The period between 1890 and 1904 might be divided into three epochs. Down to 1894, when the war with China broke out, the relation between the government and the parties in the lower house was in the main one of simple difference of political theories. With the war the nation entered, externally, into the arena of world-politics, while, in the diet, there dawned an era of varied coalitions among the parties and also between them and the government. Desire for power seemed to begin to affect the minds of the politicians whose aspirations had heretofore been comparatively more idealistic. A grand party was finally created by the combined influence of Marquis Itō, on the one hand, who apparently aimed at organizing a model constitutional party, and, on the other, of an enormous number of men the motives of some of whom were anything but a copy of those of their leader. When the whips of this new party, which controlled a majority in the diet, began to manifest unwillingness to accept the discipline and to override the wishes of its founder and leader, Marquis Itō, the politics of new Japan entered its third stage, in which the controlling factors are found to be even more personal and partisan and a matter of interests and feeling, than in the second period. As soon as the nation entered upon the war with Russia, however, the political atmosphere at once changed: the party lines and the traditional differences between the diet and the government were temporarily obliterated, and the nation--the cabinet, the two houses, and the people--seemed to think and feel as one mind. The conclusion of the treaty of peace with Russia, the terms of which displeased many Japanese, has suddenly terminated this union and alienated the cabinet and the privy council from some people, while the dividing lines between the various parties are being again drawn on changed issues. When this critical stage passes away, the political life of constitutional Japan must inevitably enter its fourth epoch, but what its nature will be remains to be seen. At this moment the future progress of the party life of the Japanese nation appears to be as difficult to forecast as it was in 1890, when the first diet was convened.