The Enigma of Japanese Power (35 page)

The malleability, relativity and negotiability of truth in Japan; the claimed superfluity of logic; the absence of a strong intellectual tradition; the subservience to the administrators of law; and the acceptance, even celebration, of amorality: these are, of course, all causally intertwined. They reinforce what I have referred to as the crucial factor in the exercise of Japanese power: the absence of a tradition of appealing to transcendental truth or universal values.
¹⁴
All other extant civilisations have developed religions and systems of thought that acknowledge the existence of a truth transcending socio-political concerns. Neither Shintoism nor Buddhism has been of assistance here.

It is helpful in examining the mental backdrop to the Japanese political tradition to make a comparison with intellectual and spiritual life in China. The dominating force there was Confucianism, a surrogate religion with roots in social experience, and thus very suitable for Japanese power-holders. Confucianist ethics were based on a very sophisticated understanding of human character and the dynamics of society; metaphysics had no place in it. The Chinese concept of heaven (T’ien) is very different from the Western (originally Mesopotamian) concept of a universe that was created, and subsequently controlled, by a Divine Power. The Chinese Heaven was, of course, viewed as superior to anything on earth, but it was not seen as the creator of the universe and was not visualised in a concrete form.
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Nor was it considered important as a source of social knowledge. The Confucianist code of behaviour could hardly be more this-worldly in its orientation. Significantly, though, the principles it developed were taken to be universally true and applicable under all circumstances.

This prepared the Chinese mind for conceiving of a moral order separate from the social order. Though not based on any belief in a supernatural being or supported by metaphysical speculation, it transcended temporal authority and immediate social concerns. In this respect Chinese Confucianism does, after all, resemble the transcendental traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

However much the Japanese emulated the Chinese in other things, and however much Japanese power-holders craved obedient subjects, they were not interested in trying to produce moral citizens by invoking paramount abstract principles. To follow the Chinese one step further and, by abstracting a morality from socially desirable behaviour, to develop the idea of individual conscience in potential opposition to social practices was totally inconceivable. The Chinese individual can draw upon a tradition that instructs him not to surrender his moral judgement to society. As Confucius himself is supposed to have said: ‘The moral man must not be a cipher in but a cooperative member of society. Wherever the conventional practices seem to him immoral or harmful, he not only will refrain from conforming with them but will try to persuade others to change the convention.’
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Confucius rejected absolute loyalty to an overlord in favour of loyalty to principle, to the Way.
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The result was ‘a goodly company of martyrs, who have given their lives in defense of the Way’.
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This tradition has given the Chinese, at the very least, the freedom to speculate on the legitimacy of rulers, particularly when comets, earthquakes, floods or pestilence allowed little doubt about the wrath of Heaven. The revolutions and usurpations of the throne that punctuate Chinese history were always justified by reference to the mandate of Heaven. Even for the great mass of people, the concept of a moral order transcending considerations of political or economic expediency provided something to which they could, at least in principle, appeal so as to free themselves from the total arbitrariness of power.

The place that the Chinese have given to abstract principles, the power they have granted ideology, could hardly be better illustrated than by the social convulsions – the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution – they have lived through in very recent decades, which were among the most terrible in the history of the world and were all justified by appeals to a supposed historical ‘truth’ situated above society.

One reason why Japan entered the modern industrial world with relative ease compared with China and other Asian nations lay in the very lack of any strongly held precepts, based on transcendental beliefs, to block the changes of mentality that were required to cope with the material changes. There was neither intellectual nor moral opposition strong enough to halt the influence of the many new concepts the country needed in order to modernise.
¹⁹

Unrestrained by any tradition enjoining ‘truth to oneself’, the Japanese may ‘believe’ one thing and do something entirely different. It was relatively easy for them formally to adopt Western political institutions and ideals, because the moral possibility was retained of using these alien concepts and beliefs as tools for new ends suitable to Japan’s own needs.

The ability to make rapid mental adjustments to changed social conditions also makes amazing chameleon-like changes in behaviour possible when Japanese find themselves in entirely different circumstances from the ones they are used to. In her classic study of Japanese behaviour Ruth Benedict noted that the most dramatic difference between Western and Japanese soldiers was the extent to which, as prisoners of war, the latter co-operated with the Allies. ‘They were better than model prisoners. Old Army hands and long-time extreme nationalists located ammunition dumps, carefully explained the disposition of Japanese forces, wrote our propaganda and flew with our bombing pilots to guide them to military targets.’
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A former Japanese inmate of the Siberian prisoner-of-war camps writes that the Germans, Italians, Koreans and Chinese in those camps did not display such ‘miserable capitulation’ to the Soviets as did his countrymen. He speaks of the gutlessness and spinelessness with which the Japanese prisoners waved red flags, declared Japan an enemy country and shouted banzai for Stalin. He compares it with the opportunism in the behaviour of Japanese intellectuals, who first acted as though they believed the myth that the Japanese emperor was a living god, subsequently chanted ‘democracy’ as they bowed before the United States occupation authorities and, ‘when sensing a threat from the Soviet Union, began to sing its praises as the fortress of peace in the world’.
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In a very different setting, far removed from the cruelty, hardships and constant fear of the Siberian camps, Japanese company representatives could be seen waving Mao’s Little Red Book and mouthing the appropriate slogans on visits to China during the Cultural Revolution. A shift in outward attitudes towards the Arabs, from disdainful indifference to sycophantic solicitude, immediately followed the oil crisis. Films which show Arab countries in a bad light are under no circumstances shown in Japan. One phone call from a Middle Eastern representative to the most respected general newspaper, the
Asahi Shimbun
, is sufficient to ensure the withdrawal of a cartoon he does not like.
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Maybe the best recent example of the ease with which Japanese intellectuals take on the political colouring of their environment is the relationship between most of the Japanese media and the Chinese government. All the major Japanese newspapers except one (the
Sankei Shimbun
) agreed that they would publish only positive stories about China, Mao Tse-tung and the Cultural Revolution, and that they would promote good bilateral relations. This was in exchange for a guarantee that their correspondents in Peking would not be evicted. They never told their readers about this, and for many years the Japanese public had no idea what was actually happening in this large neighbouring country.

To sum up what is most crucial in Japanese political culture: the Japanese have never been encouraged to think that the force of an idea could measure up to the physical forces of a government. The key to understanding Japanese power relations is that they are unregulated by transcendental concepts. The public has no intellectual means to a consistent judgement of the political aspects of life. The weaker, ideologically inspired political groups or individuals have no leverage of any kind over the status quo other than the little material pressure they are sometimes able to muster. In short, Japanese political practice is a matter of ‘might is right’ disguised by assurances and tokens of ‘benevolence’.

The self-consciousness with which Japanese culture is constantly referred to should alert one to its ideological function. ‘Culture’ is, in fact, working overtime to explain the motives of every Japanese under all circumstances. The implication at times is almost that Japanese individuals have no motives other than those implanted in them by their culture, as if they were all enslaved by some national, autonomous nervous system.

In the prevalent, officially sponsored view, Japanese sacrifice themselves and their family lives for their company, not because this enables their company to expand with minimum costs, but because they are culturally inclined to sacrifice themselves for the group. They submit themselves to conciliation in disputes because of their cultural dislike for courts and lawyers, not because the Justice Ministry limits the number of judges and lawyers to only a fraction of what is required for the functioning of a modern legal system. Army-camp conditions at company dormitories supposedly follow from the Japanese cultural tradition of keeping an eye on youngsters. Japanese interest groups allow themselves to be neutralised by the bureaucracy, not because the politicians exploit them or because, lacking any legal mechanism for redressing their grievances, they are highly dependent on bureaucratic goodwill, but because they are all imbued with the cultural norms of ‘harmony’.

The culturist explanation is found everywhere one turns for enlightenment. It even has a powerful hold over a majority of the foreign scholars studying social, economic and political aspects of Japan. In its context the basic determinants of Japanese socio-political life are implicitly placed outside the boundaries of scrutiny and criticism that a political system deserves. And when ‘culture’ is brought into the discussion, it is expected that all contentious argument should cease, for we are then in the presence of an immutable given. Japanese culture is treated by Japanese spokesmen as if everything subsumed under it is automatically above reproach. The harmony espoused by enterprise labour unions, the loyalty towards employers that keeps husbands away from their families and the inter-meshing relationships of the distribution system that exclude foreigners from the market are sacrosanct cultural achievements. One is made to feel that there is absolutely no room for critical, unappreciative or otherwise negative comments. In the late 1980s such comments as these have a good chance, even, of being labelled ‘Japan-bashing’ by official spokesmen and the press.

Japanese officials, commentators and businessmen routinely appeal to ‘cultural’ reasons for not doing what foreigners think they ought to be doing. The Japanese ‘plead understanding for their side in trade disputes on cultural grounds, because of traditional social harmony, or the long history of isolation, or delicate domestic sensitivities . . . never because it would force local businesses into unwelcome competition with foreigners’.
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Morita Akio of Sony Corporation contends that reciprocity in trade ‘would mean changing laws to accept foreign systems that may not suit our culture’.
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‘Cultural differences’ are also a favourite explanation when a Japanese firm tries to wriggle out of a contract. A famous instance of this was the sugar negotiations with Canberra in the late 1970s, after world prices had declined. The Australians were accused of forcing the ‘non-contractual’ Japanese to abide by the rules of an alien culture.

Westerners, especially Americans, have been quite vulnerable to such arguments. For a period in the mid-1980s, when a common retort to United States criticism of the relatively closed Japanese market was that foreigners were trying to change Japanese culture, the accusation quietened some critics who worried that their demands were indeed, perhaps, a form of sacrilege. The ‘cultural defence’ ploy is effective because Westerners are often afraid of being thought ethnocentric, which in many eyes is but one step away from being racist.

Government officials demonstrate great conviction that all their actions and everything Japan is held responsible for internationally can be explained by Japanese culture and must therefore be excused. When foreign criticism mounts, the officials and the press, instead of analysing and refuting this criticism, tend to speak of the need to improve their efforts at explaining the Japanese side. Explaining Japan to the world has spawned a formidable sub-industry of writing and publishing. Government agencies and private institutions sponsored by the large business federations are actively involved in the international dissemination of propaganda. A broad and continuous stream of glossy publications – put out by various ministries, the Japan Keizai Koho Centre (attached to the Keidanren), and other semi-official and private bodies – tries to convince foreigners, in particular Japan’s irate trading partners, of the cultural origin and therefore the immutable status of the Japanese practices that elicit criticism abroad. The explainers are helped by foreign apologists, many of them scholars or diplomats who accept the culturist argument.

Sometimes there are signs of a recognition that the nature of this effort is propagandistic. After I had written an article for the US publication
Foreign Affairs
on the absence of dominating free-market forces and central leadership in Japan, one Japanese consulate in the United States reported to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo that my effort might well have wiped out 50 per cent of what had been achieved by Japanese money and energy in a recent public relations campaign.
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The extraordinary degree of regimentation and conformism among the ordinary Japanese is maintained by systematically instilled submissive attitudes. The moulding of character so as to foster loyalty through submission dominates Japanese methods of upbringing and is manifest in many areas of adult life. The programme derives its vigour from an ideology that is not generally recognised for what it is: an ideology disguised by the respectable vestments of ‘cultural analysis’. Members of each succeeding generation are told that they should obey the dictates of the group because they are Japanese and therefore endowed with a peculiar quality of character that makes them want to be loyal to the group. Japanese thought processes, in contrast with those of the West, are said to be non-rational, non-logical, situational, emotional and socially dependent; and this is presented not as a deficiency, but as a sign of superiority. This culture of submission – the essence of what the Japanese generally refer to as ‘typical Japanese culture’ – constitutes a pervasive, powerful creed that feeds communal sentiment and supports and justifies political arrangements.

Not every system of ideas or beliefs is an ideology. An ideology, in fact, aims to make contemplative thought superfluous. It bans the adventure of ideas; it is a substitute for explanation. As such, it diminishes our knowledge and thus our perception of socio-political reality, which is why it can be used to disguise existing power relations and serve those in whose interest it is to obfuscate the true political situation as part of an unceasing campaign to make that situation endure.

The ideology of Japaneseness differs, of course, from ideologies that seek to harness political energies to the realisation of a Utopian future. Its task, on the contrary, is to make the existing Japanese socio-political world completely acceptable and immune to any advocacy of drastic change. Unlike Western ideologies, it is not something that overrides the immediate demands of society, and so it is not something the individual can appeal to in order to justify thought or behaviour going against the grain of social expectations.

While vast numbers of books help keep the ideology of Japaneseness an active ideology, there is no one work that could be considered its Holy Writ nor, of course, any central institution guarding doctrinal purity. The interests served by Japanese ideology are not quickly identified because they are not represented by a single set of dominating power-holders. This is another reason why this ideology is generally not recognised for what it is, for the dissemination of ideologies is usually assumed to require, first of all, a fairly strong central leadership.

Ideological propaganda, however, need not come from a single, conspiratorial source. A constellation of forces, all merely intent on preserving their interests, is capable of presenting a cohesive, self-serving picture of the world. For all their rivalry and conflicting interests, Japanese groups, each controlling its own province at least partly by ‘conspiratorial’ methods, are harnessed together in the effort to make the System prevail. Thus they all endorse and help spread the same set of mutually re-inforcing presentations of socio-political reality.

While the System is a fount of propaganda, it does not necessarily follow that all who help purvey this propaganda know that they are propagandists. On the contrary, the seductiveness of Japanese ideology is partly due to the sincerity with which it is offered. And though it is interesting to speculate whether most Japanese power-holders are aware of the deception their propaganda causes, the answer to this question is irrelevant to the analysis of Japanese power relations, since the effect remains the same.

The ideological function of the culturist argument becomes abundantly clear if one traces the lineage of the ideas that form its main ingredients, for at one time they were part of an unambiguous ideology of Japanese superiority.

Many of the arguments with which the exercise of extra-legal power is explained and justified today were first heard some four centuries ago. They brought together and modified various strands of older ethical and metaphysical theories so as to buttress the political settlement that followed several centuries of civil war. With the consolidation of Tokugawa power, Japanese schools of thought lost whatever political independence they may have had, and while their teachings on the meaning of life and on proper conduct were amalgamated into a single orthodoxy, the ‘heresies’ of some previously influential Buddhist sects and of the Christians were suppressed.

The schools of thought acceptable to the shogunate are probably better described as spiritual or intellectual ‘movements’ within the orthodoxy. A couple of them gradually developed their own heresies, and these helped undermine the credibility of Tokugawa rule in the early nineteenth century. Yet despite their variety they formed, for some two hundred years, the intellectual bedrock for a stagnant political system; and this is a fact of almost inestimable significance.

After an interlude caused by the upheaval accompanying the reopening of Japan to the West and the revolutionary changes brought about by the early Meiji leadership, relatively free political discourse once again had to make way for government-sponsored ideology. ‘Traditional cultural values’ were not just relied upon to continue as cultural values usually do, without any helping hand from ministers and bureaucrats; they were ‘revived’. The formal state ideology constructed in the Meiji period, which served the ruling élite until 1945, consisted of fragments of the scholastic defence of Tokugawa warrior rule, to which was added an important emphasis on the unique superiority of the Japanese political culture.

After another pause, caused by the defeat in war against the United States, the efforts of the social engineers accompanying General MacArthur and indigenous enthusiasm for a legally constituted parliamentary democracy, bits and pieces of the old ideology of uniqueness are being used to knit together the various aspects of the culturalist explanation and to justify political discipline in contemporary Japan. But before examining this contemporary phase further, we must take a closer look at the ideas that Tokugawa and Meiji Japanese were brought up to believe, since without some knowledge of this historical background the intellectual claims now being made by Japanese about their psychology and society will remain largely unintelligible.

The overriding concern of the Tokugawa power-holders was the maintenance of an order totally devoid of any social mobility. All their subjects occupied a fixed place in the formally prescribed class layers, and although power relations among them changed in the natural course of events, there was no theoretical acknowledgement that such changes were possible. Against the background of the shogunate’s supreme preoccupation, all injunctions to obedience and submission were welcomed as proper education, regardless of their origin.

The power-holders could draw upon a rich heritage from which to distil a grand ethic of submission. For roughly half a millennium prior to the Tokugawa consolidation, much of Japan had been an intermittent battlefield. This almost constant civil warring naturally encouraged a behavioural code whose main ingredient was blind obedience to fighting leaders. Before 1600 Japan’s warrior governments had developed ethics that were later subsumed under the term
bushido
, ‘the way of the warrior’, ethics that also fostered a willingness to fight to the death, or to execute oneself at the behest of one’s lord or the shogunate.
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Among the many Japanese versions of religious-philosophical imports from China, Zen Buddhism served particularly well as a further support for the ethic of submission. It is totally amoral and idealises an anti-intellectual approach to life, which supposedly leads to superior modes of perception. The Tokugawa power-holders may not have been aware of it, but the first major propagandist of what was to become Tokugawa ideology was a samurai and Zen monk called Suzuki Shosan (1579–1655).
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Via a chain of temples and as a private adviser to lower samurai, he spread the notion that to use one’s intellect to make judgements is the source of all evil and, more specifically, the source of political subversion.
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His influence was felt at a level where the new government apparatus touched the lives of commoners. To say that Suzuki Shosan had no respect for the individual is to put it mildly. To him one’s body is nothing but ‘a bag of phlegm, tears, urine, and excrement’ that, in any case, does not belong to oneself, but to the lord to whose generosity one owes one’s life.
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Whatever the body contains, the idea that it may include an individual self is nonsensical.
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The glorification of a ‘death in life’ attitude continued to influence the ideology of Japaneseness at least until 1945.
Bushido
precepts had been processed into an etiquette for non-fighting samurai, an etiquette summed up in the famous
Hagakure
, written in 1716, which says in its first paragraphs that ‘the Way of the samurai is found in death’.
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The work is both humdrum and extremist. Various stories and aphorisms in it have, through numerous intermediary writings for the common man, gained immortality as part of the ideology of Japaneseness in its more simplistic guises. In 1970 the nation was treated to a real-life demonstration of
bushido
practice when the author Mishima Yukio (whose earlier flirtations with the warrior etiquette had been taken with a grain of salt) disembowelled himself after exhorting troops of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces to rise in rebellion and restore the emperor.

While explicit theories of the self as a worthless entity suitable only for total service to one’s superior are no longer widely held, Zen- and
bushido
-inspired imagery still informs Japanese idealism. Films and television series on samurai and
yakuza
themes tend to take it rather seriously. Though the codes of behaviour in these dramatisations seem extreme to contemporary Japanese, the implicit message is still that audiences today can learn something from the dedication, loyalty and readiness for self-sacrifice evinced by romanticised figures from the past.
Chushingura
, the great epic celebrating the real-life eighteenth-century vendetta conducted by forty-seven retainers against a shogunate official who had humiliated their lord (through misinforming him on a point of etiquette), is brought back again and again on TV, on the stage, in the cinema and in countless comic books. This historical saga, with its many subplots in which wives and daughters are sold into prostitution and relatives are murdered to give the future victim a false sense of security, was most aptly described by Arthur Koestler as ‘by all Western standards a tale of sheer dementedness’.
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The samurai and
yakuza
, and for that matter the heroic soldiers in films on the Pacific War who represent the same kind of extremist dedication, are thought to be ‘real men’ in popular Japanese imagery. The ideal male is taciturn and anti-intellectual. As one newspaper editorialised: ‘The Japanese do not trust talkative and eloquent people . . . [but] tend to respect people who are poor at speaking. An increasing number of Japanese are beginning to think that the . . . saying “eloquence is an indication of insincerity” applies exactly to Prime Minister Nakasone.’
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All this because Nakasone had stated more clearly than his colleagues what he believed to be desirable policies for Japan.