The Enigma of Japanese Power (65 page)

Chiho Jichi Kenkyu Shiryo Sentaa,
Gendai kanrisharon
[Modern Managers], 1977, p. 22.
↩

Irwin Scheiner, ‘Benevolent lords and honourable peasants: rebellion and peasant consciousness in Tokugawa Japan’, in Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner,
Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period 1600–1868
, University of Chicago Press, 1978, pp. 39–59.
↩

Kawashima Takeyoshi, ‘Dispute resolution in contemporary Japan’, in A. T. von Mehren (ed.),
Law in Japan
, Harvard University Press, pp. 43–5.
↩

Ian Buruma,
A Japanese Mirror
, Cape, 1984, chapter 10.
↩

Sahasi Shigeru, ‘Kanryo shokun ni chokugen suru’ [Speaking directly to bureaucrats],
Bungei Shunju
, July 1971, p. 108.
↩

Ibid., p. 109.
↩

Chitoshi Yanaga,
Japanese People and Politics
, Wiley, 1956, p. 307. See also Chalmers Johnson,
MITI and the Japanese Miracle
, Stanford University Press, 1982, p. 134.
↩

See Chapter 5. For a detailed account of the ‘telecommunications wars’ and the dynamics of both ministries, see Chalmers Johnson,
MITI, MPT, and the Telecom Wars: How Japan Makes Policy for High Technology
, Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, University of California, Brie Working Paper No. 21, 1986.
↩

The MPT has also waged a major bureaucratic war, with a combination of the agriculture co-operatives and the ministries of agriculture and finance, over a ‘people’s loan’ system, which it managed to establish (in 1973) after mediation by the LDP members concerned. See Yung H. Park,
Bureaucrats and Ministers in Contemporary Japanese Government
, Institute of Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1986, pp. 137–8.
↩

Inoguchi Takashi and Iwai Tomoaki,
‘Zoku giin’ no kenkyu
[A Study of ‘
Zoku
Diet Members’], Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 1987, p. 22.
↩

Richard H. Mitchell,
Thought Control in Prewar Japan
, Cornell University Press, 1976, p. 187.
↩

Kubo Hiroshi,
Nihon no kensatsu
[Public Prosecution in Japan], Kodansha, 1986, p. 154.
↩

Walter L. Ames,
Police and Community in Japan
, University of California Press, 1981, pp. 147–8.
↩

Ise Akifumi,
Nippon keisatsu zankoku monogatari
[The Inside Story of the Japanese Police], Eeru Shuppansha, 1985, pp. 12–16.
↩

The US aircraft manufacturer was ultimately found to have been negligent in applying the prescribed number of rivets during repairs of the plane’s bulkhead. The focus of the conflict was JAL’s president at the time of the crash. Takagi Yasumoto was the first who had risen within the organisa-t4on, rather than having been put at its head by the ministry. His appointment had been tolerated by the MOT on a short-term basis while its own designated appointee waited in the wings. But Takagi had proven hard to budge once in office and he had also been proved right in predicting the unfavourable outcome of Transport Ministry bungling in connection with landing-right negotiations with Washington: all cause for sour grapes among the transport bureaucrats.
↩

To prepare for this exploit, Nakasone had formed an advisory committee which concluded that worship at the Yasukuni shrine was not unconstitutional ‘as long as it did not lead to militarism’. But a minority in this group were said to be unable to reconcile themselves with this position, and the press was critical of the choice of committee members. Thirty-six independent scholars, numbering constitutional experts among them, handed to Nakasone their own report concluding that worship at the controversial shrine did in fact violate the constitution, since religion and state should remain clearly separated.
↩

To his own reign must be added the five years that he served as regent for his weak-minded father.
↩

See Kojima Noboru, ‘Tenno to Amerika to taiheiyo senso’,
Bungei Shunju
, November 1975, pp. 94–126; and D. Clayton James,
The Years of MacArthur, Vol. 3: Triumph and Disaster
, Houghton Mifflin, 1985, pp. 320–2.
↩

During the famous visit at Buckingham Palace in March 1921, Hirohito saw a newspaper for the first time and also for the first time witnessed spontaneous behaviour. King George V walked into his bedroom in a dressing-gown and patted him on the back at breakfast. It was years before his attendants and the court in Tokyo had mentally digested this, but in memory of this unforgettable freedom Hirohito ever after breakfasted on ham and eggs and never again wore a kimono.
↩

John Bester, ‘Afterthoughts’,
Mainichi Daily News
, 15 April 1985.
↩

Thomas Rohlen,
Japan’s High Schools
, University of California Press, 1983, p. 191.
↩

Michael Korver, ‘An outsider takes an inside look at Japan’s corporate culture’,
Japan Economic Journal
, 3 May 1986, p. 41.
↩

Nakane Chie, in
Japanese Society
, University of California Press, 1970, has given one of the most succinct but exhaustive accounts of these vertical bonds in Japanese groups.
↩

Imai Kazuo,
Kanryo sono seitai to uchimaku
[Bureaucrats, their World and Hidden Behaviour], Yomiuri Shinbunsha, 1953, p. 61.
↩

Ise,
Nippon keisatsu
, op. cit. (n. 14), p. 115.
↩

Mikuni Akio,
Mikuni on Banking
, Mikuni & Co., 1987, p. 6.
↩

Masao Miyoshi,
As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy in the United States
, University of California Press, 1979, p. 87.
↩

For an excellent account of these, see Walter Edwards, ‘The commercialised wedding as ritual: a window on social values’,
Journal of Japanese Studies
, Winter 1987, pp. 51–78.
↩

Ibid.
↩

At an exchange rate of 130 yen for the dollar, prevailing at the end of 1987.
↩

Chalmers Johnson, ‘Omote and ura: translating Japanese political terms’,
Journal of Japanese Studies
, Winter 1980, p. 110.
↩

Ito Daiichi,
Gendai Nikon kanryosei no bunseki
[Analysis of the Bureaucracy in Contemporary Japan], Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1980, p. 20.
↩

For a different line of argument, but a similar conclusion, see J. Victor Koschmann (ed.),
Authority and the Individual in Japan
, University of Tokyo Press, 1978, p. 14.
↩

Tsuji Kiyoaki, ‘Nihon ni okeru seisaku kettei katei’ [The policy-making process in Japan], in
Shinpan-Nihon kanryosei no kenkyu
, Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1969, p. 157.
↩

Ito,
Gendai Nihon
, op. cit. (n. 32), p. 50.
↩

Nihon no Kanryo Kenkyukai (eds.),
Oyakunin sojuho
[How to Manipulate Bureaucrats], Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha, 1971, pp. 148—9.
↩

Tsuji,
Nihon kanryoisei
, op. cit. (n. 34), p. 163.
↩

See, for example, Frank K. Upham,
Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan
, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 211.
↩

Tahara Soichiro,
Nihon no kanryo
1980 [Bureaucrats in Japan 1980], Bungei Shunju, 1979, p. 262.
↩

See Robert J. Smith,
Japanese Society
, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 27.
↩

Kurt Singer,
Mirror, Sword and Jewel
, Croom Helm, 1973, p. 39.
↩

Upham,
Law
, op. cit. (n. 38), pp. 122–3.
↩

Hanami Tadashi,
Labor Relations in Japan Today
, Kodansha International, 1979.
↩

See Howard Stanislawski, ‘Japan’s Israel problem’,
New Republic
, 9 March 1987.
↩

For these and other examples, see Willy Stem, ‘Japan’s ’free traders’ boycott Israel’,
Tokyo Business Today
, November 1987, pp. 26–8.
↩

A good example can be found in Clyde Prestowitz,
Trading Places
, Basic Books, 1988, p. 161.
↩

Watanabe Yozo,
Gendai kokka to gyoseiken
[The Modern State and its Administrative Rights], Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1972, p. 312.
↩

Ishikawa Masumi, ‘Shitatakanari “kokka himitsu-ho” an’ [The ‘spy bill’ keeps on surviving],
Chuo Koron
, February 1986, pp. 141–2.
↩

See Ito,
Gendai Nihon
, op. cit. (n. 32), p. 23.
↩

Ibid., p. 89.
↩

Narita Yoriaki, ‘Gyosei shido’ [Administrative guidance], in Takayanagi Shinichi et al., (eds.),
Gendai no gyosei
, Iwanami Shoten, 1966, p. 138.
↩

Ito,
Gendai Nihon
, op. cit. (n. 32), pp. 83–4.
↩

Ibid., p. 86.
↩

Ibid., p. 53.
↩

The war in China began with the so-called Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 July 1937. Before then, Japan’s Kwantung Army had attacked the Chinese garrison at Mukden in September 1931, in an action that has gone down in history as the Manchurian Incident. This marked the beginning of intensified involvement that led to the above-mentioned war, and thus it is possible also to speak of Japan’s fifteen-year war in Asia.
↩

Edwin O. Reischauer, history professor at Harvard and US ambassador to Tokyo in the 1960s, has been one of the most influential proponents of this view.‘For a recent expression of it in an interview, see ’Nihon no susumubeki michi’ [The road that Japan should take],
Bungei Shunju
, January 1988, p. 101.
↩

A pioneering study in this context, focusing on the continuities of industrial policy and the careers of the officials who shaped it that spanned the pre-war, wartime and post-war periods, is Chalmers Johnson’s
MITI and the Japanese Miracle
, Stanford University Press, 1982. See also Sheldon Garon,
The State and Labor in Modern Japan
, University of California Press, 1987.
↩

The most complete study on the purge in English is Hans H. Baerwald,
The Purge of Japanese Leaders under the Occupation
, University of California Press, 1959. Baerwald lists 1.9 per cent purged out of 42,251 who were screened. See also Hata Ikuhiko,
Kanryo no kenkyu
[On Bureaucrats], Kodansha, 1983, p. 27. The total of purged personnel was more than 210,000, mostly military. There is a discrepancy in the statistics as to how many were formally purged. The accepted figure for those listed to be purged is 1,800 bureaucrats. According to another statistic, in the final instance the number of bureaucratic purgees came to only 719. See also Kinoshita Hanji, ‘Kyu-shihaiso no kaitai to fukkatsu’ [Dissolution and revival of the old ruling class], in
Sengo Nihon no seijikatei: Nempo Seijigaku
, Iwanami Shoten, 1953, pp. 69–85.
↩

T. J. Pempel, ‘The tar baby target: “reform” of the Japanese bureaucracy’, in R. E. Ward and Y. Sakamoto (eds),
Democratising Japan
, University of Hawaii Press, 1987, p. 159. Pempel gives an excellent succinct overview of the relationship between occupiers and the Japanese bureaucracy, in which he draws a parallel with the US treatment of German bureaucrats and contrasts this with the systematic overhaul by the Soviet occupiers of the East German bureaucracy.
↩

Theodore Cohen,
Remaking Japan
, Free Press, 1987, p. 379.
↩

Ibid., pp. 381–2.
↩

The exact final number of people purged under a variety of criteria is 1,535.
↩

Baerwald,
The Purge
, op. cit. (n. 4), esp. pp. 2–3.
↩

Ibid., p. 69.
↩

Yoshida Shigeru,
The Yoshida Memoirs
, Houghton Mifflin, 1962, p. 128.
↩

Miles Fletcher,
The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan
, University of North Carolina Press, 1982. See also Juan J. Linz, ‘Some notes toward a comparative study of fascism in sociological historical perspective’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.),
Fascism
, University of California Press, 1976, pp. 103–4.
↩

Hashikawa Bunzo, ‘Kakushin kanryo’ [Reformist bureaucrats], in Kamishima Jiro (ed.),
Kenryoku no shiso
, Chikuma Shobo, 1965, p. 252.
↩

Hata,
Kanryo no kenkyu
, op. cit. (n. 4), p. 125.
↩

Mark R. Peattie,
Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West
, Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 186–9.
↩

Goto Ryunosuke founded the Showa Kenkyukai in 1933. For a detailed study of its three major intellectuals and its various ideological strands, see Fletcher,
Search for a New Order
, op. cit. (n. 12).
↩

Shibagaki Kazuo, ‘“Keizai shintaisei” to toseikai: sono rinen to genjitsu’ [‘The economic new order’ and the control associations: their ideal and reality], in Tokyo Daigaku Shakai Kagaku Kenkyujo (eds),
Senji Nihon keizai
, Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1979, pp. 301, 307–10, 322.
↩

Hashikawa, ‘Kakushin kanryo’, op. cit. (n. 13), pp. 254–6; Johnson,
MITI
, op. cit. (n. 3), pp. 123–5; and Hata,
Kanryo no kenkyu
, op. cit. (n. 4), pp. 112–18.
↩

Nakajima Makoto, ‘Showashi o irodoru kakushin kanryo no jidai’ [The age of reformist bureaucrats in Showa history],
Gendai no me
, September 1978, p. 52.
↩

T A. Bisson,
Japan’s War Economy
, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1945, p. 10. For the merger and many other details of the Cabinet Planning Board, see Johnson,
MITI
, op. cit. (n. 3), pp. 137–43.
↩

Ito Daiichi,
Gendai nihon kanryosei no bunseki
[Analysis of the Bureaucracy in Contemporary Japan], Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1980, p. 36.
↩

For an account of Kishi’s
jinmyaku
politics, see Takada Kyoshi, ‘Kishi Nobusuke’, in
Kuromaku kenkyu
, Shin Kokuminsha, 1977, pp. 15–113.
↩

Johnson,
MITI
, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 172.
↩

‘Zaikai no “Ikeda sanmyaku”’ [‘Ikeda’s networks’ among business circles],
Shukan Asahi
, 30 October 1960, p. 8.
↩

Ito Osamu, ‘Sengo Nihon kinyu shisutemu no keisei’ [The formation of postwar Japan’s financial system], in Kindai Nihon Kenkyukai (eds),
Nempo Kindai Nihon kenkyu
, vol. 8, Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1986, pp. 225–6.
↩

Hata Ikuhiko, ‘Kanryo no ikinobiru michi’ [How bureaucrats survive],
Shokun
, April 1977, p. 85.
↩

Johnson,
MITI
, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 41.
↩

For an overview of the control associations, see Shibagaki Kazuo, ‘“Keizai shintaisei”’, op. cit. (n. 17), pp. 291–336.
↩

Johnson,
MITI
, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 173.
↩

Sakakibara Eisuke and Noguchi Yukio, ‘Okurasho Nichigin ocho no bunseki’ [An analysis of the Ministry of Finance/Bank of Japan kingdom],
Chuo Koron
, August 1977, pp. 98, 113–20.
↩

Ibid., p. 99. The Bank of Japan Law dating from 1942 was amended in 1947, but left the bank’s essential wartime functions intact.
↩

Ibid., pp. 99, 117.
↩

Akimoto Hideo,
Keidanren
, Sekkasha, 1968, pp. 116–17. The Juyo Sangyo Tosei Dantai Kyogikai (Important Industries Control Association) from 1941 was dissolved in February 1946, replaced by the Nihon Sangyo Kyogikai (Japan Industrial Association) in August 1946 and combined with the Kinyu Dantai Kyogikai (Financial Corporations Association, formed in April 1946) one week later to become the Keidanren.
↩

Otani Ken, ‘Uemura Kogoro’, in
Sengo zaikaijin retsuden
, Sangyo Noritsu Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1979, p. 168.
↩

Ishizaka’s reputation of being against the bureaucracy was partly due to his opposition to MITI’s proposed Law on Special Measures for Specific Depressed Industries, which was never passed. See Chapter 15.
↩

Among these leaders of both organisations were Moroi Kanichi, Sakurada Takeshi, Imazato Koki and Shikanai Nobutaka. For a comparison of the two organisations, see Noguchi Yuichiro, ‘Yottsu no keieisha dantai’ [Four management groups],
Chuo Koron
, October 1960, pp. 161–3.
↩

Hoashi Kei,
Toseikai no riron to jissai
[Theory and Reality of the Control Associations], Shin Keizaisha, 1941, p. 4. Shibagaki Kazuo gives an extensive account of Hoashi’s theory, and how essential aspects of it have been realised in the post-war economy, in ‘“Keizai shintaisei”’, op. cit. (n. 17), pp. 291–336.
↩

Hoashi,
Toseikai no riron
, op. cit. (n. 37), p. 2.
↩

Ibid., p. 38.
↩

Ibid., pp. 15–16.
↩

Otsuka Banjo, ‘Keizai minshuka to sono gutaisaku’ [Democratisation of the economy and its concrete measures],
Keieisha
, March 1947, pp. 2–9; and Otsuka Banjo, ‘Keizai minshuka to shusei shihonshugi’ [Democratisation of the economy and reformed capitalism],
Keieisha
, December 1947, pp. 1–5. See also Kuribara Kazuo and Matsuyama Jiro,
Nihon zaikai nyumon
[Introduction to Japanese Business Circles], Gakufusha, 1961, pp. 36–7.
↩

The Doyukai theoreticians were then still paying lip-service to the ideal of economic freedom as exemplified by the United States, which is why the second half of their declaration decries monopolies and the dual structure with subordinate subcontractors.
↩

Watanabe Yasuo, ‘Sengoha kanryo ron’ [On post-war bureaucrats],
Chuo Koron
, September 1960, p. 206.
↩

Oda Keisuke, ‘Doyukai’,
Jiyu
, November 1970, p. 170.
↩

Kimura Takeo, ‘Sanken’,
Chuo Koron
, July 1971, p. 188.
↩

For an extensive account of these business moves preceding the creation of the LDP, see Chitoshi Yanaga,
Big Business in Japanese Politics
, Yale University Press, 1968, pp. 121–40.
↩

See Hayashi Shozo, ‘Nihon no pawaa eriito: gendai no kanryo’ [Power elites in Japan: bureaucrats today],
Chuo Koron
, May 1960, p. 110.
↩

Garon,
State and Labor
, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 234.
↩

Watanabe, ‘Sengoha kanryo ron’, op. cit. (n. 43).
↩

Theodore Cohen,
Remaking Japan
, Free Press, 1987, p. 92.
↩

Hiranuma Kiichiro Kaikoroku Hensan linkai (ed.),
Hiranuma Kiichiro kaikoroku
[Memoirs of Hiranuma Kiichiro], Gakuyo Shobo, 1955, p. 215.
↩

Ogino Fujio,
Tokko keisatsu taisei shi
[History of the ‘Thought Police’ System], Sekita Shobo, 1984, pp. 429–31, 435–6.
↩

This information is culled from Yonehara Itaru, Kazahaya Yasoji and Shiota Shobei,
Tokko keisatsu kokusho
[Black Paper on the ‘Thought Police’], Shin Nihon Shuppansha, 1977, pp. 211–21.
↩

Garon,
State and Labor
, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 233.
↩

Ibid., p. 235.
↩

Yung H. Park,
Bureaucrats and Ministers in Contemporary Japanese Government
, Institute of Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1986, pp. 63–4.
↩

Hayashi, ‘Pawaa eriito’, op. cit. (n. 47), p. 108.
↩

It was formed in 1952 as an agency and was made a ministry in 1960.
↩

Jin Ikko,
Jichi kanryo
[Home Affairs Ministry Bureaucrats], Kodansha, 1986, p. 14.
↩

Ibid., p. 73.
↩

Ibid., p. 215.
↩

For the role of the reform bureaucrats in establishing this wartime government mouthpiece, see Hashikawa, ‘Kakushin kanryo’, op. cit. (n. 13), p. 256.
↩

Already in the 1870s commentators were speaking of a
fukuzatsu naru shakai
(‘an increasingly complicated society’); see Carol Gluck,
Japan’s Modern Myths
, Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 30.
↩

Kenneth Pyle, ‘Advantages of followership: German economics and Japanese bureaucrats, 1890–1925’,
Journal of Japanese Studies
, Autumn 1974, p. 144.
↩

Garon,
State and Labor
, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 212. Garon makes the point that, by paying attention to the nativist rhetoric, historians have overlooked the profound impact of Nazi models on Japanese policies of the day, particularly those relating to the suppression of labour unions.
↩

See Chapter 12.
↩

Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi,
Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan
, Harvard University Press, 1986, p. 112.
↩

Yanaga Chitoshi,
Japanese People and Politics
, John Wiley & Son, 1956, p. 306.
↩

Richard J. Smethurst,
Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism
, University of California Press, 1974, p. 11.
↩

Kenneth Pyle, ‘The technology of Japanese nationalism: the local improvement movement, 1900–1918’,
Journal of Asian Studies
, November 1973, p. 58.
↩

Smethurst,
Social Basis
, op. cit. (n. 69).
↩

Okudaira Yasuhiro, ‘Tennosei kokka no jinmin shihai’ [Control of the people under the emperor system], in Nakamura Masanori et al,
Taikei Nihon kokkashi 5 kindai 2
, Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1976, p. 321, as quoted in Herbert Bix, ‘Kawakami Hajime and the organic law of Japanese fascism’,
Japan Interpreter
, Winter 1978, p. 129.
↩

Garon,
State and Labor
, op. cit. (n. 3), pp. 73–4.
↩

Ibid., p. 28.
↩

Kato Shuichi, ‘Taisho democracy as the pre-stage for Japanese militarism’, in B. Silberman and H. D. Harootunian (eds.),
Japan in Crisis
, Princeton University Press, 1974.
↩

Sheldon M. Garon, ‘State and religion in Imperial Japan, 1912–1945’,
Journal of Japanese Studies
, Summer 1986, p. 299.
↩

The two million figure is a common estimate among activist women’s groups. According to official statistics there were more than a million abortions per year between 1955 and 1961. By 1981 this figure had shrunk to just under 600,000. Doctors believe that this official figure must be more than doubled because many clinics under-report for tax reasons.
↩