Japan

A Postindustrial Power--third Edition, Revised And Updated

Ardath W. Burks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429718953
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Japan has been among the first of the handful of countries to move "beyond modern," and in this third edition of a much-praised book, Ardath Burks brings the blur of the nation's rapid change into focus. In his newly revised and updated Japan, Professor Burks also traces the history of the Japanese, exploring their traditions, their continuity, and their cultural heritage. He devotes a chapter to the remarkable "introspection boom" (Nihonron): the Japanese asking, "Who are we Japanese?" In discussing the country's swift modernization, the author looks not only at the initial transition from primary agriculture to an industrial economy but also at the current evolution into a service-centered society. On both domestic and international levels, the book evaluates the maturing of Japanese industry and its growing investment abroad, as well as the global tensions fueled by Japan's enormous trade surpluses. In response to the intense trade pressure it feels, the country is beginning to shift from export-driven growth to a consumer-oriented economy, a shift that will demand the building of a heretofore neglected, yet essential, infrastructure of housing and transportation. The author analyzes domestic political developments including the regime of Nakasone Yasuhiro and the fall of Takeshita Noboru and Uno Sousuke, precipitated by financial scandal within the majority Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Burks assesses the formidable tasks facing the revamped ruling LDP as its new generation of younger leaders grapples with an evolving economy, an expanding regional role, and the dissatisfaction of women and young people who have begun to rebel against the growth ethic and their marginalized role in society. In his well-drawn, lucid portrait of this complex country, Professor Burks reflects on Japan as a nation in historical transition, envisioning a postindustrial future filled with friction and promise. As he writes in his introduction, "Americans and Japanese too often look

1
Sansui: The Landscape and Its Settlement

In Japanese art there is a venerable tradition called sansui. This term, which literally means "mountain and water," refers both to a style and to the visible, pleasing proximity of rounded hills, jagged peaks, calm bays, and tempestuous seas. Originally used to describe an inspiration for monochrome landscape painting, the term is also useful in summarizing the structure of the island nation.

Structure

The combination of mountains and sea in Japan has profoundly affected the historic development of the country and has contributed to the problem of human settlement faced by the Japanese even today. In brief, Japan is scenery-rich and resource-poor.

The Mountains

Geologists view the Japanese archipelago riot so much as islands as immense mountains on the globe. These ranges rise 20,000 to 30,000 feet (6,100 to 9,100 meters) from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Just east of, and close to, Japan is a deep trough, the Japan Trench, which at bottom reaches 36,198 feet (11,033 m) below sea level. Just to the south is another trough with a depth of more than 13,000 feet (4,000 m). On shore, Japan's mountains are sharply ridged; many of the peaks in central Honshū rise more than 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above sea level. Since glacial effects were not felt in this area, mountain slopes are quite steep and the valleys narrow, yet most of the terrain is forested hills.

Division of the country into relatively small plains (except where noted) may have contributed to the early clannishness of the Japanese and probably set the boundaries for old provinces. The topography, according to former ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer, may have also helped to shape the decentralized feudal pattern of medieval Japan. Until modern engineering enabled the building of rail lines, their cuts, bridges, and tunnels, and toll roads, lateral connections between the valleys were few. And sometimes, even today, topographical barriers have proved to be formidable. For example, in January 1979 the national railway system completed the world's longest tunnel on the Joetsu superexpress line, beneath Mt. Tanigawa on the Gumma-Niigata prefectural border. At 13.7 miles (22 kilometers) in length, the Daishimizu Tunnel just surpassed the length of the Simplon Tunnel (12.3 miles or 20 km) on the Swiss-Italian alpine border.

In 1988 links were completed that more closely integrated two of Japan's more relatively isolated islands. In March, after more than twenty years of construction, the Seikan Tunnel opened for rail service between Hakodate on Honshū and Aomori on Hokkaidō. At just over 33 miles (53 km), it became the world's longest underseas passage. In April the Seto Ōhashi, a bridge over the Inland Sea, became the world's longest motor-rail span, connecting Kojima on Honshū with Sakaide on Shikoku.

Geographers do, of course, describe Japan as a series of festoon islands, stretching some 1,300 miles (2,100 km) from the Chishima (Kurile) island group in the northeast to the Nansei (Ryūkyū, including Okinawa) group in the southwest. (See Fig. 1.1.) In between, the archipelago consists of the four main islands—Hokkaidō, Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū (97 percent of the total land area)—and of some 3,300 islets and rocks, many uncultivatable and uninhabited. Even when one thinks of Japan as an island-nation, it is difficult not to think of mountains.

Circum-Pacific crustal movements have formed and continue to shape the land, which is torn into bewildering fractions along fault lines, some heaped above and some sunk below the water. The resultant islands lie between a shallow submerged valley, the Sea of Japan, and a deep submerged depression, the Japan Trench.

Another explanation, borrowed from both geologists and geographers, has the Japanese islands poised precariously on a ring of fire. This zone of instability runs clear around, and borders on, the Pacific basin. In this sense, the islands are laid out in arcuate patterns, a series of convex bows. At the nodes in which the arcs intersect, there is direct or indirect evidence of volcanic activity. The four bows are:

1. the Chishima (Kurile) arc: anchored in the central Hokkaidōnode (recent volcanic eruptions occurred at the site of the 1972 Winter Olympic games, near Sapporo)
2. the Honshūūarc: anchored in the north on the western peninsula of Hokkaidō and in the south in the Kyūshū node

Figure 1.1 JAPAN

• 3. the Nansei (Ryūkyū) arc: anchored in Kyūshū (including Mt, Aso, an active volcano and the world's largest caldera type)
• 4. the Ogasawara (Bonins) arc: anchored in the north on the Izu Peninsula of Honshū and running south through the Izu, Ogasawara (Bonin), and Kazan (Volcano) islands (including Mt. Fuji, 12,389 feet [3,776 m] above sea level, a volcano that last erupted in 1707)

The active and extinct volcanoes within Japan total 265. Scientists have estimated the total number of eruptions in the world during the historic age at about 540. Japan accounted for 30 before 1900, and about 20 in this century (or about 10 percent of the total).

Cross-island tectonic zones have given rise to spectacular scenery and have contributed to instability. Another result is that in the nineteenth century Japan gave birth to the science of seismology. In modern times, delicate seismographs have recorded more than 5,000 earthquakes annually in Japan. About one in five has been detectable by humans. About one-fifth of these (200) have been strong enough to stop the swing of a pendulum.

The major earthquake zone is related to the volcanic nodes. It is on the Pacific side, between the archipelago and the Japan Trench, and epicenters tend to be on the slopes of the Trench at depths of about 3,300 feet (1,000 m) below sea level. The Japanese have lent the world a name for a frequent and feared earthquake by-product, the seismic "tidal" wave (tsunami).

The greatest earthquake in modern Japanese history, which occurred on September 1, 1923, leveled Tokyo and its environs, leaving more than 130,000 dead. Today, the Japanese have become fatalistically adjusted to the idea that great quakes will occur. In 1975, an earthquake forecast council estimated that a Richter-scale-5 quake would cause suffering for more than 133,000 citizens in the southwestern wards of Tokyo; water supply to some 420,000 houses in Tokyo would be interrupted; and some 15,000 citizens would be killed in Kawasaki City, just south of Tokyo. In spite of these forecasts, with the most up-to-date engineering and a considerable dose of faith, Tokyoites have continued to erect towering office buildings and have expanded vast underground networks of subways, pedestrian malls, and shops.

Indeed, the Japanese have become so inured to nature's might that in the 1970s a novel titled Nihon chimbotsu (Japan sinks)¹ was widely read with fear and fascination. The work, actually a social science fiction, described the effect on society if the whole archipelago was doomed to slide into the ocean after a tectonic shift.

This is riot to say that natural disasters have offered no blessings. As a result of volcanic activity and earthquakes, Japan has magnificant natural scenery: the perfect cone of Fuji-saw, the cauldron of Aso, volcanic bays in Hokkaidō, and the hot springs that dot the islands.

The Seacoast

The coasts of Japan are also, in effect, mere adjuncts to the mountainous structure. Capes, headlands, peninsulas with their lighthouses, and the bays between are either protrusions of, or submerged valleys between, the pervasive mountains, Japanese tend to think of their country as "a small, narrow, island nation." In fact, no part of Japan is more than seventy miles from a coast, and all of the country lies in the shadows of mountains.

The total area of the four main islands is about 145,883 square miles (377,837 km²). There is a total length of shoreline of about 9,800 miles (15,800 km). Japan thus has 1 linear mile of coast per 14 square miles of land (as compared to Britain's ratio of 1:8).

The magnificant Setonaikai (literally, "sea within channels," or the Inland Sea) is actually a submerged shallow structural depression nestled between the mountains of Shikoku and the less rugged highlands of western Honshū. The line of fracture is fringed by a chain of volcanoes (all extinct except Mt. Aso on Kyūshū) and more than 950 islands. Some one-half million acres (202,500 hectares) of shores surrounding the Inland Sea have been declared national park in hopes of protecting the legendary beauty of the region. The main western water highway is well known to the Japanese, historically having served as the connection between the parts of Kyūshū that were points of contact with the continent of Asia and the oldest settled culture in the Yamato Basin, around Nara. As geographer David Kornhauser has described them, the coastal plains on Honshū face south and west just like the porch and sliding doors of a classic Japanese farmhouse. Shifting the image, the Setonaikai is Japan's Mediterranean with a pleasingly mild climate.

Today one can easily forget the long and relatively quiet coastline facing north and west over the Japan Sea. Japan's "backside" (ura Nihon), it has quite different topography and sharply different climate. It can therefore be a delight to the infrequent tourist who travels west to Matsue, where Lafcadio Hearn lived and died, or who journeys northwest to the undisturbed "Little Kyōto," Kanazawa. Older Japanese remember pre-World War II days, however, when this coast linked Japan with its interests on the continent—in Manchuria, Korea, and North China. There are still important ports in the area. One is Niigata, which was used in the 1950s to repatriate Koreans.

Geography, climate, and recent history have made the Pacific, or eastern and southeastern, coasts vastly more important. The major bays, really submerged valleys, used for shipping Japan's exports are here. They are (ranging southwest) Tokyo (including the port of Yokohama), Sagami, Ise, and Ōsaka, including the port of Kōbe. Mention must also be made of the portals of the Setonaikai, the Bungo Channel to the west, and the Kii Channel to the east. There are new port cities all along the Setonaikai and harbors serving the modern industrial complex located on northern Kyūshū. Perhaps more important in history are the other large bays in Kyūshū, serving Nagasaki, Sasebo, and Kagoshima.

The peninsulas that jut into, and the bays that welcome, the Pacific Ocean enjoy the warm flow of the Kuroshio (the Black, or Japan, Current). It serves the same function as does its sister stream along the California coast, namely, to moderate the climate of all neighboring areas. Thus, climate and accessibility have encouraged the growth of great cities and the expansion of ports (and consequently the mainstream of history) to be on the Pacific side. The post-World War II development of Japan to superpower status, linked through the Pacific basin to the Americas and to Western Europe, has accelerated the trend, making this region domestically a great urban corridor and internationally Japan's window to the world.

The Plains Between

In Japan, then, the seacoast is nearby, and throughout almost all the land, mountains are visible. The compact character of the habitable remainder is possibly the explanation for the Japanese love of landscapes and the tendency to reproduce them on a small scale, for example, in tiny trees (bonsai) and in miniature gardens.

It follows that level land has always been at a premium: traditionally, as a base for rice culture; currently, as a base for industrial and postindustrial cities. Only about one-quarter of the total area of Japan has land with slopes less than fifteen degrees; only 24 percent of Honshū, the most populated island, is so constructed. Lowlands make up only about one-eighth of the total area, and a large proportion of these are eroded deposits from the highlands. Thus, Japan's lowlands, too, are mere adjuncts to the mountains.

There are only a few relatively large plains, and these, of course, loom large in Japan's history. They include the Kantō, which hosts the modern Tokyo metropolitan area; the Nobi, which is occupied by Nagoya and its industrial environs; the Tsukushi, which holds the manufacturing cities of northern Kyūshū; and the Ishikari and the Tokachi, which contain Sapporo and the developing regions of Hokkaidō. None of these, it should be noted, is anywhere near the size of the immense North China Plain.

As a result of the topography, japan's rivers tend to be short and, in rainy season, fast flowing. There are only two rivers over 200 miles (320 km) in length: the Ishikari in Hokkaidō and the Shinano in central Honshū. Fourteen rivers are between 100 and 200 miles (160 and 320 km) in length; eight, less than 100 miles long. None of the rivers plays a role in Japanese life equivalent to that of the Yangtse in China, the Mississippi in the United States, or the Amazon in South America.

Japanese tend to think of their country as being quite small. Japan is about 10 percent smaller than the U.S. state of California, with which it is most often compared. The country is larger in area, however, than any of the European nations except Sweden, France, and Spain. In latitudinal spread it is quite elongated, stretching (in the American imagination) from Hokkaidō (between Montreal and Boston) in the north through northern Honshū (Philadelphia), Tokyo (North Carolina), Ōsaka (South Carolina), and southern Kyūshū (the Florida panhandle), to Okinawa (Gulf of Mexico) in the south. Until recently, a south-to-north journey between Fukuoka and Sapporo took more than 20 hours by rail, even with the speedy sector on bullet trains of the New Tōkaidō Line (six hours from Fukuoka to Tokyo). New bullet-train service from Tokyo to Sendai and planned extension via Aomori to Sapporo will soon cut the time in half.

By jet aircraft, if schedules were so fitted, it would still take...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Photographs
• Preface to the Third Edition
• Introduction
• 1 Sansui: The Landscape and Its Settlement
• 2 The Japanese Tradition
• 3 Shibui: A Taste of Japanese Culture
• 4 Kindaika (Modernization)
• 5 Postwar Politics
• 6 The Postwar Economy
• 7 The Postindustrial Society
• 8 Kokuminsei: Who Are We Japanese?
• 9 Kokusaika: The Internationalization of Japan
• Notes
• Annotated Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index