Japanese and Russian Politics

Polar Opposites or Something in Common?

T. Inoguchi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137488442
• eBook ISBN: 9781137488459
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume offers a comparative analysis of Japanese and Russian politics in the 2010s, examining both domestic dimensions and foreign policy. A bi-national collaborative effort, the volume is structured to offer perspectives on each country from both Russian and Japanese scholars. An introduction by Takashi Inoguchi gives a historical overview of the two countries' paths to development as 'late comers' vis-à-vis the West in the late nineteenth century. The analysis that follows reveals that Japan and Russia have come to acquire genuinely striking contrasting features: frequent leadership change despite extraordinary societal stability and continuity in Japan and infrequent leadership change despite extraordinary ups and downs in Russia.

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Japan and Russia: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy*

Takashi Inoguchi

Introduction

This volume attempts to present how Japanese and Russian academics portray and analyze the domestic politics and foreign policy of the two countries in the 2010s. In an era of globalization, Seymore Martin Lipset¹ is most apt when he says that one never knows one country without knowing other countries. A foremost scholar specializing in and well-versed with one country cannot automatically be a scholar in the Lipset sense. When “socialism in one country” was a good slogan for Russia during much of the Soviet period (1917–1991) and when the Economic Planning Agency drew Japan’s “national economic outlook” in much of the preglobalization era (before 1985–), knowing one country was almost enough for country specialists—a starkly different feat in the 2010s.

Japan and Russia are widely considered one of the many pairs of countries that are polar opposites in many senses. For example, one can say that Japan is democratic in politics, market-oriented in economics, “dovish” in foreign policy, whereas Russia is authoritarian in politics, control-oriented in economic management, and “hawkish” in foreign policy. Scholars specializing in one country tend to characterize other countries’ politics and economics in light of their familiar home country. Those scholars who are well-versed with two or more countries are sometimes different. Alexander Gerschenkron² coined the concept of the advantage of a latecomer on the basis of his unrivalled familiarity with Russian and German economics. Ronald Dore³ compared the strengths and weaknesses in British and Japanese management of manufacturing factories due to his unsurpassed knowledge of British and Japanese factories.

This volume aims at a much more modest task. It is to present how Japanese and Russian scholars portray and examine the domestic politics and foreign policy of the two countries. In order to alleviate the deficiencies of one country specialists in the Lipset sense, the editor formulated the team of scholars as follows: the team of Japanese scholars examined both Japanese and Russian domestic politics and foreign policy, while the team of Russian scholars examine both Russian and Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy. Strict pairing of scholars was not adopted in terms of the same comparative concepts used. What is the merit of this approach in comparing Japan and Russia? What is the merit of avoiding strict fixed conceptualization? The editor has recourse to Albert Hirschmann,⁴ when he argues that what he calls the hiding hand principle enables one to be creative when facing difficulties. Or in his own words:

Since we necessarily underestimate our creativity it is desirable that we underestimate to a roughly similar extent the difficulties of the tasks we face, so as to be tricked by these two offsetting underestimates was into undertaking tasks which we can, but otherwise would not dare, tackle. The principle is important enough to deserve a name: since we are apparently on the trail here of some sort of Invisible or Hidden Hand that beneficially hides difficulties from us, I propose “The Hiding Hand”⁵.

Hence the task of this volume is for Japanese and Russian scholars to portray and examine the politics of both countries in a set of somewhat loosely assigned instruction: Identify the key characteristic of the politics of both countries and title your chapter accordingly.

Then readers may ask a key question: Why is the hiding hand principle possibly effective in guiding this volume? The world, besides country specialists in both countries and beyond, knows little of these two countries; their perceptual and behavioral interactions; their analytical and judgmental slants and biases; and their low probability “correlation of forces.” However “correlation of forces” might perhaps be better phrased as “coincidence of ideas or models. For example, what would happen if Japan in Asia and Russia in Europe become closer? Or what would happen if they remain as “cold” as it has been since 1945?

Two Historical Portrayals

Japan is normally compared either with other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) industrial democracies⁶ or more recently with East Asian democracies.⁷ Russia is commonly compared to other former communist countries in Eastern Europe. Both are often treated as rara avis, and thus neither is compared with the other. Why are we interested in this comparison? Because they have one commonality: they are latecomers vis-à-vis the West. This introduction attempts to lay out why the Japan-Russia historical comparative portrayal is important to those interested in their politics, internal and external.

The concept of latecomer and its use in analysis are fairly common both in Japan and in Russia.⁸ Cognizant of being a latecomer in the nineteenth century, both Japan and Russia chose a determined and quick development path. Let us compare Japan and Russia at the time of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 in terms of prevailing conditions of the economy and the regime. Their learning from the West had brought about tumultuous transformations at times. One of them was economic development. Another was democratization.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Japan had a functioning parliamentary democracy of a limited sort⁹. The government was run by a regime based on a bureaucracy that was somewhat suspicious of increasingly powerful political parties as an opposition in parliament. Voting rights were limited to those who paid a certain amount of tax to the state. The government appointed the House of Peers, one of the two houses in parliament. The government wanted to strengthen those pro-government members in the House of Representatives who were busy coopting political parties that by definition were antigovernment in legislation, especially in budget legislation. The revolutionary heroes of the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and their successors were in charge and evolving their regime in the direction of democratization. In Russia the tsar’s regime tried intermittently and cautiously to modernize the economy by focusing on banks and railroads to quell suspicions of the growing influence of Western ideas of freedom and democracy. Alarmed by the rise of Prussia and its modernization and arms buildup west of Russia, Russia’s modernization drive wavered between the reformers and traditionalists in pushing for it. Russia’s eastward expansion took place in the context of constrained and often stalled domestic modernization efforts. The Russo-Japanese War took place in the very far East as both latecomer countries pursued expansionism.

World War I critically divided Japan and Russia. Japan formed an alliance with Britain and was victorious. The Japanese regime evolved in the direction of a more fully fledged parliamentary democracy during and after World War I. In 1925 universal suffrage was provided for the entire male adult population. In the same year, Japan enacted a stricter public security preservation law. In 1914 Russia joined the entente and endured a devastating defeat by the invading German forces, resulting in the fall of the government, which was subsequently taken over by a provisional goverment, all the while continuing to wage war against Germany. The antiwar Bolsheviks resorted to a coup d’etat and revolution, employing the slogan of peace and land. Peace resulted. Communists consolidated their power through a reign of terror.

In the 1930s, both Japan and Russia initiated preparation for war. The efforts focused on not only arms buildups but also the purging of political domestic enemies. As democratization receded in Japan, in Russia the worst kind of physical elimination of political enemies were carried out. War preparation meant war-focused industrialization in both countries. Japan was drawn into a long war with China, yet continued to consider the possibility of launching a war against the United States. Russia’s insecurity heightened as domestic political terror grew. The wars both countries waged seriously and deeply impacted their economies. Both Japan and Russia fought fierce battles respectively against Americans and Germans. Japan lost against the United States, and Russia won against Germany. Japanese territories shrank as Russian territory expanded. The Allied powers, led by the United States, occupied Japan. Russia became leader of the anti-US camp. Whereas Japan completely democratized itself under US occupation, Russia expanded communism in adjacent countries.

The commonality appeared also in the economic management of both countries: state-directed concentration of resources bore fruits after World War II. In the 1950s–1960s, both countries achieved high-economic growth and gained international status. Japan attracted attention in 1962, with the article, “Consider Japan” in The Economist. Russia gained attention by launching Sputnik into space in 1957. Some 30 years of heightened economic growth receded thereafter, however. In the 1970s–1980s, Russia stagnated, more or less, confronted by crossroads. Japan continued economic growth with an annual growth rates higher then most OECD countries, but with rates halved compared to the 1950s and 1960s. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and deserted communism. From then onward, Russia has been wavering between a loose dictatorship and authoritarian pluralism. Japan temporarily put an end to the rule of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1993. But since that time Japan has maintained a democracy of some kind, often featuring short prime ministerial tenures and mostly registering low-economic growth.

At the end of the Cold War, Japan and Russia had very different foreign policy positions and power in the world. Japan had a high per capita income level and lightly armed forces helped by its alliance with the United States. Yet how to direct the country into the twenty-first century was not well envisioned. Overshadowed by the enormous success of the recent past, Japan did not articulate its direction sufficiently after the Cold War¹⁰. The long recession, which started in early 1990s, continued for the next two decades. Meanwhile the significance of the alliance with the United States has decreased slightly. Russia was vanquished after the Cold War and resisted hard efforts to liberalize¹¹. The Boris Yeltsin regime worked hard toward economic liberalization made by the World Trade Organization, an organization Russia was eager to join to maintain its great power status. In the Vladimir Putin regime, the resource boom elevated Russia to an unprecedented level of economic growth. The Putin regime tried to orchestrate innovation and competitiveness during the boom years. Yet it remains an important agenda item without being a vigorous operationalized lever for industrial and technological breakthroughs¹².

Preview of this Volume

In this section, I will highlight what the chapter authors titledtheir chapter.

The early chapters on Japanese politics are entitled “Politics of Swings” and “Political Parties in Disarray.”

The chapters on Russian politics are entitled as “Politics of Volatility” and “Politics of Dictatorship and Pluralism.”

The chapters focused on the Japanese and Russian economy are entitled “Economics Takes Command” and “Politics of Modernization.”

The Japanese foreign policy chapters are entitled “Continuity in Alliance” and “Foreign Policy in Statu Nascendi.”

Russian foreign policy chapters are entitled “Improvising at Kremlin” and “Pragmatic Realism.”

Japanese Politics

What are the key characteristics of Japanese or Russian politics according to the chapter authors? On Japan, politics of swing and swing away (Inoguchi) and political parties in disarray (Streltsov); on Russia, politics of volatility (Smirnov) and politics of dictatorship and pluralism (Shimotomai).

On Japanese politics Inoguchi highlights the fairly frequent turnovers of prime ministers. Two preconditions were necessary. First, the stagnation of the economy prevailed since 1991 when the collapse of the largest bubble took place. Between 1991 and 2012, 12 prime ministers were born. A deflated economy registered almost zero to one percent annual growth. Between 2006, when the Liberal Democratic Party lost power to the Democratic Party of Japan, and 2012, when the Liberal Democratic Party recaptured power, six prime ministers were born. Second, prime ministers did not enjoy electoral strength and often times led them to procrastinate calling for a general election. Between 2006 and 2012, the general elections took place only twice (i.e., 2006 and 2012). The two years coincided with the maximum years of tenure for House of Representatives members. Inoguchi argues that the two key underlying conditions of frequent turnovers of prime ministers were deflation and prime ministers’ timidity of facing electorates’ verdict. These two conditions accumulated electorates’ discontent, which led to the large scale swings of party support patterns, that is, from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009 and from the Democratic Party of Japan to the Liberal Democratic Party in 2012. With Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s comeback in late December of 2012, these two conditions apparently disappeared at least for the time being. First, Abe’s economic policy executed the first quantitative easing of money since March 2013, which resulted by summer 2013 in both the depreciation of Japanese yen’s exchange rate vis-à-vis US dollars and most other major currencies. This boosted export sectors like automobiles, electric appliances, electronic devices, construction machines, precision machines, tourism. Poll figures favoring Abe as prime minister had been high hovering around 60 percent. Nikkei stock price averages went up somewhat up to approximately 16,000 yen from the nadir of lower than 10,000 Japanese yen in 2012. How effective will Abenomics turn out in 2014 and beyond? Of the three arrows of Abenomics, quantitative easing of money (monetary policy), fiscal tightening (fiscal policy), and deregulation and innovation (growth ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Japan and Russia: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy
• 2   Japanese Politics: Leaders, Political Parties, and Economic Policy
• 3   Russian Politics: Leaders, Kremlin and Politics of Vperyod (Forward)
• 4   Japan and Russia Economics
• 5   Japanese Foreign Policy: “Searching for an Honorable Place in the World”
• 6   Russian Foreign Policy: Vperyod (Russia Go Forward) Eastward?
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index