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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Polity Histories
- Sprache: Englisch
Japan, anchored by its traditions, transformed by American post-war Occupation, and globally recognized for its technological innovations, manufacturing prowess, and pop culture, faces powerful challenges from within and without. How Japan chooses to handle these problems and opportunities will determine its future for decades to come. In this book, Jeff Kingston - one of the most lucid analysts of Japan today - takes readers on a fascinating journey through this country's contemporary history, exploring the key developments and forces, both at home and abroad, that are shaping Japan in the twenty-first century. Whether Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's transformative agenda of "Abenomics" and "proactive pacifism" toward a rising China and a belligerent North Korea can set Japan on the path to greater prosperity and security remains to be seen. But having won a third term as president of the Liberal Democratic Party in 2018, Japan's ongoing transformation is very much in Abe's hands.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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CONTENTS
Cover
Front Matter
Dedication
Map
1 Bouncing Back?
Notes
2 Japan, Inc.
Planned Economy
Trade Frictions
Environmental Nightmare
The Bad Sleep Well
Recruiting Politicians
Sagawa Kyubin Saga
Corporate Governance
Cronyism
Notes
3 American Alliance
Unequals
Remaking Japan
San Francisco System
Disputed Territories
Yoshida Doctrine
Korean Relations
Reconciliation Postponed
Third Rail
Abe Doctrine
Notes
4 Lost Decades and Disasters
Crash and Consequences
1995: A Year of Reckoning
Japanization
Taking Stock
Good Governance
Immigration
Precaritization and Inequality
Natural Disaster: The 2011 Tsunami
Nuclear Disaster
Nuclear Renaissance?
Game Changer?
Notes
5 Dissent
The Nobility of Failure
Anpo 1960
Beiheiren
Student Movement
Narita International Airport
Anti-Nuclear Movement
Managing Dissent
SEALDs (Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy)
Notes
6 Abe’s Japan
Abenigma
Abenomics
Immigration
Diplomacy
US Alliance
Abe Doctrine
Executive Powers
Constitutional Revision
Press Freedom
History
UNESCO Follies
Abe Statement 2015
Abdication and Succession
Wither Japan?
Notes
Further Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Japan
Jeff Kingston
Polity
Copyright © Jeff Kingston 2019
The right of Jeff Kingston to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2548-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kingston, Jeff, 1957- author.Title: Japan / Jeff Kingston.Description: Cambridge ; Medford, Mass. : Polity Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2018011379 (print) | LCCN 2018022995 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509525485 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509525447 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509525454 (paperback)Subjects: LCSH: Japan--Politics and government--1989- | Japan--Social conditions--1989- | Japan--Economic conditions--1989- | Japan--Foreign relations.Classification: LCC DS891 (ebook) | LCC DS891 .K5385 2018 (print) | DDC 952.05--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011379
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust
To Machiko, Goro and Zoe … heartfelt thanks to my wonderful and patient gardeners.
The Japanese Archipelago
1Bouncing Back?
Japan enjoys an enviable reputation in the world, and most nations would love to have its problems, or at least what they know about them. A visiting MP from the United Kingdom, dazzled by the bustling prosperity and bright lights of twenty-first-century Tokyo, famously proclaimed, “If this is a recession, I want one.” There is no gainsaying that Japan is a remarkable success story and has suffered far less social upheaval and glaring disparities than other advanced industrialized nations. In the global imagination, Japan is incredibly cool, mostly because of its pop culture of games, anime, manga, fashion, and cos play, in addition to washoku (Japanese food), cutting-edge technologies, vibrant traditions, and “lost in translation” off-beat wackiness. There is little violent crime, people are usually considerate and polite, streets are clean, and things seem well organized. In what other country would a rail company apologize for a train departing 20 seconds early?
This positive montage of images is accurate as far as it goes but is somewhat misleading and tidies away lots of other aspects of a society going through some major upheavals. Had the British MP travelled to Japan’s provincial towns, his bubbly optimism would have confronted the depressing sight of shattagai, downtown shopping arcades where the shutters are permanently down on storefronts because of bleak economic conditions. There is a sense of crisis among many Japanese about their own futures and that of their nation. According to polls, Japanese are pessimistic and not especially happy compared to other nations. There are many reasons why, and one may be that how Japanese respond to a question may differ from how people in other nations respond. People are conditioned by their cultures and in some societies it may be more natural or acceptable to admit happiness or feel obliged to seem content. Japanese society is a pressure cooker, where people are driven by norms, expectations, and rules of conduct that are inculcated from a young age and reinforced in schools, the local community, and the workplace. Much is implicit, requiring people to read the situation and left wondering if they have done so correctly. None of this is unique to Japan, but with the exception of South Korea, I know of no other society that is quite so relentlessly intense or actively reinforces self-doubt to such a degree. It’s not that people are not joyful or lacking in exuberance, but lots of this fades over the years as parents, teachers, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and bosses give meaning to the common expression: the nail that sticks out gets hammered. The hammering can be incessant and often self-administered as people work to fit in and not attract attention. This helps explain why there is often severe culture shock for returnees, those who have come back to Japan after living overseas. There are even special programs to ease the strains of re-entry for them.
The education system requires intensive swatting that places a premium on rote memorization to pass exams that very early on play a very influential role in deciding one’s future. The fierce competition to get into the best junior high schools, high schools, and universities takes a toll on youth, justified by the common belief that such mind-numbing memorization and dedication will pay off in terms of the most desirable job offers. Self-sacrifice for the common good is a much-lauded virtue, one that helps employers pressure workers into working overtime for free (sabisuzangyo) and working excessive hours at the expense of their private life and health, sometimes to the point of death from overwork (karoshi). Over the past 30 years of living here, I sense these pressures are receding somewhat and there is more tolerance for diversity, respect for private lives and individual aspirations, but it is easy to come up with counterexamples. Strictly enforcing hair color rules in schools? Really? One Osaka high school student sued the prefectural government in 2017 because her school demanded that she dye her naturally brown hair black if she wanted to attend classes. Others have been excluded from yearbooks if they colored their hair. Advocates of such strict regulations that can cover skirt length, perming hair, and makeup argue that these rules help students avoid “getting lost” and prepare them for work and the need to abide by social norms.
Perhaps, in addition to such specific causes of unhappiness, there is a collective inclination to melancholy arising from mono no aware – an appreciation of the transitory nature of our world. This aesthetic is celebrated every spring with cherry blossom-viewing parties featuring various degrees of boisterous inebriation, poetic musings, and an ineffable foreboding because everyone knows that soon the blossoms will scatter in the wind. This is not to buy into the argument that Japan has a unique national character or that culture is destiny, but rather to suggest that such factors are relevant to better comprehend how Japanese see themselves and how some of them seek to explain Japan to others.
In my experience, people here are not generally prone to a “let the good times roll” mentality because this is a society that has experienced more than its share of devastating adversity – natural and manmade disasters – so when things are going well it’s time to imagine it won’t last. It is a land rich in expressions that convey resilience precisely because there has long been a need to have such a spirit. In the weeks after the March 11, 2011 monster tsunami that pulverized villages along the northeast coast of Tohoku, a relatively poor region known for a hardscrabble life, I often heard the expressions gaman zuyoi (stoic perseverance) and nana korobi yaoki (knocked down seven times get up eight times).1 Such expressions were invoked so much that it began to annoy my relatives in the region who complained that it was just a way for the government to justify reducing relief and recovery assistance and leave them to their own devices. Possibly so, but I suspect that there is also local pride in what these expressions evoke: “we are tough and will bounce back.”
There is a temptation for non-Japanese to invoke concepts that make sense to them to make sense of what is going on in Japan. For example, there is a rich literature that analyzes Japan in terms of modernization, using Western examples as benchmarks to evaluate what they observe. Certainly, Japan has been influenced and inspired by Western practices and institutions, especially since the intensification of globalization that has ensued from the heyday of imperialism in the late nineteenth century. And some Japanese also have tried to make sense of their nation’s tremendous socioeconomic transformation from Tokugawa era (1602–1858) feudalism, in terms of Marxist and modernization theories. Useful no doubt, but in this short book, I aim to zoom in on the key forces, developments, and events that have characterized Japan’s post-WWII trajectory. Rather than getting too caught up with modernization, the inevitable tensions with tradition and the predictable paradoxes to which this gives rise, we will focus on some of the major themes and contested issues of the past 70 years to show how they have shaped Japan and its place in the world today.
The ongoing transformation of Japan is the third in the modern era following the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the US Occupation of 1945–52. Those reinventions of Japan were top-down and were both swift and sweeping, accomplished by decree, and unimpeded by significant opposition.2 The US imposed liberal norms, democratic values, and civil rights that limited state power, while trying to empower women.3 This prompted Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru4 to quip, “Demokurushi” (making a wordplay on the Japanese pronunciation of democracy) meaning, “But it is painful.” As we will see, the contemporary overhaul is fitful, incremental, and contested in a nation where egalitarian, pacifist, and democratic values have become deeply entrenched following defeat in the Pacific War (1931–45). The most sweeping changes are evident in current Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s national security policy. The Abe Doctrine involves easing and bypassing constitutional constraints on Japan’s armed forces and overturning the nation’s embrace of postwar pacifism despite widespread public opposition. Article 9 of the constitution that renounces war and maintaining armed forces has become a talismanic touchstone of national identity. But to some conservatives, it is a humiliating reminder of defeat and subordination. What was inconceivable 20 years ago has happened rather quickly since 2013, although those on the hawkish end of the spectrum feel it is overdue, urgently essential, and just the beginning.
At the dawn of 2018, the Japanese media was abuzz about Abe’s plans to: (1) revise the pacifist constitution; (2) retrofit two large flattop vessels currently used for helicopters into aircraft carriers for deployment of stealth fighters; (3) expand purchases of stealth fighters, cruise missiles, and antiballistic missile systems; and (4) enhance contingency planning for conflict in the Korean peninsula in the National Security Council, a body that didn’t even exist before 2013. The aircraft carriers, and cruise missile armed aircraft, would give Japan offensive military capabilities that the nation has sworn off for the past seven decades due to constitutional curbs.
This momentous shift on security under Abe is driven by China’s regional hegemonic ambitions and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Advocates argue that enhancing the nation’s military capabilities is prudent given the evolving threat environment, while critics charge that this pivotal U-turn is unconstitutional, recklessly sacrificing non-militarist values that have served Japan well since WWII and transforming Japan into a full-blown military ally of the US with all the dangers that entails. Advocates counter that the US–Japan alliance has been lopsided, with the US committing to the defense of Japan without any reciprocal obligation. In light of President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, the Abe camp asserts that Japan risks weakening the alliance if it doesn’t reciprocate, precisely at a time when the US security umbrella has become even more essential.
Battles over the US alliance and Japan’s security policy have persisted since the late 1950s. This political fault line extends to ongoing battles over wartime history, with liberals condemning the devastation inflicted on Asia and Japan, and supporting a forthright reckoning that conservatives oppose. Japan’s rampage in Asia looms large over contemporary debates about the wisdom of abandoning the pacifist principles favored by liberals. Revisionists like Abe counter that this focus on Japanese depredations is masochistic, and they seek to restore pride in the nation by rehabilitating the wartime past. These cultural wars about national identity regarding history, security, and constitutional revision have intensified under Abe, whose economic policies are far less contentious.
The Japanese economy has been in the doldrums since the early 1990s, due to a combination of the asset bubble implosion, inconsistent macroeconomic policymaking, an aging society, and low productivity in the service sector. Social and economic problems festered, deepening the economic hole Japan needs to climb out of. Zigzagging on fiscal stimulus and austerity sharpened and prolonged the downturn, a legacy that is targeted by the bold policies of Abenomics – massive monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms. The jury is still out on Abenomics despite a soaring stock index and low unemployment because it is not clear whether it is overcoming deflation, improving household welfare, boosting productivity, or propelling sustainable growth. This is urgent business as Japan’s demographic challenge of an aging and shrinking population confronts the government, firms, and households with grim prospects. Reviving Japan’s economic dynamism is thus essential to address these interrelated problems.
Japan’s enormous challenges – economic, demographic, security, and globalization – are driving the “third transformation,” a work in progress involving a series of reforms that considered on their own seem of little consequence, but taken together represent an ambitious undertaking to reinvent Japan.5 Since the early 1990s Japan has been in a prolonged period of transition in which subtle changes co-exist with prominent continuities. Reform has not been a linear process, onward and upward, relying more on pragmatic compromises and fine-tuning than shock therapy and sweeping measures. Yet, Japan in 2018 is very different from the way it was in 1988 during the frothy bubble era; over these fleeting three decades of my residence in Tokyo, many of Japan’s seemingly ineradicable verities, assumptions, and practices have been reconsidered, revamped and, in some cases, cast aside.
There is an ebbing confidence about future prospects and a degree of fatalism about the nation’s galloping demographic decline. The greying of Japan, and its shrinking population, constitute the nation’s biggest and most intractable set of challenges. The fact that adult diapers have been outselling baby diapers since 2012 vividly conveys the dynamics. As of 2018, 27 percent of the population is over 65 years of age, and this ratio will nearly double by 2050, posing serious fiscal challenges in terms of spiraling budgets for national pensions, medical insurance, and elderly care. Dire population projections suggest that by 2050 the overall population could possibly shrink to 100 million from 127 million in 2000. How will so many fewer workers support the pensions and health care of so many more retirees? The ramifications of a shrinking domestic market for Japanese businesses are also alarming.
The stark implications of this demographic time bomb are covered extensively in the media, heightening the malaise that has gripped Japan since the stock and land asset bubble popped in the early 1990s. The subsequent implosion in values wiped out trillions of yen and cut a swathe of destruction through corporate Japan, leaving millions of households saddled with negative equity, precipitating the “lost decades.” While the economic pain is undeniable, there have been many positive “losses” as well. In the aftermath, the Japan, Inc. system of close and cooperative relations between business and government, and the presiding elite lost considerable credibility and the public began to lose faith. The flailing response to the massive economic problems discredited the ways and means of a system that no longer seemed to have the answers for Japan’s emerging problems. People demanded more transparency and accountability in government affairs, and by 1999 every major municipality, and the national government, had passed information disclosure legislation that enabled the media and people to better monitor what the government was doing. As scandals emerged about embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, taxpayers were outraged that cosseted bureaucrats were enjoying the highlife on the public purse. It also became clear that politicians and officials were routinely complicit in the rigging of public works contracts (dango) by construction firms in exchange for lucrative rake-offs. The waxing loss of faith in government also propelled a flowering of civil society, especially after the 1995 Kobe earthquake due to the government’s incompetent disaster response.6
Previous reverence for public officials evaporated on the strength of so many damning revelations. It dawned on people just how risky it is to leave things up to a governing elite enjoying a cocoon of power and privilege, shielded from scrutiny. What had been business as usual under Japan, Inc. no longer met public expectations, thus raising the bar for good governance. Certainly, shady practices persist in twenty-first-century Japan, but new norms are being established, contested and mainstreamed in ways that are part of the quiet transformation. Gradually, the governing elite is being nudged and dragged into heeding these new norms and expectations even as it tries to evade them. The role of civil society provides another barometer of change. Non-profit organizations (NPOs), non-government organizations (NGOs), and volunteerism were an afterthought in responding to the Kobe disaster, but now are fully integrated into disaster emergency response preparations, and played an essential role in the March 2011 tsunami relief and recovery efforts.7
But while much remains to be done, the magnitude of what has already been achieved provides the most accurate barometer of Japan’s ongoing third transformation. Japanese people, organizations and policymakers are responding to various challenges in diverse ways, though vested interests continue to protect their turf and fend off reforms. Japan. Inc. remains resilient, finding inspiration in adversity while advocating neoliberal reforms to awaken the animal spirits of capitalism by paring back regulations and taxes on business, reducing civil liberties, welfare and workers’ legal protections, and making people more self-reliant (jiko sekinen). This amplifies risk in a society that is risk averse and promotes greater reliance on families rather than the state in times of need. The Japanese are divided and ambivalent about the ongoing renovation and unsure how to proceed, disappointed in the Establishment, but without viable alternatives. In the chapters that follow I paint a necessarily brief account of Japan’s improbable rollercoaster journey from the devastation of 1945 through to the ongoing third transformation under Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. In doing so, I hope to give readers a stronger sense of Japan’s rich postwar history and an appreciation of the pluck of a people and nation looking to bounce back – nana korobi yaoki – and become a more influential force in global affairs. While the mainstream consensus forecasts a genteel decline, technological innovation and medical breakthroughs offer glimmers of hope. Moreover, Japan, Inc. is not constrained by national borders and in expanding its footprint abroad and growing overseas, it may reinvigorate the nation and prove the doomsayers wrong. After all, in the mid-nineteenth century and again in 1945, Japan overcame bleak prospects and exceeded even the wildest expectations, so it may be too soon to start humming the nation’s requiem.
Notes
1.
Richard Lloyd-Parry,
Ghosts of the Tsunami
(New York: MCD Books, 2017); David McNeill and Lucy Birmingham,
Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
2.
Andrew Gordon,
A Modern History of Japan
, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); John Dower,
Embracing Defeat
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1999).
3.
Beate Sirota Gordon,
Only Woman in the Room
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997).
4.
I use Japanese name order: family name + given name.
5.
Jeff Kingston,
Japan’s Quiet Transformation
(New York: Routledge, 2004).
6.
Mark Mullins and Koichi Nakano (eds.),
Disasters and Social Crisis in Contemporary Japan
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
7.
Jeff Kingston (ed.),
Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan
(New York: Routledge, 2012).
2Japan, Inc.
In many respects Japan is a stunning success story, recovering speedily from wartime destruction and wowing the world with an economic miracle of double-digit annual GDP growth from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. While other industrialized national economies stagnated in the 1970s and experienced the social pathologies associated with high unemployment and growing income inequalities, Japan seemingly leapt from one milestone to another. It was an onward and upward story that far exceeded what anyone could have imagined gazing across the rubble of Tokyo in 1945.
Japan now boasts the third largest economy in the world, some of the world’s most recognizable brands, and cutting-edge high-tech firms that play an essential role in global supply chains. It is a prosperous nation that enjoys a high degree of social cohesion, equality, safety, and a good national health insurance system. Tokyo has the world’s best public transport system, some stunning architecture (surrounded by a miasma of functional buildings) and is a mecca for food, fashion, and art. Japan’s cool vibe blends natural beauty, resilient traditions, high-tech, and pop culture, but how did it get here?
Planned Economy
Policies adopted by the US Occupation played a key role in jumpstarting Japan’s economic resurgence. American policymakers resuscitated the 1940 dirigiste system that helped wartime Japan squeeze the maximum output out of limited resources.1 This system gave wartime bureaucrats extraordinary discretionary power to guide and control a command economy ranging from allocation of resources to production and distribution, in a nation squeezed by sanctions and blockades. It helped sustain Japan’s war effort against steep odds and subsequently proved indispensable to the US during the occupation years. After 1947, the Cold War shifted the American priorities from punitive policies to transforming Japan into a showcase of the superiority of capitalism over communism, and a military outpost to contain the Soviet Union.2
The 1940 system had its roots in the development model embraced by Japan in the late nineteenth century that telescoped its industrial revolution into a few decades. Rather than an Adam Smith free market, laissez-faire approach, Japan’s Meiji oligarchs drew inspiration from the neo-mercantilist policies favored by Friedrich List, which relied on a strong state role in promoting development. Lagging far behind the Western imperial nations that had imposed unequal commercial treaties on Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, Meiji leaders understood the disadvantages of a free market approach. They promoted fukoku kyohei(rich nation, strong military) and knew that responding to the threat of Western imperialism required rapid economic growth to finance a sweeping military modernization.3 Given shortages of capital and resources, and a sense of urgency, Japan adopted state-sponsored capitalism, where, in contrast to the Anglo-American model, the government took the lead in initiating and funding industrialization projects, and then privatized them. This helps explain some of the tensions and misunderstandings that ensued with growing bilateral trade tensions in the 1970s and 1980s; what looked like a rigged system to Washington, featuring cozy government–business ties, was a legacy of Meijiera development policies and the 1940 system that the US had endorsed during the Occupation era.
To revive Japan, the US put in place a system that it came to regret. But given the abject state of the Japanese economy, tilting the playing field to the home team’s advantage seemed a good idea because there was no support in the US for a Marshall Plan of aid to help Japan recover as there was in Europe in the aftermath of WWII. In the early years of the Occupation, Japan suffered from severe shortages of everything, and there was a rationing system for food that many families supplemented with visits to the thriving yamiichi (black markets). Gangs controlled the black markets, making hefty profits out of helping families get what they needed to survive. One judge, who starved to death by shunning the black market, was held up by some as an inspiring example of probity and by others as testimony to the folly of abiding by the rules.
