âPower is not just one of the things social scientists study, but the central thing,â claims Jonathan Hearn and we agree with him (Hearn 2012, p. 3). This book examines how people in Japan attain and use power in its manifestations as status, influence, legitimacy, knowledge, or authority across society and politics. Enormous social and political changes have occurred that amount to paradigm shifts in the distribution of power and deserve renewed scholarly attention.
Decades ago, analysts described power in Japan in a straightforward way: authority was rigidly predetermined, with the state, the employer, the older generation within the family, and men at the helm of the various hierarchies. To be sure, throughout this time, some scholars offered textured analyses or pointed to conflict within the system (see, e.g., Krauss et al. 1984). But more nuanced academic studies of power in Japan struggled to compete with the mainstream narrative propounded by the media and celebrity scholars.
A string of highly publicized high-level scandals involving power holders in the late 1980s, followed by a burst bubble and a protracted recession, meant that power holdersâpoliticians, bureaucrats, and big businessesâwere failing to ensure prosperity. Economic woes continued well beyond the âlost decadeâ of the 1990s when Japanâs economic and political future seemed unclear as political leaders lacked the power (or were unable or unwilling) to push through game-changing solutions.
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, economic growth is an ever more distant memory. According to some analysts, future prosperity is increasingly jeopardized by the demographic pressures that provide difficult, costly burdens on a debt-ridden state coping with deflationary pressures and sluggish growth. As Japan grapples with the consequences of having one of the oldest and most rapidly aging populations in the world, it is important for social scientists and policy-makers worldwide to understand the choices it makes, since other developed countries will deal with similar issues.
Our study is particularly timely. Policy-makers have once again turned their attention to workers, to the roles of women, to families, and to immigrants as potential âsolutionsâ to the perceived problem of maintaining or increasing the working population.1 Our analyses demonstrate the ways in which the state attempts to achieve this by legitimizingâone aspect of powerâparticular social arrangements and institutions.2
The authors in this volume examine the power of the state vis-Ă -vis families, children, and workers in their studies of some of the policies and institutions that attempt to exert power over citizensâ lives. We also look at how power operates within families and communities. We then turn to political power and look at the ways in which politicians attempt to exert powerâor set the agendaâin situations that are marked by multiple principals.
Too often, power is studied in isolated âpolitical,â âsociological,â or âanthropologicalâ units and this compartmentalized approach fails to uncover reciprocal and dynamic effects within the system as a whole. Our approach enables us to look, for example, at power within interpersonal, familial, and community relations. At the same time, we study the interactions between citizens and the âagents of the stateâ responsible for policy provision.
Our project is theoretically appealing since some scholars bemoan the fact that abstract theories of power do little to help us understand how actors actually exercise power (see Smith 2009, Chap. 1). We combine theoretical insights with empirical evidence to demonstrate how the state exercises power. The mechanisms include (1) exerting control over the policy-making process, (2) using rhetoric to legitimize reform, (3) manipulating public opinion through educational reform and rebranding, and (4) using ministerial appointments as a means to hold onto power, particularly when changed structural conditions increase the importance of these positions as a power resource.
Smith (2009) theorizes that states have typically relied on âauthority, bureaucracy and forceâ but recently supplemented these with âincentives, regulation, risk and surveillance.â We will see that the postwar Japanese stateâs bag of tricks most typically relies on authority, bureaucracy, incentives, and regulation. Rather than âpower overâ (domination), the state has âpower toâ effect its policy program/vision of the country.3 Chapters in this book examine how the state is attempting to mobilize social groups to achieve its economic objectives that include maintainingâor attempting to maintainâthe population at a particular size, ensuring a large enough tax base to enable government spending at a desired level (and not, e.g., accepting that Japan could be a much smaller country with considerably fewer economic resources and lower spending capacity).
Throughout the analyses, we recognize that power is not a zero-sum game in which governing institutions, nation-states, or elites have the upper hand. We pay attention to the interactions among societies, citizens, and governing bodies to think in a multifaceted way about power/empowerment. Despite obvious asymmetries in power relations, no one group possesses all the resources all the time. Instead, actors have a range of mechanisms that vary in effectiveness when they attempt to shape social outcomes (see Smith 2009, p. 7). This is in part because citizens and groups without obvious power have ways to deflect the power of the state, despite their structural disadvantages.
Overall, the authors uncover change in power relations in societal organization, in the ways in which policy is formulated and administered, and in how citizens react to power, whether this is the power of the state, employer, or individual. Rather than a pervasive government and a passive populace, we see the various ways in which individuals develop their roles, in essence, deflecting the power of the state. James C. Scott (1990) refers to this as âinfrapoliticsâ or the strategies of resistance employed by those who lack formal power).4 We also see the ebb and flow of power over time and see that power is context dependent, that is, actors can have power in one context, but not another.
Power
We recognize that under conditions of âdispersed inequalities,â no one group possesses all of the different types of resources, such as social standing, networks, legitimacy, wealth, knowledge, and public office, that could be utilized to exercise power (Dahl 1961). The authors of this text draw on the concept of distributive power, as Max Weber puts it, âthe chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a social action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the actionâ (Weber et al. 1978, p. 926). An understanding of power famously encapsulated by Dahl as, âA has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise doâ (Dahl 1957, pp. 202â203) has greatly influenced fields across the social sciences.
Although Dahl studied power at the community level, this definition of power is especially problematic at the national or international levels since the single agent of âAâ or âBâ invites generalizations of society and state.
Twentieth-century interest in Japan in the post-World War II period coincided with reconsiderations of the concept of power in social sciences and humanities. Michel Foucaultâs classic lament is particularly apt: âHistory has studied those who held powerâânamely kings, generals, and institutionsârather than the strategies and mechanisms of power that operate on everyday interpersonal levels (1980, p. 51). Individuals are not the points of power but the vehicles for networked, circulating power operating in localized contexts (1980, pp. 98â99). Power might be produced from âaboveâ in ways to benefit the sovereign state and produce the appearance of wholeness, but power functions at the level of everyday, visible social agents including families, doctors, parents, and teachers. Foucaultâs work on power has influenced scholarship in several fields, including scholars of non-Western contexts, because it invites us to consider both governments and âgovernmentalitiesâ or power operating in localized networks (see Chap. 6 of this volume).
We recognize the limits of classic definitions of power and pay attention to âhiddenâ or less overt power that shapes behavior and norms. In this book, we see how actorsâeven powerful ones such as the stateâcan have power in one situation but not in another (see Smith 2009, Chap. 12). Rather than looking for a parsimonious explanation that relies on one theory, we will see that âthe nature of power depends on where power is being exercised, who is involved in the power relations and who is the subject of power,â as Martin J. Smith found in his study of Western states (2009, p. 7).
We use this framework to analyze state and society without recourse to the reductions in well-known books on Japanese culture. Many of these postwar analyses were influenced by Ruth Benedictâs well-intentioned, but ultimately flawed, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946). Benedict tried to point out that some of the same stereotyping of Japan used to fuel nationalism and hatred during World War II could be turned into postwar pacifism. A pioneering anthropologist under commission from American war authorities in 1944, Benedict analyzed Japanese society (mainly by interviewing Japanese immigrants in America) and found that the nationâs contradictions also constitute its essential national character: Japanese people are âmilitaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timidâ (1995, p. 2). Both manifestations of the âchrysanthemumâ and the âswordâ figure into a harmonious society in which hierarchy, discipline, and duty compel Japanese society to hold together, whether toward the aims of peace or war, explained Benedict.
Chie Nakane (1970) and others portraying a stratified, coherent society gained more attention in Japan and abroad than those writers seeking to discover how Japanese engage in contentious behavior that influences politics. Minority communities in Japan, and contentiousness and power more generally, simply became invisible to adherents of Nihonjinronâdiscourses of essential Japaneseness.
Contemporary analyses of Japan have proliferated, but domestic and international commentators still draw on some of the older stereotypes that see an authoritative state and passive populace. We see this when influential journalists claim, â[Japanese] People do not feel public responsibility to get out their opinion; they do not really analyze and criticize themselvesâ (Foreign Press Center, Japan 2013). Some academics likewise continue to describe Japan as a âspectator democracyâ with a disinterested public (Hrebenar and Itoh 2014, p. 8). These descriptions are especially jarring as they were published at a point in time when people were taking to the streets in unprecedented numbers to protest against restarting the nuclear power stations. Anti-nuclear protests led into wider protests against the Abe administrationâs security legislation (drawing from a broad demographic, but with young people at the forefront, especially the Student Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs).
Our project is policy-makersâ understanding of societal organization influences the trajectory of reform as it delineates the range of alternative policy paradigms they consider viable. At times, this relationship is reciprocal, as Peter Hall comments, âThe consequences of policy can gradually alter the societal organization of a nation, just as the shape of policy is in the first instance heavily influenced by that organizationâ (1986, p. 267).5
At other times, policy-makersâ understanding is not in line with citizensâ norms; instead, they propose ideologically motivated policies as an attempt to shape s...