Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society

Victoria Bestor, Theodore C. Bestor, Akiko Yamagata, Victoria Bestor, Theodore C. Bestor, Akiko Yamagata

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136736261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: History

The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary resource that focuses on contemporary Japan and the social and cultural trends that are important at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This Handbook provides a cutting-edge and comprehensive survey of significant phenomena, institutions, and directions in Japan today, on issues ranging from gender and family, the environment, race and ethnicity, and urban life, to popular culture and electronic media. Written by an international team of Japan experts, the chapters included in the volume form an accessible and fascinating insight into Japanese culture and society. As such, the Handbook will be an invaluable reference tool for anyone interested in all things Japanese. Students, teachers and professionals alike will benefit from the broad ranging discussions, useful links to online resources and suggested reading lists.

The Handbook will be of interest across a wide range of disciplines including Japanese Studies, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and Asian Studies in general.

Part I Social foundations

DOI: 10.4324/9780203818459-2

1 Shōwa-era Japan and beyond

From Imperial Japan to Japan Inc.

Peter Duus

DOI: 10.4324/9780203818459-3

In 1968, on the 100th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration, two out of three respondents to an Asahi Shimbun poll chose World War II as the most important event of the preceding century. It may be surprising that they did not choose the Restoration itself, the event that launched Japan on the fast track to modernity, but war and defeat loomed large in public memory. The surrender in 1945 was a moment of trauma, dislocation, and change in the lives of most adult Japanese, and two decades later, it still felt like a major rupture in the flow of the history.

On one side of that rupture was the “dark valley” of the 1930s when an increasingly militaristic government plunged the country into war, first with China, the world’s most populous country, and then with the United States, the world’s most industrialized. These early years of the Shōwa era (1926–89) were years of stifling political repression, growing austerity, and unprecedented death and destruction. On the other side of the rupture was a peaceful and democratic “New Japan,” no longer a major world power but a prosperous industrial country whose people had begun to enjoy the “bright life” – a consumerist lifestyle unimaginable before the war. In the space of a generation, “Imperial Japan” had been transformed into “Japan Inc.”

Today this narrative, with its stark contrast of a “dark” and “light” Japan, is no longer as persuasive as it was in the late 1960s. As time has passed, the historical continuities across the divide of defeat have become clearer, and the contrasts more muted. Much of our understanding of postwar Japan’s history has been shaped not by historians so much as by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and other social scientists working with paradigms that emphasize long-term change such as “modernization,” “economic development,” or “social evolution.” In recent years, some historians in both Japan and the United States have also come to speak of a “transwar period” stretching from the 1920s into the 1960s, when familiar features of the “New Japan” were forged in the crucible of depression, war, defeat, and foreign occupation. Broad patterns of change that had been obscured by a historiography focused on politics, diplomacy, and war have emerged in sharper relief.

The transwar perspective offers a useful framework for a volume on contemporary Japanese culture and society. It places contemporary Japan in the longue durée. But history written in this register obscures as much as it reveals. It does not linger over the events that provided the dynamic of long-term change: the preparations for war, the war itself, the experience of defeat, and the American Occupation. Nor does it provide a sense of how it felt to experience such rapid historical change. It also suggests a linear Pollyanna-ish view of history in which everything turns out all right at the end. Nevertheless, the transwar perspective reminds us that historical change is cumulative, that institutions, mores, and culture change in measured ways, and that historical ruptures are never complete. This is perhaps most obvious in looking at economic growth, which followed a long upward trajectory that proceeded in fits and starts; but it was true of other broad developments as well.

The state and industrial growth

The postwar “economic miracle” has dominated the narrative of contemporary Japan. Between 1955 and 1973 the real GNP grew at the then-remarkable annual rate of 10–11 percent. By 1968, it ranked second in size among the advanced market economies of the world. As many economists have pointed out, however, rapid economic growth was nothing new. During the 1930s, when Japan was still regarded as a latecomer economy poorly endowed with resources and burdened by a growing population, its economy was growing at an annual rate of 4–5 percent, faster than the Western economies. Industrial growth continued after the outbreak of full-scale war in China in 1937, and it was brought to a halt only with the massive wartime bombing that began in late 1944. But even at the time of surrender, the plant capacity of Japanese heavy industry was greater than it had been eight years before (Nakamura 1981: ch. 1).

Economic growth in the 1930s was stimulated less by domestic consumption or exports than by military production. The country had been known abroad as an exporter of cheap textiles goods, toys, and other light industrial goods, but as the country prepared for war, heavy industry’s share of output rose, from 35.3 percent in 1930 to 59.2 percent in 1940. A new economic bureaucracy, lodged in the Ministry of Commerce and the Cabinet Planning Board, worked to create new industries essential to the war effort, such as petroleum refining, aircraft manufacturing, and motor vehicle production. Convinced that “planned rationality” was superior to the vagaries of “market rationality,” th ey advocated government intervention, central planning, and market controls to accelerate economic development.

The economy, however, remained based on private enterprise. Instead of creating government enterprises, the economic bureaucracy deployed protective tariffs, import restrictions, business exemptions, subsidies, and other financial incentives to encourage private corporate investment in new industries. It was in response to such measures, for example, that an automobile industry came into being. Firms like Nissan, Toyota, and Isuzu began to manufacture a few passenger models along with military trucks and tanks. After the outbreak of the war in China, government controls on prices, wages, and materials were put in place, and eventually industrial production was put under the supervision of a new Ministry of Munitions.

After the war the economic bureaucrats moved into the newly established Ministry of Trade and International Industry (MITI), where they played a key role in the recovery of the industrial sector. During the 1950s MITI used the same incentives deployed to build the wartime industrial structure to promote the expansion of targeted industries like steel, aluminum, petrochemicals, and electronics. The goal was to raise the technology and productivity in domestic firms to international levels so that they could compete with foreign firms in the domestic market. At the same time the Ministry of Finance adopted fiscal policies that kept interest rates and corporate taxes low. The close collaboration between economic bureaucrats and corporate leaders prompted foreign journalists to suggest that the economy was being run as a gigantic corporate enterprise: “Japan Inc.”

The postwar political environment nurtured the government’s growth-oriented policies. Defeat made most Japanese wary of ever pursuing an aggressive foreign policy again. Mainstream political leaders like Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru envisaged a postwar future for Japan as a major trading power at peace with its neighbors in Asia. Although the United States pressed Japan to rearm rapidly after the Occupation ended, conservative politicians chose instead to rely on a de facto alliance with the Americans for the country’s defense. Sitting under the protection of the American “nuclear umbrella,” the economy was not burdened with heavy military expenditures. The country could devote its energy, manpower, and other resources to economic growth instead of overseas adventures.

While government industrial policy guided postwar recovery and aggressive private corporate investment accelerated industrial expansion in the 1950s and 1960s, the economy benefited from an international environment that facilitated rapid growth. As the result of international efforts to promote worldwide “free and fair” trade through fixed exchange rates and reduced tariffs, the world economy was growing by leaps and bounds. All advanced countries benefited, but Japan, with its single-minded focus on the pursuit of growth and its dependence on imports of energy and other resources, benefited even more. The industrial raw materials that Japan lacked were easily available and relatively cheap in the world market. As new oil fields opened in the Middle East, the Japanese shifted their main energy source from coal and hydroelectric power to oil-fueled thermoelectricity. Under the system of fixed exchange rates, the Japanese government kept the price of Japanese exports competitive by leaving the value unchanged even as the economy grew.

The relentless drive toward economic growth had a broad social and political impact. First, rapid economic growth restored a sense of nation that had been eroded by the humiliation of defeat and foreign occupation. A kind of “GNP nationalism” took hold of the public imagination. The Japanese could no longer boast about the country’s prowess as a military or diplomatic power, but they could boast of its success as an economic superpower. By the 1970s many journalists and academics even linked economic growth to national character by arguing that “unique” aspects of Japanese society and culture, such as the values of discipline, industriousness, frugality, and teamwork, made this “economic miracle” possible.

Second, the steady growth of the economy stabilized the political environment, which had been beset by intense confrontation between conservative parties and left-wing (“progressive”) parties in the immediate postwar years. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party, organized in 1955, bolstered its hold on the government for the next four decades by embracing “GNP nationalism.” For example, the “Income Doubling Plan” announced by Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato in 1960 promised a two-fold increase in average household income over the next decade, and the promise was fulfilled several years ahead of time. Electoral support for the left opposition, the Japan Socialist Party, went into decline, and so did the scale and incidence of other radical opposition movements.

Most important of all, the energetic pursuit of rapid economic growth reoriented ordinary Japanese from the pursuit of public goals to the pursuit of private ones. Public opinion polls in the 1960s and 1970s showed a significant level of apathy or indifference toward politics and a marked shift toward the pursuit of personal fulfillment. Most Japanese defined work and family as their main life goals and chose rest, travel, play, sports, and culture when asked what they wanted more time for in the future (NHK 1991). The patriotic values that had sustained Imperial Japan gave way to individualistic values that built Japan Inc.

The corporate world

The postwar corporate world also took shape in the prewar years. The onset of the depression spurred a trend toward oligopoly. Huge business conglomerates (zaibatsu) like Mitsubishi and Mitsui continued to grow in size during the 1930s, and mergers took place in many industries – iron and steel, banking, beer brewing, heavy machinery, electric power – as a means of increasing productivity through economies of scale. The trend was encouraged by the government, which found it easier to regulate a small number of large firms than the reverse. Once war broke out, the economic bureaucracy sought to overcome the “chaos” of competition by creating “control associations” that allocated raw materials, fixed market shares, and set prices in all major industries. Zaibatsu enterprises and other large firms dominated these associations.

Although the Allied Occupation attempted to “deconcentrate” the economy after the war, corporate managers had learned the value of “orderly competition.” The 1950s witnessed the emergence of “enterprise groups” (keiretsu), loosely affiliated alliances of corporations relying for capital on a common financial institution, sharing information about the market and resources, and buying each other’s shares. (Many of these enterprise groups closely mirrored the composition of prewar zaibatsu.) Competition did not decline but took place in an oligopolistic framework. In most industries companies from one enterprise group competed for market share with companies in other groups. Firms that introduced new technologies, improved productivity, and cut unit costs succeeded in besting their competitors.

During the 1930s and 1940s large firms came more and more under the leadership of professional managers, who were neither owners nor major shareholders but career employees who worked their way up the corporate ladder. This “separation of ownership and management” was accompanied by a shift in corporate financing, especially after the outbreak of war. Instead of raising capital through the public sale of stocks and shares to private investors, the government encouraged large corporations to borrow from major banks (known as “city banks”) that treated them as preferred customers. These banks became central to the coordination of activities within specific enterprise groups.

The practice of “indirect financing” (i.e. relying on banks and other financial institutions rather than brokerage houses) continued in the postwar period. This made corporate leaders more attentive to lenders than to the demands of private stockholders. It has been argued that this enabled corporate managers to pursue the goal of increasing market share over the long term rather than worrying about immediate profit returns.

The so-called “Japanese employment system” also took shape during the prewar years. By the 1920s large companies, following the model of the bureaucratic elite, offered career-long employment to newly hired technicians, engineers, and white-collar workers, and based their salaries and promotions on length of employment. The practice discouraged job-hopping and rewarded long-term commitment to the company. Blue-collar workers, however, usually did not enjoy such benefits, especially in the light industries like textiles. Complaints about management treatment were at the core of many prewar labor disputes.

During the war the government dissolved existing labor unions and organized workers in large companies into “patriotic production associations” to foster cooperation between labor and management. When the war ended, the Allied Occupation legalized trade union activity and encouraged the growth of independent industrial unions; but in practice “enterprise unions” representing both white-collar and blue-collar workers in a single company became the rule. Workers in enterprise unions tended to identify with their firms, facilitating collaboration between management and workers (see also Slater, Chapter 8).

Although labor conflict intensified in the immediate postwar years – when company managers clashed with labor leaders over both political and workplace issues – in the early 1950s blue-collar workers began to win the same treatment extended to white-collar workers: lifetime employment, age-graded promotions, company housing, and other welfare benefits.The demand for labor grew rapidly as the economy expanded, giving labor more leverage in negotiating with management. In the Spring of 1955, large corporations and labor federations hit upon a new modus operandi for reducing strikes and other confrontations. Labor federation leaders targeted a single industry for the negotiation of an annual raise, and once agreement was reached on a “base-up,” it became the standard for labor negotiations in other industries. This so-called “Spring offensive” contributed to a steady decline in working days lost to labor disputes as well as rising profits and rising wages.

To be sure, the “Japanese employment system” affected only a minority of employees. Most companies also relied on part-time workers, many of them women, who did not enjoy the benefits of full-time “regular” workers. At the same time, many companies continued to subcontract various aspects of production. The manufacture of parts, the maintenance and repair of plant facilities, as well as delivery and various other services, were outsourced to small or medium-sized contractors, who often hired subcontractors in turn.

This “dual structure” of the labor market, already evident in the 1920s, was encouraged by the government during the war as a way to maximize production. However, small firms, operating with limited profits, paid low wages, often relied on family members or neighbors as workers, and offered little job security. These firms were sometimes the source of technical innovations and improvements, yet they were also vulnerable to sudden changes in the market. Lacking the capital to tide over slowdowns, they often laid off workers in order to survive.

From village to city

Despite advances in industrialization, Japan remained a heavily agrarian society in the 1930s. Although agricultural production accounted for only 15–17 percent of GNP, farmers and other agricultural workers accounted for nearly half the working force. Farmers still used the same tools and techniques that their ancestors had for generations. Despite the rural diffusion of modern amenities like elementary schools and electric lights, their daily lives remained embedded in traditional folkways. Only about one-third of farm households owned all the land they farmed. The rest were either full-time tenant farmers or part-tenant/part-owners working for landlords who dominated the political and social life of the villages. Rural areas were particularly hard hit by the onset of the depression, as prices fell and farm household debt increased.

Ironically, the lot of the rural communities began to improve during the war. Farmers benefited from food shortages that drove up the price of rice and other agricultural products. Worried by the social tensions created by landlordism and anxious to assure steady production of foodstuffs, the government also began to buy rice directly from the farmers at fixed prices, bypassing the landlords and reducing their income and their sway. After the war a land reform program initiated by the government, and then expanded by the Allied Occupation authorities, set limits on the amount of land a household could own. Landlords were forced to sell their excess holdings to former tenants, who bought them with the help of low-cost government loans. By 1950, 50 percent of all agricultural land was self-cultivated by small-scale farmers. To preserve their electoral base, conservative governments continued to promote rural prosperity by financing rural public works programs, restricting agricultural imports, and maintaining the price of rice well above world market levels.

Although the farmers’ lot had improved substantially...