Tanaka

The Making of Postwar Japan

James Babb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317877608
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Kakuei Tanaka was the most powerful politician in Japan for nearly two decades, and his followers have dominated Japanese politics for most of the country's recent history. This account of the life and times of Tanaka explores the public profile and private power-broking of a controversial and powerful politician, opening up in the process the intimate political history of modern Japan.

Chapter 1
Humble Beginnings

In December 1993, in the intensive care unit of Keio Hospital in Tokyo, a 75-year-old Japanese man was struggling for his life. Eight years earlier he had suffered a serious stroke from which he had never fully recovered and, in addition to a serious thyroid problem, he was now suffering from diabetes. His daughter, Makiko, had visited him on the 16th: ‘Daddy, when you feel better, let’s go for a drive.’ ‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ he replied enthusiastically. The doctor asked him, ‘What do you like?’ In slurred speech, ‘I like to ride in the car.’¹ The next morning started a typical Tokyo winter day – cold but crisp. When the doctor saw him in the morning, the man said he was sleepy. In the afternoon, however, a rare rainstorm swept into the city and the air hung heavy. The man’s breathing became difficult and by four minutes past two in the afternoon he had died of pneumonia.

The man was no ordinary man. He had been influential in Japanese politics in the decades after World War II, and between 1972 and 1985 was without question the most powerful politician in Japan. Even after his illness in 1985, and after his death, his followers and his legacy continued to shape Japan. Earlier in 1993, his daughter had been elected to his seat in the Niigata Third District which he had held since 1947. After his death, she would become one of the most popular and outspoken politicians in Japan, continuing his influence in another form. She would also become the heiress to his substantial fortune estimated at 11.9 billion yen or nearly $100 million.²

This man, Kakuei Tanaka, was by no means common, but his story is crucial to understanding the rise of the common people in postwar Japan. Pre-war Japan was hierarchical and only fitfully democratic, but by the end of the war in 1945, the social order had collapsed and men like Tanaka rose to prominence in a way that was unthinkable before the war. Like many Japanese, he sought to rebuild his identity on the foundations of the past, and yet, much of what he did was new. After all, Japan had changed decisively. The country was more democratic, and with the aid of politicians such as Tanaka, policy was now focused on improving the economic and social standing of the average Japanese. Moreover, the collapse of the pre-war social order led in the end to an unprincipled pursuit of financial gain at the expense of sober assessment of possible consequences of unbridled economic growth. The story of Tanaka’s life exemplifies this change from pre-war to postwar Japan. In addition, an exploration of Tanaka’s role in shaping the postwar period is crucial to understanding Japan today.

It is impossible to ignore the pre-World War II past as it provided the starting point for Tanaka and all of postwar Japan. The greatest contrast between the two periods is between the hierarchy and social distinctions of pre-war Japan, and the relative equality and democracy of the postwar period. The hierarchy of pre-war Japan does still linger in many ways, not least in the levels of politeness in speech and behaviour which continue to typify Japan, but the breakdown of status distinctions and the rise of the commoner are part of an ongoing process which has taken place over the past two centuries as the legacy of feudal Japan has faded and a modern Japan has begun to emerge.

Moreover, the desire for democracy and economic security has led the Japanese to aspire to a ‘good life’ which is as Western as it is Japanese. Japan wholeheartedly adopted Western technology and techniques, and at the same time tried to hold on to a Japanese spirit. The result was that physical goods and processes led to the introduction of modern business enterprises, factories, newspapers, markets and ideas. This was true throughout Japan, and as time passes, it has become difficult to identify the pure elements of old Japan. This leads some Japanese nationalists to bemoan the loss of pre-war order and the rise of democracy, but it must be noted that the imperatives of domestic political and economic demands in Japan, more than any external pressures, have determined the nature of change in Japanese society, as the case of Tanaka clearly demonstrates.

A romantic view of the past persists, nonetheless. Even Tanaka explained Japanese behaviour by pointing to the legacy of 250 years of semi-feudal rule of the house of Tokugawa and the maintenance of hundreds of domains (ban) ruled by powerful local lords (daimyo) who were often nearly autonomous and absolute in their power over commoners who were irrevocably tied to their lands or their vocations. Tanaka’s autobiography starts by noting the historical background of his home village, in which the local lord ruled his feudal domain, like all others, by means of the samurai, who were primarily warriors at first but evolved into a class of high-level civil servants.³ The power the samurai wielded over commoners is legendary: they had the right to use the long and short swords they wore as symbols of their status to inflict summary punishment, including death, on those who displeased them. Tanaka’s home prefecture⁴ of Niigata was the site of two such feudal domains, Echigo and Echizen, where the loyalty of the people to their local lords was unquestioned, as in all such regions. It was natural for Tanaka to use the symbolism of the ‘Echi’ element of the names of these domains to lend weight and tradition to his own constituency support organisation, the Etsuzan Association.

It would be a mistake, however, to overemphasise the continuity in the influence of feudal traditions. By the nineteenth century, large numbers of samurai and entire feudal domains were slipping into debt. This increased the influence of nominally inferior financier-merchants – officially commoners – who occasionally were able to marry their children into samurai status. In the same period, peasant uprisings became more frequent and severe. Thus, when Japan was thrown into crisis as a result of confrontation with the West in the mid-nineteenth century, the old feudal system easily collapsed. A political coup d’état against the Tokugawa regime in 1868 was called the Meiji Restoration because in theory it ‘restored’ the emperor as the supreme ruler of Japan and was named after the new Emperor Meiji. However, the breakdown of the old feudal order did not produce a new era of egalitarianism.

The New Elite of Pre-War Japan

As the old hierarchy was destroyed, a new one was created in its place. The leaders of the Meiji Restoration copied the system of peerage from Great Britain, giving themselves the titles of ‘count’ and ‘marquis’ despite an often middling or low samurai status, and bestowing similar status on powerful merchant families allied to the new regime. In addition, special titles and privileges were given to the various branches of the Imperial family, which had fallen into obscurity in the Tolcugawa period, and to former Tolcugawa lords, who were given a place in the new status hierarchy as well. Wealthy merchants, landlords and senior government officials constituted a new elite which grew in influence to occupy a central place in the pre-war regime.

Two domains, Satsuma (at the far end of Japan’s southernmost island, Kyushu) and Choshu (at the southern tip of Japan’s main island, Honshu), dominated both the overthrow of the Tolcugawa regime and the Meiji state formed immediately afterward. At the same time as providing themselves and their supporters with new posts and titles, the Satsuma and Choshu elite – often known as the Meiji oligarchs – modernised Japan by abolishing the old domains, stripping the samurai of their swords and their status, and pensioning off lords and samurai alike in the process of creating a modern centralised state. In addition, the new regime also allowed commoners (i.e. non-samurai) to become public officials as well as soldiers and officers in Japan’s modern army and navy.

This process of substituting one form of hierarchy for another did not go unchallenged, however. The early opposition to the Meiji oligarchy arose from disgruntled former samurai. While attempts to restore the old order were easily put down by the new Meiji army, the opposition was most successful when it combined radical ideas favouring democracy drawn from Rousseau with demands for an aggressive foreign policy. These demands led to a series of violent protests known as the Movement for Liberty and Popular Rights (Jiyn Minken Undo). In order to appease the supporters of this movement, the Meiji government pursued a policy of war and expansion into Formosa and Korea at the turn of the twentieth century. The government also established an elected Lower House of parliament with limited powers as part of the 1890 Imperial Constitution, though officially the concession of the constitution was a ‘gift’ of the emperor to his people. The movement itself, however, was quickly repressed by the authorities.

Nonetheless, the first elections for the new parliament soon led to the formation of political parties, with the opposition continuing to carry the banner of the popular rights movement. The problem was, however, that MPs represented only the largest taxpayers, so the opposition spoke primarily on behalf of disgruntled landlords who bore the brunt of the tax burden. The Meiji oligarchy was able to keep this and other new opposition parties under control through a combination of policies which included selective repression, bribery and the formation of a government party. However, one of the most effective methods of reducing the power of the landlord-based parties was to lower the tax requirement for voting rights and enable more non-landlords, particularly wealthier merchants and urban taxpayers, to participate in politics. By 1926, fall manhood suffrage was achieved, though landlords and wealthy merchants still dominated party politics at the local level in most districts.

It was also the 1920s which saw the demise of Meiji oligarchic control of the government as the narrow elite which had carried out the Meiji Restoration died of old age. Links to the old Satsuma and Choshu domains became less important as commoners recruited and promoted on merit began to rise to the highest levels of officialdom. This development was particularly significant in the case of the military. The death of the hardline Meiji oligarch Yamagata Aritomo in 1922 was symbolic not only of the demise of Choshu dominance of the Japanese army but of samurai dominance as well. Unfortunately, this led to a decline in discipline within the military when newly promoted officers became increasingly prone to independent action in the field and susceptible to right-wing nationalist ideas as the old regional loyalties and samurai values declined in importance.

As the 1920s came to an end, these military radicals opposed more and more openly the influence of political parties over government. The parties seemed poised to replace the old Meiji elite, but in the eyes of many military officers political parties seemed to be hopelessly corrupt and eager to pursue policies which weakened the role of the military. In particular, Japan’s special rights in China appeared to be threatened and Japanese national security was seemingly put at risk as party governments inadvertently encouraged Chinese nationalism with policies of non-confrontation. In addition, party governments participated in the negotiation of disarmament agreements and reduced the military’s budget.

By the early 1930s, junior officers in the field began to take action, including participation in attempted coups against party governments and independent military initiatives in China. While the officers and their extremist right-wing allies insisted on their loyalty to the emperor and the nation, their targets were wealthy business and party leaders who represented the economic and political elite of Japan. The young military radicals sought to act on behalf of the common people. However, in the aftermath of a failed coup in 1936, these radicals, notably the ‘imperial way’ (Kodoha) faction, were suppressed by the ‘control’ (Tosei) faction of army conservatives. This control faction essentially protected the domestic Japanese elite, though it was even more aggressive internationally than the imperial way faction and effectively seized control of Japanese foreign and security policy in exchange for supporting the status quo.

The political vulnerability of the Japanese elite was not surprising given its small size. A Fortune magazine special issue on Japan in 1936 put the number of Japanese ‘gentlemen’ at a minuscule 0.4 per cent of Japanese families with an annual income per family of more than $3,000 a year – approximately 50,000 out of 13,500,000 families.⁵ Moreover, the new elite had little credibility as the traditional elite in Japan. It was a new aristocracy based on wealth created as a result of the industrial development of Japan after World War I:

The old feudal aristocracy of ancient bloodlines no longer makes much sense except in the lingering pride of certain of those lines. Some of the new gentlemen of Japan come from the old aristocracy, are descended from the upper levels of the feudal soldiery (samurai). But the new Japan is an industrial power, her greatest riches are industrial riches, and they have created what is very largely an industrial aristocracy. The current gentlemen of Japan are very largely industrial gentlemen. Or their heirs.⁶

Despite the reliance of this small elite on the military and the state to maintain order, it would be a mistake to identify it with a backward-looking nationalism. The ideal of the pre-war Japanese elite was a hybrid of Western and Japanese elements, but it was the Western aspects, especially in the most modern cities, which were loci of the public and visible accretions of elite status:

Japanese gentlemen work (if they do work) and live in cities which are a mixture of East and West, as are their habits. They work in the most Westernized settings in those cities, inside classical marbles and at mahogany desks, with Western panelling on the walls and often Western-style portraits. But the maid who brings in the green tea which refreshes business conferences usually wears a kimono, and when the gentleman gets through for the day, and goes out into his pilastered hall and down the Otis elevator and out the burnished revolving doors to his Lincoln or Cadillac at the curb, he moves into a hybrid city.⁷

This extended to private life as well, with the homes of the Japanese elite including Western-style rooms and many preferring Western domestic customs. This was particularly true with drink, which included French wines and Scottish whiskys as well as domestically produced beer and sake (rice wine).⁸ Indeed, elite status and an affluent lifestyle in Japan meant acquiring the best of Western culture and technology as much as the better things which Japan had to offer. This was increasingly imitated by local elites, particularly landlords and merchants.

Tanaka’s Rural Background

The Meiji Restoration which made possible the modernisation of Japan also had an impact on non-elites. Peasants were given title to their lands and restrictions were removed on the activities of petty manufacturers and merchants. Commoners were al...