The Political Economy of Japanese Globalisation

Harukiyo Hasegawa, Glenn D. Hook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415232869
• eBook ISBN: 9781134571024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Political Economy of Japanese Globalisation reveals the key dimensions of Japanese globalisation today by analysing both its inward and outward manifestations. This is the first book to examine fully the issue of globalisation in relation to Japan. Organised in three parts, The Political Economy of Japanese Globalisation reveals the meanings and implications of the study of Japan's globalization in the context of on-going debates about globalisation in general. The book demonstrates how, despite the passing of the 'Japanese model', Japan can still provide significant insights into the meaning of this phenomenon.
The first part of the book examines globalization in politics and international relations: Japan's particular position in globalization; its recent role in the East Asian political economy; and the relative identities of Japan and Europe. Part two looks at the economy and business at the heart of Japanese globalization: Japan's globalization in Asia as part of oriental capitalism; its recent financial reforms; the US globalization in Japan; Japan's impact on Germany and the meaning of 'Japanization' and 'globalization'. The third part of the book assesses the social issues in Japan in the context of globalization, highlighting the positive political impact of globalization seen in the way externally generated pressures have brought into focus 'universal' values, such as citizenship, human rights and democracy.
Providing a clear analysis of the political economy of Japanese globalization in one volume, The Political Economy of Japanese Globalization is a major resource for postgraduates and researchers in Japanese studies, Asian studies, international relations, international political economy, as well as for all those dealing with Japan professionally.

Part I

Globalization in politics and
international relations

1

The global meaning of Japan

The state’s persistently precarious position in the world order

Takahashi Susumu

Two meanings of ‘global’

The meaning of modern Japan from the perspective of world history

This chapter presupposes that the word ‘global’ contains at least two meanings: first, simply another word for world-wide; second, something new which has been rapidly created by new historical forces. The purpose here is to elucidate the world-wide meaning (the global meaning in the former sense) of non-global Japan. In other words, this chapter aims to examine the basic features of modern Japan from the perspective of world history, although at the end it will touch on the meaning of global Japan, in which case ‘global’ will be used in the latter sense. Its main focus is on the basic features of modern Japanese foreign policy from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the present time. Given the long time-span covered, for heuristic purposes the history of modern Japan will be divided into the following five periods:

1 The period of building modern Japan: from the Meiji Restoration to the beginning of the twentieth century (the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5).

2 The period of consolidating modern Japan: the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the 1920s in the early Shōwa period (1925–30). It features democratization, industrialization and the enhancement of Japan’s position in the international community.

3 The period of searching for great power status: the beginning of the 1930s to the end of the Second World War. Japan committed itself in this period to a series of armed conflicts: the Manchurian incident, the war with China, and the Pacific War.

4 The period of building another modern Japan: the history of post-war Japan coloured by high-speed economic development as well by the shrunken role of Japan in world politics. This feature of post-war Japan can be summarized as the economic giant, political pigmy.

5 The period of sea change: this period, from the end of the 1980s to the present, shows the lack of adaptability of Japan’s post-war model to a rapidly globalizing world. In politics, although the old political system collapsed, political fluidity continues and a new political system has yet to be established. In the economy, a mismatch between the post-war economic model of Japan and the globalizing economy has become increasingly evident.

Preconditions of Japanese foreign policy

Before addressing the main topic of this chapter, it is first necessary to draw attention to recent work carried out by Japanese historians on the preconditions of modern Japan’s foreign policy. They have attempted to revise the orthodox interpretation of the world view of modern Japan promulgated by US Japan specialists, namely that since the Meiji Restoration Japan has adapted itself to the Western state system and succeeded in maintaining national independence and building a modern nation state in the Western sense. Following this interpretation, the history of modern Japan can be described as a successful history of modernization. In this sense, the successful achievement of modernization can be viewed as the global meaning of Japan.

Revisionists, however, are challenging this orthodox interpretation (Watanabe 1997). They place emphasis on the continuity of a world view based on the traditional, pre-modern world order. It is a view strongly influenced by that of the Chinese Empire. As reflected in its position as the Middle Kingdom (chūka), China viewed itself as situated at the centre of a vast square earth, surrounded by the Four Seas, beyond which lay islands inhabited by barbarians. China has always asserted this central position in the world order. This Sino-centric view was transmitted into pre-modern, Tokugawa Japan. The reactions were varied: some Confucian scholars admired China as a great civilization, whereas others rejected this attitude and further claimed that chū (the centre) probably fitted Japan more precisely than it did China – geographically Japan, surrounded by the four seas, was stronger than China surrounded and periodically conquered by the four barbarians. What is important to stress is that Meiji Japan did not abandon this Sino-centric view of the world order, as many leaders in early Meiji Japan took the view that the Western powers occupied the central position always asserted by China. The attempt to civilize Japan (bunmeikaika) in the early Meiji period, according to Watanabe, should not be understood simply as Westernization, but also as the rise of Japan to the position of centrality in the world order in place of China (chūka) (Watanabe 1997:244–57).

This Middle Kingdom theory in the Chinese sense strongly influenced the view of the world order shared by early Meiji leaders. Iwakura Tomomi, one of the powerful leaders who visited the West in the early 1870s, wrote in 1869:

Even though we must make contact with every foreign country, these countries are the enemy of our Imperial Japan. What is an enemy? Every foreign country consumes so much energy in studying literature, developing technology and strengthening power … in order to gain a superior position to other countries. Country A treats country B in this way. Country B also treats country C in the same way. Therefore I claim that every foreign country is an enemy of our Imperial Japan.

(Oka 1993:243)

The quote demonstrates this period’s early and primitive discourse on power politics. It also provides a key to understanding the view of world order through which the political leaders perceived international politics and responded to them. The key sentences are ‘Country A treats country B in this way. Country B also treats country C in the same way.’ Clearly, the underlining assumption of these sentences is the vertical or hierarchical view of the world order, otherwise, country A would treat country B in one way, whereas country B would treat country C in another way. A corollary point is a logical consequence of the first: Iwakura considered the relationship between country A and country B in terms of superiority and inferiority, not in terms of power resources. This mind-set, it is argued, helps to account for the foreign behaviour of modern Japan (Maruyama 1992; Oka 1993).

Pre-war Japan: sub-imperialism and regional power

Sub-imperialism

Although it is true that a key aim of Meiji Japan’s foreign policy was to maintain independence, another important aim was to attain a higher rank in the international community. To this end a search for colonies was launched, as in the case of Japan’s colonization of Taiwan and Korea. By the time the full annexation of Korea was accomplished in 1910, this aim had been realized following colonial acquisitions and the defeat of China in 1895 and Russia in 1905. Another Meiji leader, Inoue Kaoru, wrote in 1887:

What we have to do is to transform our empire [Imperial Japan, not the Japanese colonial empire] and our people, make the empire like the countries of Europe and our people like the peoples of Europe. To put it differently, we have to establish a new, European-style empire on the edge of Asia.

(Jansen 1992:106)

In 1885, the well-known Meiji thinker, Fukuzawa Yukichi, called on Japan to part from Asia (datsua). His arguments could be summarized by saying that progress for Japan required distancing itself from Asia. By 1912, when the Meiji period ended and the Taishō period started, Meiji Japan, as Fukuzawa had advocated, had attained the position of an imperial power by successful Westernization and modernization. From this perspective, the global meaning of the development of Meiji Japan is the success of modernization and the enhanced position of Japan in the international community.

Yet this is no more than a one-sided view of Meiji Japan. In a well-known piece examining British imperialism, Gallagher and Robinson distinguish between ‘informal empire’ and ‘formal empire’ (Gallagher and Robinson 1976). They found that the British Empire in the nineteenth century had such a strong power base that it could deploy various means to control non-Western, less developed countries on a case-by-case basis, depending on the circumstances. On the one hand, when the British Empire faced favourable conditions, it tended to control the targeted non-Western countries informally – that is, it subordinated them without colonizing them. On the other, when the Empire faced less auspicious circumstances, as when circumscribed by proto-nationalist movements in the targeted countries, it deployed force against the opposition and ruled the country formally. The former case can be regarded as a formal, and the latter as an informal, empire.

From this perspective, an empire possesses two types of colonies: formal and informal. Meiji Japan’s foreign behaviour suggests that, by the time of the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, it had become an informal colony of the Western powers. It was this position as an informal colony, as demonstrated by the unequal treaties that the Tokugawa government was forced to sign with the West in the 1850s and early 1860s, which drove Japan to sub-imperialism in East Asia – that is, imperialist behaviour by a country that is controlled informally by a more powerful imperialist country (Beasley 1987; Banno 1996; Mitani 1997).

The sub-imperialist power plays a double role. Whereas it is the object of a great power’s expansion, it is simultaneously the subject which can expand its control beyond its own territory and dominate its neighbours (Fieldhouse 1973). Because early Meiji Japan was controlled informally by the Western powers, or at the very least was perceived to be controlled by them, it attempted to expand its power into neighbouring East Asia. In a sense, early Meiji Japan switched from resisting the expansion of the Western powers to expanding into neighbouring countries. It can thus be regarded as a classic sub-imperialist power (Moriyama 1992).

Japanese sub-imperialism inhered the following three basic characteristics. First, as a sub-imperialist power, Japan was more conscious of being the object of informal colonial rule by the Western imperialist powers than of colonizing neighbouring East Asia. That explains why Meiji Japan did not identify itself as an imperialist power. Second, because of its unstable and insecure position in the East Asian regional order, Japan as a sub-imperialist power implemented a more brutal colonial policy than did the Western powers. Third, Japan as a sub-imperialist power had to tackle the difficult question of how to justify colonialism not as a colonial power, but as a power resisting Western colonial rule. Herein lies the importance of the ideology of Japanese colonialism as liberation from Western colonial rule. When the Sino-Japanese War began in 1894, Uchimura Kanzō, a prominent Christian leader who had stood almost alone in resisting the ideological claims of Meiji Japan, wrote that since Japan’s announced purpose of liberating Korea from Chinese suzerainty was unselfish and pure, it was reasonable to see it as a just war. He continued: ‘Japan’s victory will mean free government, free religion, free education, and free commerce for 600 million souls that live on this side of the globe’ (Jansen 1992:111). This was the argument of anti-colonial colonialism. About half a century later, this contradictory rhetoric led to that grand illusion, the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Thus, although early Meiji Japan did not identify itself as a sub-imperialist power, its thought and behaviour demonstrated its typical form.

Regional power

During the period from the Russo-Japanese War to the end of the 1920s, Japan strengthened its power enormously by annexing Korea, expanding its control in south Manchuria, entering the Permanent Council of the League of Nations, and participating in the Washington Conference system. In this way, it gained gradually at least a quasi-first rank position in the international community. The orthodox interpretation of Japanese foreign policy sees the positive side of this historical transition and considers the path chartered by Japan to have led to its transformation from a revisionist to a status quo power. An implicit assumption of this interpretation is that Japan should be satisfied with its achievement, abandon its ambition, and stop aggressive behaviour. Certainly, if early Shōwa Japan had recognized itself as a status quo power, it would have followed another historical path. As the Manchurian Incident showed, however, it did not, and hence remained a revisionist power.

The reason for Japanese dissatisfaction with the great achievements the nation had made in the historical context of the late nineteenth century is related to the structural instability of its international position at that time. As a sub-imperialist power, Japan was pushed into the position of becoming a regional power as a result of gaining two formal colonies (Taiwan and Korea) and an informal colony in parts of China. A regional power shares three characteristics. First, it establishes hegemony in a defined region, not on a world scale. Second, its ability to maintain hegemony in the region depends on the intentions and capabilities of the extra-regional Great Powers, for a regional power cannot confront a great power or a coalition of Great Powers by itself. Finally, it faces the possibility of one of the countries it subordinated resisting and weakening its hegemonic position with the assistance of the Great Powers outside of the region. The regional power is thus in the paradoxical position of having capabilities which are too small to make a regional order by itself, but too large to be simply subordinated to a great power. In this sense, a regional power is neither a great power nor a small power.

As with Japan, therefore, a regional power cannot by definition gain a stable position in the international order. It is always put under constant pressure from the Great Powers outside of the region, on the one hand, but imposes heavy pressure on the subordinated countries within the region in order to prevent them from resisting it with the assistance of the extra-regional Great Powers, on the other. Its position is so precarious that it is always worried about the nightmare of resistance by the subordinated peoples in its colonies in combination with the military or diplomatic intervention of the Great Powers. In the worst case, a regional power may yield to the temptation to impose a regional order in a self-centred way and make a suicidal attempt to shut out the Great Powers from the region (Banno 1993, 1996; Mitani 1997).

The insecurity felt by Japan as a regional power is well illustrated by an article by Tokutomi Sohō, a famous nationalistic journalist in Meiji and Taishō Japan. He wrote in 1916:

The countries of the white men are already extending into the forefront of Japan. They have already encroached on China, India and Persia. Japan is not so far from Europe. Most of the countries in the east from Suez, excluding Japan, have been dominated by them. Coping with such a situation, can we have a hope of equal treatment between the white man and the yellow man? No … Although Chinese, like us, also belong to the world of the yellow man, they always humble themselves before the white man and indulge themselves by leading a comfortable life. We, Japanese, should take care of the yellow man in general, Chinese in particular. We should claim that the mission of the Japanese Empire is to fully implement an Asian Monroe Doctrine.

An Asian Monroe Doctrine means for Asians themselves to deal with the affairs of Asia. Although we say that Asians should handle their own affairs by themselves, there are no other Asian people than the Japanese who are entitled to perform this mission. Therefore, an Asian Monroe Doctrine means in reality a Monroe Doctrine led by the Japanese. However, my opinion should not be misunderstood. I am not the sort of narrow-minded person who claims that we should shut out the white man from Asia. What I want to say is that we should not be dependent upon the white man, and that we should end the dominance of the white man in Asia.

(Eguchi 1993:42–3)

Tokotomi’s line of argument, which illustrates Pan-Asianism, clearly shows the mind-set of the Japanese elite in this period (Hiraishi 1998). It had three key elements. The first was a sense of frustration at being in the pos...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/Routledge Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Globalization in politics and international relations
• Part II Globalization in economy and business
• Part III Globalization in nationand society
• Glossary
• Index