The was a

national assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

in early

Meiji Meiji, the romanization of the Japanese characters 明治, may refer to: Japanese history * Emperor Meiji, Emperor of Japan between 1867 and 1912 ** Meiji era, the name given to that period in Japanese history *** Meiji Restoration, the revolution ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, established after the

Osaka Conference of 1875 The was a meeting held by the major leaders of the Meiji Restoration in Osaka, Japan from January to February 1875 to address the issue of forming a representative assembly. The leaders present included Okubo Toshimichi, Kido Takayoshi, Itagaki ...

. It is also referred to as the Senate of Japan, being the word used to describe the

Roman Senate The Roman Senate () was the highest and constituting assembly of ancient Rome and its aristocracy. With different powers throughout its existence it lasted from the first days of the city of Rome (traditionally founded in 753 BC) as the Sena ...

, and other western legislatures named after it. The

Freedom and People's Rights Movement The Freedom and People's Rights Movement (自由民権運動, ''Jiyū Minken Undō'') was a Japanese political and social movement for democracy during the Meiji era, Meiji period. It pursued the formation of an elected legislature, revision of the ...

and liberals among the

Meiji oligarchy The Meiji oligarchy was the new ruling class of Meiji period Japan. In Japanese, the Meiji oligarchy is called the . The members of this class were adherents of '' kokugaku'' and believed they were the creators of a new order as grand as that e ...

had withdrawn from the

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...

over their efforts to establish a national assembly with increased

representative democracy Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy or electoral democracy, is a type of democracy where elected delegates represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies func ...

. The Osaka Conference of 1875 attempted to address this issue by the establishment of the , a national assembly whose members (theoretically appointed directly by the Emperor) were drawn from the

peerage A peerage is a legal system historically comprising various hereditary titles (and sometimes Life peer, non-hereditary titles) in a number of countries, and composed of assorted Imperial, royal and noble ranks, noble ranks. Peerages include: A ...

, upper ranks of the bureaucracy and various scholars. The was only quasi-legislative, in that it had the power to review proposed

legislation Legislation is the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred ...

and make recommendations, but did not have the power to actually initiate any legislation. As an assembly, it replaced the . In 1876, the was given the task of drafting a

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

for Japan, which it completed in 1880, only to have the draft rejected by

Itō Hirobumi Kazoku, Prince , born , was a Japanese statesman who served as the first prime minister of Japan from 1885 to 1888, and later from 1892 to 1896, in 1898, and from 1900 to 1901. He was a leading member of the ''genrō'', a group of senior state ...

and

Iwakura Tomomi was a Japanese statesman during the Bakumatsu and Meiji period. He was one of the leading figures of the Meiji Restoration, which saw Japan's transition from feudalism to modernism. Born to a noble family, he was adopted by the influential Iw ...

as being too liberal. The was replaced by the Imperial Diet in 1890. The should not be confused with the , or elder statesmen. Most of the were members of the , but not all members of the were .

Chairman of the Genrōin

References

* Banno, Junji. ''The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional Sys''tem. Routledge (1992). * Brunton, Richard. ''Building Japan 1868-1876''. RoutledgeCurzon (1995). * Buruma, Ian. ''Inventing Japan: 1853-1964''. Modern Library; Reprint edition (2004) * Sims, Richard. ''Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868-''2000. Palgrave Macmillan. {{DEFAULTSORT:Genroin Defunct upper houses Government of the Empire of Japan Japanese parliaments Japanese words and phrases