A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (73 page)

Kishi and his younger brother, Sat
Eisaku (Kishi having been born into the Sat
family but adopted by an uncle), were just two of six prewar bureaucrats who went on to become prime minister after the war. Sat
was prime minister from 1964 to 1972. The other four were Yoshida Shigeru (1946–47, then 1948–54), Ikeda Hayato (1960–64), Fukuda Takeo (1976–78), and Ohira Masayoshi (1978–80). That is, for the great majority of the vital first few decades after the war, Japan was governed by prewar bureaucrats.

These prewar bureaucrats and their colleagues did their best to re-implement a number of prewar practices, usually subtly and by stages and not enough to bring serious counter-moves from Washington, but enough to make them feel more comfortable. One of their main concerns was education, the tried and trusty ground for implanting suitable thoughts. From the mid-1950s the government reasserted central
control over education, deliberately undoing the decentralisation policy of the Occupation.
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In 1956 elections to regional school boards were abolished and replaced by appointment through mayors and/or prefectural governors. The boards were also made subject to the central Ministry of Education. Two years later the Ministry’s curriculum became compulsory, replacing the freedom of choice promoted by the Occupation. This was to pave the way for even tighter central control, leading to the rigorous vetting and censoring of textbooks that still continues to the present day.

The public were ambivalent about these continuities. In a general sense links with the past were reassuring, but at the same time many were worried about the type of links that were being re-established. Yoshida Shigeru talked of losing the war but winning the peace,
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and many shared, and were inspired by, his sentiments of making the nation once again great. This time it would be in economic terms, not military. In the workplace it was common to find the
m
retsu-gata
(‘fiercely determined type’), dedicating their own efforts and achievements to the rebuilding of the nation. This was very similar to the nationalistic achievement-orientation of the Meiji period, but without the militaristic overtones – though there were some who did see it as an aggressive continuation of the war, often in combination with a view that Japan’s defeat militarily didn’t really count as a proper defeat because of the use of atom bombs.
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Many of the
m
retsu-gata
were proud to think of themselves as latter-day samurai, true corporate warriors.

On the other hand, it was one thing to work for the good of the nation, but there was a limit to the degree of personal sacrifice people were now willing to make. They had been exposed to American-style democracy and human rights, and while they did not necessarily want a surfeit of all this – for they had learned lessons from the communist agitation of 1946–47 – neither did they want a total rejection of it. They were no longer the mindless subjects of the god-emperor, subjects whose very aim in life was to be sacrificed.

A particular source of unease for many was a feeling that not enough of the wealth they generated was being passed on to them. This was particularly so in the 1950s, before wage increases started to make ordinary people feel they were actually making real progress. There were still poor conditions in many workplaces, and low wages. Industrial disputes were commonplace, frequently resulting in violent confrontations and even at times in deaths.

The 1953 strike at Nissan was one example of a serious dispute. It lasted for six months and ended in defeat for the members of the All-Japan Automobile Industry Union. The union was literally dismembered into sundry company-oriented unions. This was the start of the so-called ‘enterprise union’ that still characterises Japanese labour practices, as opposed to the more common ‘trade union’ of the west. The enterprise union basically comprises all workers in an enterprise (company) below upper management levels, regardless of occupation – which in most cases is anyway considered by the company to be generalist rather than specialist. The trade union, by contrast, is formed on the basis of specific trade/occupation and includes workers from all (or at least other) companies. Some observers of Japanese management have somehow managed to see enterprise unionism as a symbol of harmony between worker and employer, but it is clearly a means of weakening unions and workers’ rights by the age-old tactic of division. Though there are broader ‘umbrella associations’ of unions, in practice workers usually have nowhere to turn for support if problems cannot be sorted out in-house.

One of the most bitter and historic labour confrontations occurred in 1960, at the Mitsui-owned Miike coalmines in Ky
sh
.
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Unrest here had been brewing for some time over rejected wage claims and planned lay-offs. Its background was the policy of the government-bureaucracy-business triad to replace coal with (imported) oil as Japan’s major source of primary energy. Little evidence of concern was shown for the serious consequences this would entail for the mining workforce.

The dispute at Miike soon escalated into a major confrontation between the labour movement as a whole and government-backed big business. The employers openly hired strike-breaking thugs, and one of them fatally stabbed a miner to show they were serious. The government also brought in 10 per cent of the national police force, seemingly to confront the miners rather than the thugs. Certainly, the government very much seemed to favour the employers, and did not exactly convey an impression of neutrality. Eventually, after nine months, the strikers lost their battle, though they gained a few concessions on paper.

Unions were rarely to pose a serious threat again through strike action, especially as they became increasingly converted into harmless ‘enterprise unions’. Fortunately wages and conditions were soon to improve anyway, helping to mollify worker unrest. Grievances came mostly to be aired in other ways while strikes were converted into token brief stoppages – sometimes of only one hour – at agreed times of the year. Thus the amount of days of production lost through industrial action was to be a mere fraction of that in most other major nations, typically less than a tenth. This was a great boost to economic performance.

Workers, at least white-collar males in major companies, were further mollified by the promise of security in the form of ‘lifetime employment’. This has been greatly exaggerated in terms of both its scale and its history. Though selective scanning of earlier history can reveal some antecedents in the Meiji period and even the Tokugawa period, it is essentially a postwar practice. Moreover, it has only ever applied at most to a quarter of the workforce. Nevertheless it became a sort of ideal for society at large. Study hard, get good results, get employed by a top company, and get security for life – not to mention a salary typically a third higher than in a small company, for the dual structure of industry continues to this day.

Another source of public unease was the possibility of a revival of militarism, despite the constitutional restrictions on this. Some Japanese were not averse to renewed military activity,
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but the great majority were, and felt continuing anxiety about the presence of American troops and the possibility that Japan might be dragged into an American war with the Soviets. Matters came to a head in 1960, with the scheduled renewal of the security treaty with the United States. The authoritarianism being shown by the government in the Miike Dispute at the time did not help ease tensions. Nor did growing Cold War tensions worldwide, and a much-publicised remark a few years earlier by president-to-be Richard Nixon that Japan’s constitutional anti-war clause was a mistake.
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