship Club") was a political party in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

History

The party was established in the build-up to the March 1915 general elections as Okuma Kōenkai, a group of

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

graduates campaigning for Prime Minister

Ōkuma Shigenobu Marquess was a Japanese statesman and a prominent member of the Meiji oligarchy. He served as Prime Minister of the Empire of Japan in 1898 and from 1914 to 1916. Ōkuma was also an early advocate of Western science and culture in Japan, and ...

.Haruhiro Fukui (1985) ''Political parties of Asia and the Pacific'', Greenwood Press, p575 It won twelve seats, and upon entering the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

, became the Mushozoku Dan (''Independents Group''), with a further 45

National Diet The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (Japan), House of Councillors (, ...

members joining it. In November the party was renamed Kōyū Club, by which time it had 56 Diet members.Fukui, pp. 550–551 It was involved in talks regarding the formation of the

Kenseikai The was a short-lived political party in the pre-war Empire of Japan. History The ''Kenseikai'' was founded on 10 October 1916, as a merger of the ''Rikken Dōshikai'' (led by Katō Takaaki), '' Chūseikai'' (led by Ozaki Yukio) and the '' K ...

in September 1916, although only around half of the Kōyū Club joined the new party. The Kōyū Club continued to exist until December, at which point it merged with a group of independents to form the Kōseikai.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Koyu Club Defunct political parties in Japan Political parties established in 1915 1915 establishments in Japan Political parties disestablished in 1916 1916 disestablishments in Japan